KipEsquire brings up Hudson v. Michigan, regarding a : constitutional right to “flush it down the toilet”. “It”, of course, being drugs, while being served a search warrant. He states further that, “[T]here is no such right…The police had a valid warrant, announced their presence and entered through an unlocked door. This is troubling to civil libertarians — why?”

Although I don’t find Hudson particularly troubling, I’ll take the opportunity to respond to Kip’s inquiry:

I think the problem most civil libertarians have with the idea of “knock & announce raids” is primarily the sort of crime that they often target (drug crimes). Furthermore, they are problematic: are we to believe that anyone kicking down a door and yelling “police!” is actually the Police? I say no. Previously, I noted that, “No-knock raids require that the person being served have perfect information when no such information can possibly be obtained,” here.

Consequently, I believe that a search warrant ought to be served to a person, if the person is home. Certainly decades of courts have not held this opinion. If the police are under the assumption that the person is not home, as in Hudson, I’d say they needed to do more homework. Just for shits & grins – instead of serving the knock & announce warrant – what would prevent officers from doing the following:

1. Surveilling the property and ascertaining whether the subject of the warrant is home or not. If he is not home, and nobody else is home, serve the warrant. If he is home, proceed to step 2, below.

2. Apprehending the subject on his way to work (liquor store, bus stop, etc.) Proceed to step 3, below.

3. Finally, serving the warrant with subject in custody?

You’ve got a sweet recipe for disaster: a potentially armed & dangerous criminal, who may be high on drugs and is suspected of having drugs in his posession, and armed police officers who have a reasonable expectation that deadly force or the threat thereof may come into play. I simply don’t see any value in breaking down doors and endangering anyone else who happens to be in the house at the time such warrants are “served.”