VOX
Most of the time, when a person kills an intruder who breaks into his home, dressed in all black and screaming, the homeowner will avoid jail time. But what happens when the break-in was a no-knock SWAT raid, the intruder was a police officer, and the homeowner has a record?
A recent pair of cases in Texas are an example of how wrong no-knock raids can go, for both police and civilians, and how dangerously subjective the SWAT raid process can be. In December 2013, Henry Magee shot and killed a police officer during a pre-dawn, no-knock drug raid on his home. He was initially charged with capital murder, but he argued that he shot the police officer, who he thought was an intruder, to protect his pregnant girlfriend. In February, a grand jury declined to indict him, and charges were dropped.
In May, a Texas man named Marvin Guy also killed a police officer during a pre-dawn, no-knock raid on his home. Guy, too, was charged with capital murder. Unlike Magee’s grand jury, a grand jury in Septemberallowed the capital murder charge against Guy to stand. Guy, who is black, now faces the death penalty. Magee is white.
THERE ARE OVER 20,000 NO-KNOCK RAIDS IN AMERICA EVERY YEAR
Magee’s case wasn’t completely identical to Guy’s — the latter had done prison time on robbery and weapons charges, while Magee’s previous arrests were for marijuana possession and DUI. But the circumstances of the raids, if anything, made Guy’s reaction more justifiable. Police were trying to enter McGee’s house through the door when he shot at them, while, in Guy’s case, they were trying to climb in through the window. And during the raid on McGee’s house, the cops did in fact find a few pounds of marijuana plants. In the raid on Guy’s house, they found nothing.
Advocates say these cases highlight racial bias in the criminal justice system, particularly when the victim is a police officer. But they also highlight the bizarre nature of no-knock raids, which have been criticized for causing unnecessary confusion and endangering innocent adults and children.
In theory, no-knock raids are supposed to be used in only the most dangerous situations. So what might be most surprising about them is how infrequently police officers get killed when they bust into suspected criminals’ homes unannounced.
In reality, though, no-knock raids are a common tactic, even in less-than-dangerous circumstances. There are a staggering 20,000 or more estimated no-knock raids every year across America. By the numbers, it’s clear that no-knock SWAT raids are far more dangerous to civilians than they are to police.
Here’s what you need to know about why no-knock raids happen, why police think they’re necessary, and what happens when things go wrong.
A SWAT team enters a Denver house after using explosives to bust down the door. (Hyoung Chang/Denver Post via Getty)
How did no-knock raids become a thing?
The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from “unreasonable search,” meaning police can’t bust into your home whenever they feel like it — they need a warrant, granted by a judge. Even a search warrant doesn’t give police the right to enter your home by force — they’re supposed to knock, announce themselves, and give you a chance to open the door.
But as the war on drugs ramped up in the 1970s and 1980s, police argued that criminals and drug dealers were too dangerous to be granted the typical courtesy of knocking first. In the early 1970s, the federal government made it legal for federal law enforcement agents to conduct no-knock raids — but the law was so widely abused that it was repealed a few years later.
Since then, though, a series of court decisions and state laws have carved out a set of circumstances that make it legal for police to raid a house without announcing their presence beforehand. This has happened at the same time that SWAT teams have proliferated around the country. (For more on the history behind SWAT teams and no-knock raids, check out Radley Balko’s definitive book on the subject, Rise of the Warrior Cop.)
MOST SWAT TEAMS SPEND THEIR TIME CARRYING OUT HOME RAIDS
Most SWAT teams spend their time carrying out home raids. The ACLU analyzed 818 records of SWAT exercises from police departments around the country in 2011 and 2012. They found that 80 percent of the time, SWAT teams were deployed to execute a search warrant — instead of crises such as hostage situations or active shooters.
Not all SWAT raids are no-knock raids; police are supposed to jump through an extra set of legal hoops before they can raid someone’s house without knocking. But the line between regular SWAT raids and no-knock raids can get a little blurry.
SWAT teams often use quick-knock raids during which they might not give the suspect a whole lot of time to answer the door after they announce their presence. The legal standards for no-knock and quick-knock raids are different, but to someone whose house is being raided, they can seem pretty similar.
A SWAT team enters a house during the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers. (Mario Tama/Getty)
Why do police use no-knock raids?
It’s rare that police really need to raid a home in order to bust someone for drugs. They could always set up a drug buy on the street and surround the suspect there. But police have focused on drug busts in stash houses, or in dealer’s homes, for a few reasons.
For one thing, busting the house where drugs are stored in bulk disrupts the drug supply chain, in theory. For another, if they can charge a dealer with not just the drugs he happens to have on him or in his car when he’s arrested, but with anything he’s keeping in his house, they can slap him with a longer prison sentence. And finally, thanks to civil asset forfeiture, raiding a home lets cops seize whatever drug money (or other illegal money) is being stored there — and perhaps even the home itself — and use it for their own departments.
Over the last few decades, police have also argued successfully that there are some circumstances in which a standard “knock and announce” raid would either jeopardize police safety or make it impossible for them to fight crime.
Police during a SWAT team training. (Jonathan Wiggs/Boston Globe via Getty)
What are the rules for a no-knock raid?
To get a special no-knock warrant signed by a judge, police have to show that a standard “knock-and-announce” raid wouldn’t work. There are two different arguments police can use for this:
- The suspect is too dangerous. If police knocked and announced their presence, the suspect would have more time to get a weapon and fight.
- If police knocked and announced their presence, the suspect would have time to destroy evidence of a crime before the cops got to him.
The first of those sounds pretty straightforward. The second is rather broad. If they think there are drugs in the house, and the drugs could get flushed down the toilet, police have a case for a no-knock raid. (It’s been argued that this actually makes police more likely to use no-knock raids on small-time dealers rather than major ones, because major dealers would likely have too much product to flush down the toilet.)
For a more detailed, but easy-to-follow, explanation of the legal standards for raids, check out webcomic artist Nathan Burney’s Illustrated Guide to Law.
Is it hard for police to meet those standards?
Nope. It’s rare that judges deny warrants for no-knock raids.
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