On Wild Horses and 'No-Knock' Searches

Vin Suprynowicz | July 31 2006

Melvin C. Bailey, Jr., master chief petty officer, USN retired, writes in:

"I was impressed by the comprehensive nature of the Review-Journal’s June 19 editorial, ‘Police no longer need to knock.’ Sadly, your hypothetical question about an American being surprised by the police breaking into their home (unannounced) and an innocent party dying as a result, has already happened.

"I was assigned to the Naval Air Station, Norfolk, VA between September 1971 and May 1975. I can’t precisely remember the date, but sometime during 1973, at the police chief’s request, the Norfolk City Council passed the ‘No-Knock Law,’ which was supposed to give the police the edge in executing search warrants against suspected drug dealers.

"On the very first raid authorized under the new law, the unthinkable happened. The police raided an address provided by an informant. The raid went down in the early morning hours with the police busting through the door and fanning out throughout the house. No word was ever passed that it was the police. A 65-year-old African-American woman was asleep in her upstairs bedroom.

Awakened by the commotion, she reached for her loaded shotgun and on several occasions hollered, ‘Who is in my house?!’ Receiving no answer and fearing the worst she positioned herself in front of the locked bedroom door.

"Hearing someone walking up the stairs she crouched ready to defend herself and again she hollered, ‘Who is there?!’ Again no answer.

"When the police officer assigned to breach the bedroom door crashed into it, he was hit in the chest by a shotgun blast. The woman was subdued and arrested.

"As the smoke cleared, the police realized that they had made a mistake. They had broken into the wrong house. The address on the search warrant and the house raided were not the same. In the aftermath of this all-too-common situation the results were:

A dead police officer, the one who was assigned to breach the bedroom door. His father was the police chief.
An embarrassed police department; they had failed to ensure the accuracy of the informant’s information.
The woman who shot the officer was not prosecuted. The prosecutor found that she had feared for her life and acted in self-defense.
"The police chief made a televised announcement that the Norfolk Police Department in view of the circumstances would not use ‘No-knock’ provision of the law again.

"No matter how often we are assured that this could not happen in our community, it takes just one typographical error or misinterpreted situation to result in a similar situation."

Thus ends the missive from MCPO Bailey.

Indeed. Thirteen years after the fact – though of course such a ruling can’t be retroactive – the Supreme Court has just legalized what the BATF did at Waco, shooting the dog and her puppies in their pen in front of the church, throwing up scaling ladders and firing into the building long before any agent claims to have shouted the word "Warrant!" (though even then, no single agent would testify under oath as to who actually had the warrant in possession; no plans had been made to actually "serve" it) as agents in helicopters hovering and swooping behind the building (according to credible eyewitnesses I have interviewed) fired machine guns down through the roof.

Is that the model on which the justices now hope to see all our law enforcement based? Because they were so pleased at how it all worked out?

As I said on June 19, "This is not ‘conservatism.’ This is totalitarianism."

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