KILLEEN, Texas (May 24, 2021) – Last month, the Killeen City Council passed an ordinance banning no-knock warrants in the city, taking a step toward nullifying several Supreme Court opinions in practice and effect.
Under the new ordinance, “No peace officer employed by the City of Killeen, including the Chief of Police as provided in section 22-26, may request, execute or participate in the execution of any search warrant that does not require the officer to knock and announce his or her presence prior to execution.”
On April 27, the city council approved the ordinance by a 6-1 vote.
In 2019, James Reed was killed in a no-knock raid by Killeen police. His sister, Jumeka Reed, said she was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming approval of the ordinance.
“That was a shocker. I was only expecting four votes, you know, I mean the minimum votes,” she said after the ruling. “I am going to lay down happy and peaceful, at least for now, until tomorrow. You know, back at it. It doesn’t stop.”
Nullifying the Supreme Court
The enactment this city ordinance takes a big step toward effectively nullifying and making irrelevant several Supreme Court opinions that give police across the U.S. legal cover for conducting no-knock raids.
In the 1995 case Wilson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court established that police must peacefully knock, announce their presence, and allow time for the occupants to open the door before entering a home to serve a warrant. But the Court allowed for “exigent circumstance” exceptions if police fear violence, if the suspect is a flight risk, or if officers fear the suspect will destroy evidence.
As journalist Radley Balko notes, police utilized this exception to the fullest extent, “simply declaring in search warrant affidavits that all drug dealers are a threat to dispose of evidence, flee or assault the officers at the door.”
The SCOTUS eliminated this blanket exception in Richards v. Wisconsin (1997) requiring police to show why a specific individual is a threat to dispose of evidence, commit an act of violence or flee from police. But even with the opinion, the bar for obtaining a no-knock warrant remains low.
“In order to justify a ‘no-knock’ entry, the police must have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the effective investigation of the crime by, for example, allowing the destruction of evidence.” [Emphasis added]
Reasonable suspicion is an extremely low legal bar to meet. Through this exception, police can justify no-knock entry on any warrant application. In effect, the parameters in the SCOTUS ruling make no-knock the norm instead of the exception.
A third Supreme Court ruling effectively eliminated the consequences for violating the “knock and announce” requirement even without a no-knock warrant. In Hudson v. Michigan (2006), the High Court held that evidence seized in violation of knock and announce was not subject to the exclusionary rule. In other words, police could still use the evidence in court even though they technically gathered it illegally.
Significantly, were it not for the dubious “incorporation doctrine” made up by the Supreme Court based on the 14th Amendment that purportedly empowers the federal government to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, these cases would have never gone to federal court and we wouldn’t have these blanket rules.
Without specific restrictions from the state, police officers generally operate within the parameters set by the High Court. By passing restrictions on no-knock warrants, states and localities set standards that go beyond the Supreme Court limits and in effect, nullify the SCOTUS opinion.
