'NO KNOCK' FORMULA GUARANTEES HIGHOCTANE LEADFESTS by Barry Saunders, Staff Writer
Copyright (c) 1997, The News and Observer

Whoever said dope will make you dopey was right.

Drugs can obviously make you forgetful and addle your
brain to the point that you disregard important stuff
like people's rights and the U.S. Constitution.

And those are just the folks trying to stop drugs!
Sometime this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide
whether police have the right to batter down someone's door
to make an arrest in a felony case without knocking first
or identifying themselves.

This dubious right is being sought not in cases
involving subversives trying to overthrow the government,
or child molesters, or even murderers. No, this "noknock"
rule applies solely to drug dealers and is being touted by
some as a necessary weapon in the war on drugs.

What it is, though, is an unnecessary suspension of the
Fourth Amendment right against illegal searches.

Oh, and it's also a way to ensure that undertakers and
casketmakers have a profitable quarter.

Because if nothing else, having police officers invade
homes of suspected drug dealers without knocking first is
going to result in shootouts that will cost the lives of
drug dealers, police officers and innocent citizens, as
people react naturally i.e., violently to protect the
sanctity of their homes.

Granting police blanket noknock privileges in drug
cases, a skeptical Justice David Souter pointed out during
oral arguments on the case, would invariably lead to law
enforcement officials seeking the same right in other
cases. Indeed, many people might consider the apprehension
of suspected child molesters, murderers and the like
equally or, dare I say it? more important than
arresting drug dealers.

Yet Souter and his colleagues on the bench weren't
unsympathetic to the noknock idea, going so far as to
suggest that police seek approval of such raids on a
casebycase basis instead of as a blanket policy.

Ironically and nonsensically, proponents argue that the
tactic would actually save officers' lives, by catching
drug dealers off guard before they can grab their
highpowered weaponry.

Pshaww. Those people have obviously viewed one episode
too many of the "FBI" television series the old one
starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., not the newer, less revered
reallife version directed by Louis Freeh. No drug dealer
worth his gold chains is going to be caught dead without
his trusty gat or Uzi nearby.

After all, these are individuals engaged in an illegal
enterprise in which paranoia is an occupational
requirement. People who think police can launch a
successful sneak attack upon a usually fortified house are
deluding themselves. But it is not the attacks on drug
dealers that make me break out in a cold sweat. Most
pushers that I know are human toe jam for whom it would be
hard to work up sympathy under any conditions.

No, it is the attack on an innocent family and that
family's natural reaction that makes me shudder.

Five years ago, I thought my wellarmed pal Ivan in
Gary, Ind., was overreacting when he told me of his plan to
exact horrific vengeance on a neighbor. Seems this neighbor
thought Ivan was dealing drugs from his home because of the
heavy automobile traffic near his house. He reported Ivan
to police.

Fortunately, the police realized the cars were visiting
one house down from Ivan's and executed their assault on
the correct house.

Common mistake, right one that could be easily
forgiven?

Not by Ivan, and as I listened to the frighteningly
realistic scenario he laid out, I myself became less
forgiving. "Look man," he said. "I've got my wife and son
in there, and if I hear somebody trying to enter my house
without saying who it is, I'm going to start shooting and I
won't stop until they stop me or I'm out of bullets."

Being a frequent visitor to his home (he was a great
shadetree mechanic) I knew it was physically impossible
for him to run out of ammo.

Knocking the "noknock" law is no knock on cops. Most of
them are conscientious public servants who take no glee in
rousting innocent people from their beds in the middle of
the night. But mistakes happen, and with a noknock rule,
they'll happen more frequently.

During the 1980s, thenFBI director William Webster
warned Americans that they should, in so many words, be
prepared to give up some of their liberties in the war on
drugs. At the time, I thought he was joking. But
depending upon what the Supreme Court decides this summer,
the joke could be on us.

And drug dealers will still be laughing at the inept
war on drugs.