No-Knock Raids: Political Inaction Has Deadly Consequences - Bloomberg Law

When Amir Locke was shot to death by Minneapolis police during a no-knock raidearlier this year, it was tragically clear that the systemic changes promised in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had yet to materialize.

To be clear, Locke’s death should not have occurred. We did not require one more wake-up in the form of a senseless civilian death at the hands of law enforcement to know it is well past time to ban no-knock warrants and rein in the rampant violations of personal freedoms caused by over-policing in communities of color.

It is encouraging that the Biden administration is considering expansion of an existing limit on no-knock warrants by certain federal agents. But we clearly need to do more.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would truly ban the use of no-knock warrants in federal drug raids, has stalled in Congress. The bill passed the House in 2021 but failed to come to a vote in the Senate, where bipartisan negotiations collapsed in September.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is trying to jump-start the conversation with a new a bill named for Locke that would strictly limit the use of no-knock warrants in drug-related investigations.

Failed Efforts to Reform No-Knock Warrants

Minneapolis is a perfect example of how efforts to reform no-knock warrants have fallen short. Prior to his re-election, the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, touted a ban on no-knock warrants as one of his accomplishments. But the death of Locke, who wasn’t the subject of the warrant that led officers to his door, forced Frey to admit that his supposed ban merely required police to announce their presence before entering a private residence.

We can no longer accept these half-step measures to address a practice that is so obviously in need of reform. The ongoing delays are inexcusable—and quite clearly, deadly.

Inaction is not limited to the federal level. Here in New York, where officials also pledged to take decisive action against no-knock warrants, a bill designed to accomplish that goal has languished in a legislative committee for the past year.

The measure, S11A, is a good first step. It would ban no-knock warrants except in extreme circumstances in which officers’ lives are at risk. It would also require officers to provide more justification when they seek no-knock warrants and set penalties for those who violate the rules.

New York’s bill also goes further by preventing the use of flash bang grenades like those employed by police in 2014 in a Georgia raid, during which a deputy mistakenly tossed one into a baby’s crib, critically injuring the infant.

Opponents of banning no-knock raids include police unions whose leaders argue that the element of surprise is safer for officers. Supporters of the bans say officers are at more risk when operating clandestinely.

A Relic of the War on Drugs

There are critics who claim that the stories of Breonna Taylor and Amir Locke have been twisted by advocates and the media to frighten the public and advance anti-law enforcement political agendas. In truth, the proliferation of no-knock warrants and their deadly consequences has gone underreported.

Experts on the subject say the use of the warrants have increased exponentially since the launch of the war on drugs in the 1980s. During that time, criminal justice scholar Peter Kraska estimates, around 1,500 such warrants were issued each year—a figure that grew to approximately 40,000 in the 2000s and is thought to be as high as 80,000 in recent years.
In 2010, the number was closer to 60,000, with most of them targeting marijuana.

Further, a 2014 report by the American Civil Liberties Union on militarization of the police found that 42% of no-knock raids targeted Black people and 12% Latinos.

No-knock warrants are a relic of the outdated and ill-conceived War on Drugs, which led to the mass incarceration of people of color and cost many Americans their most sacred constitutional rights. In the wake of a long-overdue national conversation about how to reform law enforcement to better serve—not over-police—communities of color, it is far past time for this country to reverse course and protect the most vulnerable among us.

That admittedly difficult undertaking will take time, but no-knock warrants are low-hanging fruit in this debate and must be addressed without further delay.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

T. Andrew Brown is the 124th president of the New York State Bar Association, the nation’s largest voluntary state bar association. He is also the founder and managing partner of Brown Hutchinson in Rochester, N.Y., where he has practiced statewide in the areas of civil litigation and employment law.

source: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/no-knock-raids-political-inaction-has-deadly-consequences

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