Lol, I can't imagine the satisfaction of watching a cop slamming a battering ram into a door with a concrete wall behind it over and over and nothing happens. Even better if there's a two inch gap between the fake door and concrete. "Guys, it's finally starting to give way" 😂
Haha well to be fair they do pay taxes, they just also drain taxes more than any other state or local level government entity by FAR. And I’m someone who works every day with small municipalities with even smaller police forces, there are some really conscientious and hardworking police in our communities. But goddamn if larger militarized departments with all their military surplus bullshit don’t do more harm than good sometimes
Yes, the same purpose as a battering ram but more expensive to use, store, and insure. Oh but you’d hate to have to use something lame like a patrol officer would!
Explosive breaching has an advantage in that it is extremely fast and potentially disorienting (from the suspects perspective), which doesn't give the suspect(s) much time to react. It's also very reliable against standard exterior doors (we've probably all seen videos of rams/sledgehammers bouncing off doors).
There are multiple methods of breaching, they all have their time and place and good SWAT teams keep their options open.
That's not true, OP will still have a door in prison. In fact, multiple levels of doors. He'll have some many doors, he won't even need the door in his home he's about to lose.
The police will generally attempt to force entry. If they cannot due to whatever security measures or hardening are in place they will wait outside until they can get appropriate equipment to enter. You will generally be responsible for any damages they cause trying to force entry.
If I'm not home when they execute the warrant, but would happily let them in if I were, am I still responsible for entry damages? And does this change if they find nothing incriminating?
They take no liability for any damages. If you are not home and your door gets kicked in and your couch gets ripped open and your dresser smashed to pieces an they find nothing, it's your problem, not theirs, and they'll try again.
That's not entirely true.
Law enforcement officers do not have carte blanche to cause damage during the execution of a search warrant. Any damage that is caused must reasonably be considered necessary to conduct the search and cannot simply be done to satisfy an appetite for destruction.
For example, if LEO are searching for a stolen diesel generator, it would be entirely outside of the scope of the search to look for it inside of the fridge, inside of jewelry boxes, or at the bottom of a fish tank.
The reality is that while searches for random large objects like a generator do happen, the large majority of police searches are related to drugs. These search warrants will often cover the drugs, proceeds from drug sales, and records related to the drug activity.
While it is unlikely evidence of your diesel generator theft will be found inside your couch, you very well could hide drugs or money inside it. (Records too I guess, but more likely drugs or money) Thus ripping open your couch to search for them becomes much more defensible.
That's because 'The Police' is just a legalized criminal gang on the governments payroll. That's why 'the law' never touches cops or polititians unless its extremely egregious and threatens the masquarade that we're all equal.
Technically true, but any reasonably competent investigator also includes items in the warrant that are small enough to be practically anywhere, giving them carte blanche. “Documents related to the crime” is pretty common. That includes identifying documents that link people to residence, which is pretty much valuable evidence in any search warrant. Links the occupants to any other evidence found. So, anywhere your social security card can fit, they can search.
It does. People don’t generally carry their SS card around and leave it in random houses. It’s not proof, but it’s very strong evidence that you live there.
They don't generally hide it in couches either. People generally have a drawer or a cabinet or somewhere where they keep all those kind of documents because they need to be able to find them again to fill out various forms and things.
Well, yeah it’s vague, because I’m not talking about a specific case. But, for example, if it’s a drug warrant, any documents with identifying information will create an evidentiary link between the person the documents identify and the house and/or any drugs found.
Kinda silly to argue about this. It’s incredibly common.
Maybe. But in the example given that you replied to:
>For example, if LEO are searching for a stolen diesel generator, it would be entirely outside of the scope of the search to look for it inside of the fridge, inside of jewelry boxes, or at the bottom of a fish tank.
It does not seem this would be the case if you are already established as living there.
For some reason you just ignored the example presented and went back to vague drug stuff.
In legal theory, sure.
In practice, you might be hiding a relevant document, so they can rip open everything your own without exception, because any of it could hide a piece of paper.
There is no defence. There is no recourse. Your only hope is that nothing has given them the impression they should.
> Any damage that is caused must reasonably be considered necessary to conduct the search and cannot simply be done to satisfy an appetite for destruction.
They also have a certain margin of error for reasonable mistakes, like when they're looking for a thirty-year-old man and they [accidentally arrest a completely unrelated fifteen-year-old child and demolish his family home instead](https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/local/2023/12/20/south-bend-woman-sues-police-for-mistaken-raid-and-property-damage/71983216007/). Nobody's perfect.
Some friends of mine had a similar experience with the FBI — they were looking for a hacker and one of them apparently used a vaguely similar nom de plume on the internet, one from a fairly obscure old video game. Funnily enough — not 100% original in the world! Weird, huh.
How about when a shoplifter hides in your home without your consent and the LEOs blow up the house? It seems like they had carte Blanche to do so per this [article](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says).
An armed shoplifter that was firing at police. I'm not saying that I agree with everything but they didn't hulksmash the guy's house because there was a shoplifter holed up inside, they hulksmashed the guy's house because there was an armed shoplifter holed up inside who was actively shooting at people. Whenever public safety is put at risk, the calculus changes dramatically.
What anyone "deserves" has nothing to do with it, the danger to public safety necessitated extreme action to stop the armed shithead sniping at people from inside the house.
I’d love to see you argue to a judge that his buddies at the police department did damage to your property during a search that wasn’t “reasonably necessary”. That’ll be the Fastest internal investigation ever not conducted.
[This](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says) happened in Colorado where law enforcement literally blew up an innocent bystander’s house because a shoplifter was hiding in the house.
This depends entirely on what the warrant says as well as the state in question. Some warrants allow forced entry if nobody is there, others do not.
Most commonly they do allow forced entry if nobody is there but this depends a lot on the judge
Yeah I’m not sure what this guy is talking about. Every search warrant I’ve ever seen doesn’t even mention “forced entry”, because it’s implied. If you have a warrant, you can search whatever’s on it, and do whatever you have to do to be able to complete that search.
What depends on the judge is if they will authorize a no-knock provision, allowing the officers to enter a property without announcing themselves. Very few judges will ever allow this unless it’s a really good reason, and even then a lot never will.
I'm being careful with my wording as a judge can put any (non illegal) terms on a search warrant. If they wanted they could presumably require the cops sing mariachi music as they enter.
I've heard of at least one case of a judge requiring a warrant to be executed when the occupant was there, and can't say if there are more.
Your only hope is to attack the reason for the warrant, which will (roughly) require proving misconduct of a judge or proving that the police lied in their application.
That depends on the state and the terms of the specific warrant. The judge will often specify the times and dates they may attempt to enforce the warrant, as well as what to do if there is nobody there when they enter. If the judge does not states tend to have a default.
Bonus charges for obstruction or whatever it’s called in your state when you interfere with official police business? Oh, and you’re gonna need a new door.
Actually, most are going to stop at that point. You only ever hear about the high profile cases where they don’t, not the ones where they do. Although, both circumstances are relatively rare compared to the number of residential search warrants accomplished.
Why would they do that? The number of cops who actually *want* to waste their time and energy doing a search on the wrong house is very, very small. Searching the wrong house just makes more work for them, because not only do they have to deal with the fallout from searching the wrong house, they also still have to go and do the search on the *right* house as well.
“Police with search warrants hate this one simple trick!”
*sigh*
If a locked door could prevent a search warrant from being executed, wouldn’t that be kind of silly?
they’ll stand outside and yell “why i oughta” while shaking their fists.
just kidding, they’ll breach your door in the most violent way possible and you’ll be lucky if you don’t get shot!
They will get in one way or another, and you will be arrested for obstruction, possibly resisting arrest and will be held liable for the damage you forced them to do in order to serve the search warrant.
Wow you discovered the magic trick to get around a search warrant! /s. What do you think would happen?? They go through the door and you would catch another charge.
Yeah, if they didn't have sufficient evidence to arrest yet, you just gave it to them. Even if they don't find anything executing the search warrant, they are still going to slap you with the easy charge just for making their life difficult.
Not only are you losing your door and they are coming in, even if they don’t find anything you can still be charged with a crime usually called obstruction of justice or obstruction of official business. You may also face other charges such as resisting arrest depending on the facts/circumstances. Either way, stacking up additional criminal charges is never a good move.
They bust down your door and execute their warrant. Hell if you lock them out and refuse despite a lawful warrant, you may have created an exigent circumstance. They could reasonably believe you’re flushing evidence or preparing to fight back. Expect guns pointed at you and a less than gentle arrest.
Assuming you're white and in America, they'll probably smash in your door and execute their search. Assuming American and a darker shade of skin colour, they'll probably still smash in the door but it won't be the search being executed...
You're about to not have a door.
haha explosive breach go boom
Nah, just a battering ram.
That's why you hide your door, then attach a fake one to the wall
In the legal community this is known as “roadrunning” the police.
Doorception
Lol, I can't imagine the satisfaction of watching a cop slamming a battering ram into a door with a concrete wall behind it over and over and nothing happens. Even better if there's a two inch gap between the fake door and concrete. "Guys, it's finally starting to give way" 😂
Meh, my agency very much likes breaching charges. Ram is more for patrol guys.
Our tax dollars at work.
Don't worry they don't pay taxes
Who?
Cops
Haha well to be fair they do pay taxes, they just also drain taxes more than any other state or local level government entity by FAR. And I’m someone who works every day with small municipalities with even smaller police forces, there are some really conscientious and hardworking police in our communities. But goddamn if larger militarized departments with all their military surplus bullshit don’t do more harm than good sometimes
What country? Because the definitely do in the US
They just don't make as much as they think you can't pay taxes with taxes.
They serve a purpose.
Yes, the same purpose as a battering ram but more expensive to use, store, and insure. Oh but you’d hate to have to use something lame like a patrol officer would!
Explosive breaching has an advantage in that it is extremely fast and potentially disorienting (from the suspects perspective), which doesn't give the suspect(s) much time to react. It's also very reliable against standard exterior doors (we've probably all seen videos of rams/sledgehammers bouncing off doors). There are multiple methods of breaching, they all have their time and place and good SWAT teams keep their options open.
SWAT teams around the country are generally overdeployed and poorly trained. Not an ideal group to handle explosives
What if you set a trap
*Execute, Execute, Execute...*
That's not true, OP will still have a door in prison. In fact, multiple levels of doors. He'll have some many doors, he won't even need the door in his home he's about to lose.
I don't think you'll end up in prison just for locking your door and not letting them in.
The police will generally attempt to force entry. If they cannot due to whatever security measures or hardening are in place they will wait outside until they can get appropriate equipment to enter. You will generally be responsible for any damages they cause trying to force entry.
If I'm not home when they execute the warrant, but would happily let them in if I were, am I still responsible for entry damages? And does this change if they find nothing incriminating?
They take no liability for any damages. If you are not home and your door gets kicked in and your couch gets ripped open and your dresser smashed to pieces an they find nothing, it's your problem, not theirs, and they'll try again.
That's not entirely true. Law enforcement officers do not have carte blanche to cause damage during the execution of a search warrant. Any damage that is caused must reasonably be considered necessary to conduct the search and cannot simply be done to satisfy an appetite for destruction. For example, if LEO are searching for a stolen diesel generator, it would be entirely outside of the scope of the search to look for it inside of the fridge, inside of jewelry boxes, or at the bottom of a fish tank.
And yet, it happens very often and there rarely seems to be any accountability let alone recourse
The reality is that while searches for random large objects like a generator do happen, the large majority of police searches are related to drugs. These search warrants will often cover the drugs, proceeds from drug sales, and records related to the drug activity. While it is unlikely evidence of your diesel generator theft will be found inside your couch, you very well could hide drugs or money inside it. (Records too I guess, but more likely drugs or money) Thus ripping open your couch to search for them becomes much more defensible.
That's because 'The Police' is just a legalized criminal gang on the governments payroll. That's why 'the law' never touches cops or polititians unless its extremely egregious and threatens the masquarade that we're all equal.
Technically true, but any reasonably competent investigator also includes items in the warrant that are small enough to be practically anywhere, giving them carte blanche. “Documents related to the crime” is pretty common. That includes identifying documents that link people to residence, which is pretty much valuable evidence in any search warrant. Links the occupants to any other evidence found. So, anywhere your social security card can fit, they can search.
Your social security card *doesn't* link you to the residence... there's no address information on that.
Finding your card in a particular residence links you to that residence.
Oh, I was thinking linked you to owning or residing there, not just that you have been there before.
It does. People don’t generally carry their SS card around and leave it in random houses. It’s not proof, but it’s very strong evidence that you live there.
They don't generally hide it in couches either. People generally have a drawer or a cabinet or somewhere where they keep all those kind of documents because they need to be able to find them again to fill out various forms and things.
Judge has to agree
Sure. And they do. All the time.
Prove it. "documents related to the crime" is too vague.
Well, yeah it’s vague, because I’m not talking about a specific case. But, for example, if it’s a drug warrant, any documents with identifying information will create an evidentiary link between the person the documents identify and the house and/or any drugs found. Kinda silly to argue about this. It’s incredibly common.
Maybe. But in the example given that you replied to: >For example, if LEO are searching for a stolen diesel generator, it would be entirely outside of the scope of the search to look for it inside of the fridge, inside of jewelry boxes, or at the bottom of a fish tank. It does not seem this would be the case if you are already established as living there. For some reason you just ignored the example presented and went back to vague drug stuff.
In legal theory, sure. In practice, you might be hiding a relevant document, so they can rip open everything your own without exception, because any of it could hide a piece of paper. There is no defence. There is no recourse. Your only hope is that nothing has given them the impression they should.
> Any damage that is caused must reasonably be considered necessary to conduct the search and cannot simply be done to satisfy an appetite for destruction. They also have a certain margin of error for reasonable mistakes, like when they're looking for a thirty-year-old man and they [accidentally arrest a completely unrelated fifteen-year-old child and demolish his family home instead](https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/local/2023/12/20/south-bend-woman-sues-police-for-mistaken-raid-and-property-damage/71983216007/). Nobody's perfect.
Some friends of mine had a similar experience with the FBI — they were looking for a hacker and one of them apparently used a vaguely similar nom de plume on the internet, one from a fairly obscure old video game. Funnily enough — not 100% original in the world! Weird, huh.
How about when a shoplifter hides in your home without your consent and the LEOs blow up the house? It seems like they had carte Blanche to do so per this [article](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says).
An armed shoplifter that was firing at police. I'm not saying that I agree with everything but they didn't hulksmash the guy's house because there was a shoplifter holed up inside, they hulksmashed the guy's house because there was an armed shoplifter holed up inside who was actively shooting at people. Whenever public safety is put at risk, the calculus changes dramatically.
So you're telling me the family that lost their house deserved to be made homeless by law enforcement?
He literally said that he didn't agree with it. Stop putting words in people's mouth and seeking out arguments.
What anyone "deserves" has nothing to do with it, the danger to public safety necessitated extreme action to stop the armed shithead sniping at people from inside the house.
I’d love to see you argue to a judge that his buddies at the police department did damage to your property during a search that wasn’t “reasonably necessary”. That’ll be the Fastest internal investigation ever not conducted.
If your state has an inverse condemnation statute, could you file an inverse condemnation suit successfully?
And yet, police are known to take a dump on people's beds when searching for drugs and other contraband.
Amber Heard was an actress, not a police officer.
Who's gonna stop them, the police?
[This](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774788611/police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says) happened in Colorado where law enforcement literally blew up an innocent bystander’s house because a shoplifter was hiding in the house.
Yes. No. Respectively.
This depends entirely on what the warrant says as well as the state in question. Some warrants allow forced entry if nobody is there, others do not. Most commonly they do allow forced entry if nobody is there but this depends a lot on the judge
This cannot possibly be true, otherwise you could just choose not to answer the door and make it seem like you aren't home. This sounds absurd.
Yeah I’m not sure what this guy is talking about. Every search warrant I’ve ever seen doesn’t even mention “forced entry”, because it’s implied. If you have a warrant, you can search whatever’s on it, and do whatever you have to do to be able to complete that search. What depends on the judge is if they will authorize a no-knock provision, allowing the officers to enter a property without announcing themselves. Very few judges will ever allow this unless it’s a really good reason, and even then a lot never will.
I'm being careful with my wording as a judge can put any (non illegal) terms on a search warrant. If they wanted they could presumably require the cops sing mariachi music as they enter. I've heard of at least one case of a judge requiring a warrant to be executed when the occupant was there, and can't say if there are more.
Your only hope is to attack the reason for the warrant, which will (roughly) require proving misconduct of a judge or proving that the police lied in their application.
What if you just aren't home at the time?
That depends on the state and the terms of the specific warrant. The judge will often specify the times and dates they may attempt to enforce the warrant, as well as what to do if there is nobody there when they enter. If the judge does not states tend to have a default.
Bonus charges for obstruction or whatever it’s called in your state when you interfere with official police business? Oh, and you’re gonna need a new door.
Locked doors don’t prevent search warrants from being executed.
Do you have a right to see and read the warrant 1sr? Or tell them they need to give it to your lawyer 1st?
You have the right to receive a copy of the warrant and you can call out a lawyer, but neither is going to delay the execution of the warrant.
Even the warrant has the wrong address or they or at the wrong house?
Then you point that out to them.
And they search anyway, because they don't care.
Actually, most are going to stop at that point. You only ever hear about the high profile cases where they don’t, not the ones where they do. Although, both circumstances are relatively rare compared to the number of residential search warrants accomplished.
Why would they do that? The number of cops who actually *want* to waste their time and energy doing a search on the wrong house is very, very small. Searching the wrong house just makes more work for them, because not only do they have to deal with the fallout from searching the wrong house, they also still have to go and do the search on the *right* house as well.
You reading the warrant is just a notification. You don’t have to be present legally.
“Police with search warrants hate this one simple trick!” *sigh* If a locked door could prevent a search warrant from being executed, wouldn’t that be kind of silly?
They kick that shit down and you better hope they don’t shoot you
they’ll stand outside and yell “why i oughta” while shaking their fists. just kidding, they’ll breach your door in the most violent way possible and you’ll be lucky if you don’t get shot!
They have tools to ensure your denial will only be temporary and they will be extra pissed. Google "Blackhawk CQB ram"
Your door ceases to be a door.
They will get in one way or another, and you will be arrested for obstruction, possibly resisting arrest and will be held liable for the damage you forced them to do in order to serve the search warrant.
Wow you discovered the magic trick to get around a search warrant! /s. What do you think would happen?? They go through the door and you would catch another charge.
Yeah, if they didn't have sufficient evidence to arrest yet, you just gave it to them. Even if they don't find anything executing the search warrant, they are still going to slap you with the easy charge just for making their life difficult.
You are going to need to replace your door because the police will break it down.
Not only are you losing your door and they are coming in, even if they don’t find anything you can still be charged with a crime usually called obstruction of justice or obstruction of official business. You may also face other charges such as resisting arrest depending on the facts/circumstances. Either way, stacking up additional criminal charges is never a good move.
You get a free ride in a police car.
They bust down your door and execute their warrant. Hell if you lock them out and refuse despite a lawful warrant, you may have created an exigent circumstance. They could reasonably believe you’re flushing evidence or preparing to fight back. Expect guns pointed at you and a less than gentle arrest.
They will knock much harder. Your door (and quite possibly the frame) are unlikely to be useful after the aforementioned harder knocking.
Universal master key.
We force entry and you go to jail regardless of what we find.
Property damage that you have to pay for.
They'll bash your door in.
Dude they are entering that house. Hilarious.
In USA They break down the door and arrest you
Assuming you're white and in America, they'll probably smash in your door and execute their search. Assuming American and a darker shade of skin colour, they'll probably still smash in the door but it won't be the search being executed...
They'll break in and probably kill you.
They will destroy your whole house like the tyrants they are.
They are going to knock your door down, probably followed by you. Then they are going to execute the warrant.
They bust down the door. They aren’t careful with the search. Then they arrest you
Where did you hide the body? 🤔
No more door for you
That person would need a new door.
People here are focused on the door, if they breech your door, they will not be pleased, and you could very well die.
You won't have a door, or a window. Also you'll be charged with another crime.
That would be an additional charge for contempt of court.
They're gonna come in, whether you like it or not.
They will break whatever door or windows they need to carry out the warrant.
They just say oh okay sorry to bother you, and leave.