Lucille
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'Bou Bou's Law' Aims to Restrict No-Knock Police Raids
Unless, unless, unless. So essentially nothing would change. Nice window dressing though!
'Bou Bou's Law' Would Restrict No-Knock Police Raids
A horribly injured toddler inspires legislation to rein in drug warriors.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/23/bou-bous-law-would-restrict-no-knock-pol
Unless, unless, unless. So essentially nothing would change. Nice window dressing though!
'Bou Bou's Law' Would Restrict No-Knock Police Raids
A horribly injured toddler inspires legislation to rein in drug warriors.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/23/bou-bous-law-would-restrict-no-knock-pol
In response to a botched drug raid that gravely injured a toddler last May, a Georgia state legislator has introduced a bill that would impose new restrictions on warrants that allow police to enter homes unannounced. Bou Bou's Law—which Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) named for Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh, the 19-month-old boy who was nearly killed by a flash-bang grenade tossed into his crib—would allow "no knock" warrants only in cases where the police can show "probable cause that if an officer were to knock and announce identity and purpose before entry, such act of knocking and announcing would likely pose a significant and imminent danger to human life or imminent danger of evidence being destroyed." That rule is stricter than the standard the Supreme Court has said is required by the Fourth Amendment: "reasonable suspicion" that knocking and announcing "would be dangerous or futile" or "would inhibit the effective investigation of the crime."
According to Carrie Mills, a retired Atlanta cop who "considers herself an expert on search warrants," the change proposed by Fort would be reckless. "If we knock and announced, all evidence is going to be destroyed," she told WTOC, the CBS station in Savannah. "You have to draw the line between your right as a citizen to privacy and a community's right to live in a crime-free environment. You can't have them both."
The Framers probably would have disagreed. In any event, the "crime" Mills has in mind consists of voluntary transactions involving arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants. If I have to choose between my privacy and vainly trying to stop people from getting high in ways that Carrie Mills does not like, that is a pretty easy choice.
[...]
Another Georgia bill, introduced by Rep. Kevin Tanner (R-Dawsonville), would raise the evidentiary standard for no-knock warrants and require that they be executed between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. "unless the judge for good cause expressly authorizes execution at another time." That begins to address the safety issues raised by middle-of-the-night raids, which include the very real risk that cops will be be mistaken for burglars and shot. A similar timing expectation for all searches would help make the knock-and-announce rule more meaningful.