Seeing this video about the man who shot himself before his house was raided in relation to the Dateline “Predator” show: ItemFix - Social Video Factory , I was wondering something. When police want to arrest someone, why do they conduct these big dramatic raids instead of just watching the person to see when they come out of the house to go to work or whatever?
I understand if it’s a crackhouse with 20 people all hours of the day and night. But in a normal house, couldn’t they just do some surveillance, determine who’s living there, wait until the person/s leave the house, and then arrest them in the open? And if they’re worried about someone destroying evidence, wouldn’t be best to perform a search when a house is empty, so there is NO possibility of someone destroying evidence?
There are all sorts of stories about the things that go wrong with late-night “no-knock” raids. People get shot accidentally, the eldery have heart attacks, dogs get shot, etc. What’s wrong with this alternative?
I don’t have a full answer for you, but I’ve seen episodes of COPS where they intentionally chose to perform a vehicle stop instead of a raid.
In the case in question, it was a guy with a bunch of guns, and more importantly, a really big dog.
Shooting a grown man who decides to resist arrest with deadly force is one thing, but shooting a dog that can’t make an informed decision is perhaps another thing, ethically.
That, and one supposes that the 21 foot rule gets even more serious with a pissed-off German Shepard. If the damned thing severs your jugular before you or your backup can draw a bead…
It can also be a disfavored drain on police personnel time/availability/budget to maintain a stakeout at a house for who knows how long, rather than just going and getting the guy NOW.
Every police department wants a SWAT team so guys can run around playing Rambo, and once you have a big hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail. When big cities have a SWAT unit, it can get the legitimately dangerous missions - but when bumfuck county, Iowa decides it needs guys with MP5s and flashbangs, they seem to be anxious to use it on anything more major than a traffic stop.
So, they should have waited until the building had left the building or all ~125 Davidians had gone off somewhere else at the same time* to execute the warrant to search the building for illegal weapons? (*which doesn’t seem very likely does it?)
Ya sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to wait until the full auto weapons had left the building 'cause I doubt they’d be doing so on their own.
Feel free to make a thread in GD for that discussion.
My original post re: Koresh was a needless hijack anyway, and this thread could still use some relevant answers.
Having done just this type of thing for most of a career (now retired) I can shed some light on this subject. There are many factors in deciding whether or not breaking a door in is the right way to go. Usually, but not always, these raids are narcotic related. Often the case will depend on what is recovered in the house. No drugs = no charges. Knocking politely and asking to be let in doesn’t work. It gives anyone in the house time to flush or otherwise destroy eveidence. It also gives them time to arm themselves and resist. So, the element of suprise is paramount.
Waiting to take someone down on the street has its own risks. First is the risk of flight. People being chased by the police tend to have little regard for the well being of their fellow citizens. We all know the danger of pursuits in cars. Foot chases can lead to running gun battles, little old ladies being bowled over and hostage taking. From a tactical standpoint, a foot chase can be a very dangerous undertaking for an officer. Most of those involved in the drug trade (or any criminal activity) tend to have very good “street sense” and are alert to police trying to watch or sneak up on them. That’s not to say it can’t be done. It just that its time and manpower intensive to keep visual track of someone who is self employed and a bit paranoid. If the subject happens to have a job then its easy to grab him at the job site where he’s less likely to resist.
The down side to the pre-dawn raid is that the target is on home turf and may feel cornered and elect to fight since flight isn’t an alternative. The up side is that, in the couple of hundred of these that I took part in, the targets were almost always still in their beds when we got to them. They were caught completely off guard and are disoriented and confused. This usually means little or no resistence and nobody gets hurt. I’ve never had an officer or subject seriously injured on a raid that I was on. Although I’d like to attribute that to training and professionalism, luck certainly played a role. SWAT officers are killed every year doing these dynamic entries.
Each case is evaluated on its own with priorities being publiic safety, officer safety and subject safety. Officers are given a diffcult job and, in the vast majority of cases, perform exceptionally well. The ones that go smoothly you rarely hear about. The ones that go bad can end tragically and make the headlines.
There IS a certain excitement to doing the work but a professional team doesn’t let that become a factor in deciding in whether or not to execute a raid. As a matter of fact, our team had no input on whether to conduct a raid other than a veto if it was too risky for what the goal was.
Lastly, the thing I liked least about doing these kinds of entries was seeing the crying children who had no idea what was going on around them. It has to be a traumatic experience for them - seeing all these geared up cops screaming and pointing guns. While I hated seeing it, I had to remind myself that it wasn’t me that brought this upon them.
The FACTUAL answer (to the extent there is one) has to do mainly with a combination of resources, time factor (you don’t want him escaping or committing other bad acts before you manage to apprehend), and lack of need (it’s relatively rare that apprehension in a home leads to serious results). Like anything else, occasionally they get it wrong.