I caught a little bit of a show about the Dallas SWAT team the other day. In the first segment I saw, they wanted to arrest a drug dealer, so they pulled his barred front window off its mountings, and then went in with flash bangs and assault rifles and the whole nine yards. The actual drug dealer was outside at the time, so the arrested him right away and found only some young children in the house.
In the second segment, they blew up an apartment door with some kind of contraption (after lots of practice) to find the guy not home, several smoke grenades later. He got picked up a couple of days later though.
My question is, why not stake out the joint, and then arrest the guy as he’s coming out of 7-11 and then search the house at your leisure? Surely this would be safer for the good guys and the bad guys, and use quite a bit fewer resources wouldn’t it?
He would have to commit an actual traffic violation for them to be able to pull them over. The traffic violation is not related to the suspected crime. If they searched his house because they pulled him over, it would be an illegal search.
If they pulled him over for that traffic violation, they would not have probable cause to search his house for contraband/suspected illegal activities.
They may not have had arrest warrants – it could be that they only had a search warrant. In that case, they have to search the house, and arrest the guy based on what (if anything) they find inside.
If the officers attempt to stop the individual while this subject is operating a motor vehicle, a flight/chase situation is an unfortunate possibility, together with the inherent danger to the citizens. If the subject is taken in their domicile, no such risk exists.
Just because you pick the guy you want up at the 7-11, doesn’t mean there are not a dozen tons of the white stuff and 3 kamikaze underlins still at the house.
I thought catching the suspect at home was deemed to be the safest combination of element of suprise and smallest chance of innocent bystanders being hurt- unless they bust in the wrong house.
Maybe, I’m not an expert, but the second guy they tried to catch was wanted by the ATF for running assault weapons. I’d rather tackle a guy leaving a strip club than bust into a machine gun warehouse.
I hope I’m wrong, but my gut feeling is the force needs to justify their armored personnel carrier.
Well, I’m not an expert either, but I think I’ve seen every episode of Dallas Swat, and it seems to me that that run way more search warrants at drug houses than arrest warrants. They’d be budgeting the APC no matter what.
Why not search when the guy is out at the 7-11 and bust his ass as soon as he gets to the front door? I’m sure they could use surveillance to have a few guys hiding out back and run around the place when he’s putting his key in the lock. Less of a chance of him pulling out a shotgun and blowing everyone’s head off if his shotgun is still inside (or already confiscated).
In the houses they’re breaking into, it would appear the place is never empty. They’re basically 24 hour crack stores. Given how many bars are on the doors and windows, I can never figure out how any of the inhabitants ever do get out.
It is surprising to me that it appears that you can have the right to storm a suspect’s house with flash grenades and assault rifles, and simultaneously not have the right to pull his car over. Could someone explain this to me? I understand the arrest warrant/search warrant thing, but what’s the logic behind it?
I think it’s that a search warrant has to apply to a specific house. Maybe the guy never deals from his car, or something. If they’re following the guy and he suddenly goes into some other guy’s crack house, they can’t search that house until they get a warrant for it.
They same thing used to apply to wire taps. But recently, they’ve started to tap phone lines of the people called by the line for which they have a warrant, and civil libertarians have been protesting.
Aren’t there rules governing when a dynamic entrance can be used an when it cannot? Sometimes they bust in the door and other times they knock and identify themselves first.
If you have a warrant for his arrest, you can do the traffic stop.
If you need to search his house and have a warrant, you can search his house.
I think someone in this thread is confused. Not sure who.