Knock and Announce: Balancing Crime Control and Fourth Amendment Rights

Abstract

Knock and Announcement Discussion According to Samaha (2005), crime control serves as the main aim of conducting searches. However, knock and announce serve as among the challenging parts of search and compromise the anticipated results at times. The fourth Amendment commands a police officer to knock and announce before entering the house to search. Though the law defines ten seconds as the grace period for announcing the intentions of the search warrant, some situations require abrupt entry without announcements move to attain physical evidence that can support the case and avoid interruptions through strategized defense mechanism. Neither the Fourth Amendment nor any other law requires suppression of evidence; thus, whether with a knock and announce or without, physical evidence proves essential in proving the severity of a case. In our case, if the police announce the intentions of the search warrant, the criminals might decide to destroy the case evidence (the narcotic) and open the door freely, knowing that the police will fail in supporting his assumptions/claims in court. On the other hand, upon an announcement, the victims might decide to destroy the narcotic or keep it but attack the police using any available weapon in the house. Such attacks may limit the police potentials to succeed in the search process or lose life in severe cases. However, since search remains coined around power when the victim ignores the officer's knock and announcement, the king power allows the officer to break the house, conduct the search and arrest the criminal. To this effect, the officer may choose to knock and announce and, if ignored, break and conduct his duty as anticipated or choose to enter without announcement if suspecting that the victim might compromise the physical evidence, which serves as the primary mission of the search....