Time to End No-Knock Warrants?
Criminal justice reform efforts have stalled amid rising crime, but technology may have just made no-knock warrants obsolete.
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the public outcry for criminal justice reform became — for a brief moment in time — deafening. Suddenly, everything was on the table — from slashing police budgets to ending qualified immunity.
In the years since, the public appetite for sweeping criminal justice reform measures has waned substantially. While correlation isn’t causation, one factor seems to have been the sharply rising rates of crime in cities from Portland to Baltimore.
While the movement to defund the police has proven — in the fullness of time — to have been a colossal failure (any partially defunded police departments have since been refunded) much work remains to be done on the subject of sensible criminal justice reforms.
It is not only possible to strike a better balance between public safety and justice, but in many ways, technology has made it easier than ever.
One particular reform is ripe for harvest: Ending no-knock warrants.
What is a No-Knock Warrant?
Most of the time, when law enforcement officers execute a search warrant, they are required to…