When Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker woke up on March 13 to the sound of someone breaking into their Kentucky apartment, they had no idea it was the police executing a “no-knock” unannounced search warrant. So, they did exactly what many law-abiding citizens would do: Walker called 911 and grabbed his legally owned firearm to defend his home from unknown intruders. Just a few minutes later, a hailstorm of bullets shot haphazardly would cascade through the apartment (and into neighboring apartments as well) in a tragic exchange that left Taylor dead, a police officer wounded, and Walker under arrest.
The search warrant police were executing did not actually name Walker nor Taylor. Rather, it was associated with another warrant searching a suspected neighborhood drug den miles away, on the suspicion that the alleged dealer, Taylor’s former boyfriend, might have stored drugs in Walker’s home. According to NBC News, no drugs were found in the apartment, and neither Taylor nor Walker had criminal records. Simply put, there’s no reason to think either did anything wrong.
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Now Taylor is dead, and Walker’s life is ruined — all because of the deeply flawed, dangerous policy of “no-knock warrants” and police recklessness.
The special warrants were originally intended as a rare exception to allow police to avoid the conventional knock-and-announce search process in cases where either the suspect is extremely dangerous or if there are serious concerns that suspects could destroy all the evidence before the police get in. But now they’ve become a common practice, with over 20,000 “no-knock” warrants each year and judges essentially rubber-stamping them by approving almost all requests.
“No-knock” warrants are extremely unsafe for all parties involved. Homeowners, like Taylor and Walker, have no idea that the people breaking into their home are police officers. So, they do what in normal circumstances would be commendable and defend themselves. This puts both parties in an extremely dangerous circumstance that can quite easily get out of hand. And for what?
Can anyone really say that this situation somehow warranted an unannounced police home invasion? Of course, it’s worth noting that the officers claim they did announce they were police. But it’s quite hard to believe that. Taylor’s attorneys insist the couple never heard any announcement, and it was a “no-knock” warrant specifically being executed. Plus, there’s no imaginable reason why if the police had announced themselves, Walker would have shot at them. There wasn’t any “evidence” to cover up or pending arrest to resist, as no drugs were found.
It’s hard to imagine any upsides to unannounced police home invasions that could possibly outweigh the human costs, both in terms of innocent victims killed like Taylor and in police officers tragically killed in these senseless altercations resulting from this system.
We also need to have a serious conversation whether petty drug investigations and the “War on Drugs” really justify such draconian and dangerous policing practices. But even setting that broader debate aside, everyone should support, in particular, abolishing the policy of “no-knock” warrants immediately. Thankfully, in the aftermath of Taylor’s tragic killing, voices across the political spectrum, not just traditionally sympathetic Democrats and liberals, are making this call.
“No one should lose their life in pursuit of a crime without a victim, and ‘no-knock’ warrants should be forbidden,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican, said. “Let’s hope the investigation provides justice.”
“‘No-knock warrants’ are not safe for either party,” Gun Owners of America Director of Outreach Antonia Okafor Cover told me. “What a tragedy the death of Breonna Taylor is. May she rest in peace.”
A tragedy indeed. Let’s hope no more innocents have to die in home invasions gone wrong before our justice system gets the reforms it so desperately needs.
