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When you break into someone's home you want to be ready for people with guns shooting at you.

Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.

If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice.

With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.

and I would argue no knock is unconstitutional, the whole point of a warrant is to prove you’re allowed to search me and the law was written in a time where everything was on paper, we’re suppose to be secure in our papers short of a warrant, if you can’t show a warrant how do I know I’m not being robbed and need to defend myself? it’s totally bonkers
If you're there to arrest people, that seems reasonable. But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.

I do have the presumption that when professionals do things that seem weird, they probably have reasons that I as an amateur don't immediately understand.

I've also read enough Radley Balko to know cops often get away with doing awful and stupid things...

> But if the goal is to collect evidence, you can't give them time to destroy it.

Unless it's proven someone is on imminent harm, then they should find another way to collect evidence, or just not do it.

I'm aware, but there seem to be an awful lot of instances where "high stakes high priority evidence collection" doesn't apply.
> When you break into someone's home…

So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.

Best to kill anything that moves; it's the only way to survive.
The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
Dead men can’t sue!