I was wondering if some of the LEOs on the thread could share their experience and views on knock and talk. I understand knock and talk to be a tool used by LE to ferret out potential drug houses and other offenders. Now I understand that you don’t have to open the door or even let the officers inside when the visit. The question at large seems to be the constitutionality of letting officers in to your home. Can you be prosecuted if they find illegal substances in your home? I know that there are ways to influence a person’s response when they are faced with a person in a position of authority. Is this authority abused when used by LE?
The only experience I have that is even close to this type of tactic is “Cordon and Knock” operations that we use downrange. We would shutdown all travel in a neighborhood and go door to door and ask the inhabitants if they had seen anything suspicious or we would ask to come in to see how many AKs they had and check for explosives. I always wondered what would happen if the inhabitants said no.
DragonDoc - complicated question. The 4th Amendment guarantees your rights against unreasonable (specifically warrant-less) search and seizure, but there are several legal precedents which govern exactly what’s “reasonable.”
The courts hold that people should have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in certain places (won’t get into that, it’ll bog us down); with the home or place of residence being relatively inviolate. However, if you CONSENT to a search of an area where you have REP, then anything LE finds is fair game.
The question here is, what’s an honest, un-coerced consent. That’s why we pay lawyers and judges big money - to figure those things out given the circumstances of any given search.
Of course, once you open the door, even if you don’t let the LEO into the house, anything that he can see from his position outside your residence now becomes fair game under the “plain sight” doctrine.
However, I, personally, have never used a “knock and talk” to scope out a possible target house - if I’m going to be kicking in your door, I don’t want you to know I know you exist! The knock & talks that I’ve done have been more in canvassing for possible witnesses to crimes, and/or to identify the residents in the immediate vicinity of a crime. Of course, I’m a federal guy, and haven’t had the privilege to serve as a local or state LEO, so my experience may be atypical.
A knock in talk is just that. There is nothing that prohibits a officer to do that the same thing any other person can do. If you don’t want to talk then don’t answer the door or tell the officer you don’t want to talk. Yes if during that contact an officer sees contraband in plain view you can be charged and in most cases found guilty. Now just because a officer sees something doesn’t give him the right to search your entire house he would need a search warrant for the rest of the stuff.
A good friend of mine who is a deputy sheriff woud disagree. He’s done many a ‘knock and talk’ and when he finds something illegal it gives him probable cause to search the whole premise’s.
Yea Doc what they said. Kind of the same idea when you are at the airport and an officer approaches you and begens conversation with you. You do not have to talk to him and you do not have to let him look in your bag if you don’t want him to. They are only trying to develope probable cause to take it further. Then again if you have nothing to hide let them in or stop and talk with them when they approach.
Not without a warrant… You can recover any controband you can see from outside and do a protrctive sweep for bad guys, and anything else in plain sight during that is fair game, but beyond that… Get a warrant!!! Or you will end up with fruits of the poisonous tree…
That may be how things are done where you operate, but not here. How legal it is I can’t say with any sort authority, but it’s pretty common for somebody to get rolled up for other stuff due to the fact that an officer saw something in plain view.
Consent is where the lawyers are making the big bucks these days.
edited: The savvy way to do it is IF you have enough for the protective sweep, then sweep. If you find contraband, note it, don’t move it, and go the warrant route. You still have to get a foot in the door, and more often than not, its with consent.
I guess I could do that but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t consent to a search based solely on my principles. I have a 4th amendment right as long as I exercise it. When we fail to exercise our rights they atrophy and become marginalized and useless. None of us want that to happen.
I just saw a LEO loose his job and get sued for bending the rules a little. Got to ask yourself is it worth it. W`hat if he found a dead body in the back room in a closet stuffed in a box? He would loose any evidence he just found because the body was not in the scope of the search and by the way the search was illegel. You can’t just search someones home because you found some dope in the livingroom on the table because you saw the dope from his front door looking inward (plain sight).
I always think about walking out the back door and around the house to the front to see what the person at the door wants. The way my house is designed the front door is a fatal funnel (no windows and narrow entry way). I dislike walking out of the door because my situational awareness sucks. I would dislike having a LEO at my front door asking to speak to me or come inside even more. I guess I could arrange a meeting at a neutral site “on post” if he wanted to talk.
You are exactly right Doc! Nothing says you have to go along with the program. We all need to now our rights. Some I know go as far to keep a copy of the Constitution on them or close by.
Your sweep has to be limited to only those places where a person could hide.
Closet? Yes
Shoebox? No
Large cabinet? Yes
Big laundry pile? Yes
DVD case? No
As an Infantryman I completely understand the concept of a fatal funnel. I live in a good neighborhood, but I’m only a few blocks from some seedier areas and I never open my door for anyone unless I have to. I figured out a long time ago when I was a shitbag that you never invite the police in as many of them will take advantage of the situation to the best of their ability since they’re counting on you not knowing the law. I’ve come a long way since those days, but I still won’t invite them in, let them search my car, nor will I provide a statement without a lawyer present.
So let me get this right. You knock on a front door and you see a small amout of dope on the livingroom coffee table. You bust your way past the kids parents (the kid left it there last night after his partents went to sleep) go in and search the whole house for more dope based soley on your discovory of dope on the livingroom table. You put your hands on the parents because now the govenment has violated their rights. Dad runs for a gun and all hell breaks loose because you found some dope on the table in the livingroom that belonged to their son. At what point are you gonna stop violating someones rights and get a freaking warrant? How about the body you just dicovered in the closet cut up in a bag and emits a foul stench? You will surely loose your dead body and any evidence that was on the body (dna, finger prints ect…). All this could be setteled by seizing the dope, securing the residence and getting a warrant.
What you do see while legally present (the right to be) can give you PC for a warrant. While waiting for that warrant you can lock the premises down, controlling who comes and goes. Protective sweeps are just that, a cursory sweep for other occupants and threats. The Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure is not as absolute as many believe, there are many exceptions.
This is just wrong. During a “knock and talk” finding something that is illegal to possess would give you probable cause to obtain a search warrant. It does not give you probable cause to search the entire premises. I think where you are confused is, once an officer obtains consent to search a residence the officer can continue to search unless that person revokes their consent. If consent is revoked and the officer continued to search without a warrant the officer would at a minimum get a few days off and at the most a few years in prison.
I find it offensive that you brand law enforcement where you live as routinely violating people’s rights, especially when your entire base of experience is what you have heard from your “friend.”