I don't assume at all they do this for the "power rush". No doubt it makes the door bashers feel a lot safer. But, what about the innocent citizens?
My problem is, today it's OK to do it for all drug busts, tomorrow it may be for parking tickets or failure to appear. After all, it is always easiest (and safest) to assume there is armed menace lurking just inside every door.
Look. I'm no fan of drug dealers. But there has to be some sort of proportionality here. Where does this stop?
"It can't happen here", you say? Well, how about the practice of "forfeiture", which is clearly an unConstitutional "taking"? It started small, and now practically funds entire police departments. It started with "drugs" and now people are losing their expensive cars over such things as soliciting prostitutes. You are assumed guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. That sure isn't American Constitutional Law, although it may be today's jurisprudence.
The abuse of civil liberties tends to accelerate in direct relationship to the "requirement" for safety. Pick any Amendment and try it on for size. You'll find they are all eroded this way.
Similarly, there are more than enough of these dangerous and even deadly incidents of "mistaken identity" happening nowadays. Police departments should only use these techniques when there is a demonstrated threat, not when the case is full of "might be's", much less wrong addresses!
Sure. Policing is a dangerous business. Increasingly, so is being an innocent citizen.
Funny you should mention that...
The Drug War has already eaten out the core of justice and law enforcement in the U.S.
Snitches, plea bargains, no-knock raids, and overstuffed prisons are all a product of the Drug War. And it all means that the rest of crime gets lower priority and is handled sloppily. This is why leftists are having a field day with the Innocence Project - when cops and prosecutors are this sloppy and operate a system this compromised, of course it will produce injustice.
You don't have to be a "fan" of drug dealers (although the jackboot lickers will accuse you of it) to want a well-running criminal justice system that costs less.
So here we are on FR, the very archetype of the Republican demographic, and the Drug War takes another lickin' from people who, in Nixon's day, were voting for "law 'n order." If I were a cop, I'd be asking "Do I want to lose that constituency?"