Free Republic

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – Four years after the death of Breonna Taylor, lawmakers are renewing their efforts to ban no-knock warrants. The push comes as Congress has struggled to enact policing reforms. Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul says it is time to ban no-knock warrants. “It’s just not a good idea to go in without announcing yourself,” Sen. Rand Paul, (R-Ky.) said. No-knock warrants are when law enforcement go into a home without announcing their authority or purpose. Paul named his bill after Breonna Taylor, who was killed in March 2020 when police entered her apartment through a no-knock raid and...

Conservatives who support the bill recognize the conflict between unannounced home invasions and the Second Amendment.The Texas House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly approved a bill that would sharply restrict the use of no-knock search warrants, which the state Senate is now considering. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans, and the bipartisan support for the bill suggests that many conservatives recognize the potentially lethal hazards of routinely allowing police to enter people's homes without warning. That practice pits law enforcement priorities against the right to armed self-defense in the home, which the Supreme Court has recognized as the "core" of...

A Black father will not face charges after he fired a shot at police officers that he mistook for intruders in his Florida home in February, a local prosecutor decided. The Office of the State Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Florida announced last month that attempted murder charges brought against Corey Marioneaux Jr. had been dropped. After conducting a full review of the incident, authorities determined that there was not enough evidence to prove that Marioneaux had known he was firing at law enforcement who arrived at his Pensacola, Florida home to serve a search warrant, according to...

Hear that? It's the Twilight Zone music playing softly in the background because they're here-ere. Surprise, unsolicited, undesired at-home blood and saliva sampling courtesy of Minnesota's Governor Walz of "rock and cow" infamy. Or rather, they were here. No sooner had the task forces begun ringing doorbells, but Governor Walz called off his Orwellian henchmen claiming we Minnesotans were racist and threatening his Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response teams. CASPER, for short. Catchy, ain't it. Did I mention he's up for re-election in 2022? Brilliant campaign move. There may have been a bona fide incident of racism or...

Paul's legislation, titled the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, would prohibit federal law enforcement from carrying out a warrant "until after the officer provides notice of his or her authority and purpose." It would also apply to state and local law enforcement that receive funding from the Justice Department. A proposal unveiled by House and Senate Democrats earlier this week would ban the use of no-knock warrants in federal drug cases and tie law enforcement funding to state and local agencies on a similar ban.

Serving as a cop in America is harder than ever — and it comes down to respect. A deficit of respect for the men and women in blue who daily put their lives on the line for the rest of us is hurting recruitment and retention and placing communities at risk. This month, Sgt. Christopher Brewster of the Houston Police Department was shot and killed while responding to a domestic-violence call. Several hours later that same day, Officer Stephen Carr of ­Arkansas’ Fayetteville Police ­Department was ambushed and executed while sitting in his patrol vehicle. Last week, Det. ­Joseph Seals...

"HB 56 is a bill designed to white-wash decades of judicial activism that enabled LEO to obtain and execute illegal search warrants, which are referred to as “no-knock warrants” in the common environment. HB 56 is a whitewash because it actually amends current law to define “no-knock warrants” where no such term currently appears, and it obliterates the existing law (OCGA 17-5-27) that prohibits warrants that allow no verbal announcement from LEO before they breach a door."

Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about. As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down. Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife, a 29-year-old credit analyst, were frightened...

Mayor of Maryland town, his dogs dead, still waiting for apology Cops in Prince George's County, Md., have a proud tradition to maintain. In May, a former county officer was sentenced to 45 years in prison for shooting two furniture delivery men at his home last year, one of them fatally. (He claims they attacked him.) In June, a suspect jailed in the death of a local police officer was found strangled in his cell. Authorities have no idea how that could have happened. It's unlikely Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Md., was thinking of his county's behaviorally challenged...

4 gunmen bust doors, yell ‘FBI,’ loot home BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE Two men kicked in the front door, splintering it near the bolt-lock. Two more kicked in a side door. All four had guns. It was 3 a.m. “FBI! FBI!” the men shouted, one pulling what looked like a badge out of his shirt before stuffing it back in. “Where’s your money?” Lloyd McCuien lay facedown on the living-room floor of his Pulaski County house — off Arkansas 365 outside Maumelle and within sight of Interstate 40 — surrounded by seven family members. “It took me about...

RYAN FREDERICK is no hero, no matter what they're saying about him on the Internet. He's the 28-year-old Chesapeake man being held in the Jan. 17 shooting death of Detective Jarrod Shivers. Shivers, 34, was executing a drug search warrant at Frederick's residence the night he was killed. According to police, the eight-year police veteran was hit in the arm and chest by a shot fired from inside the house. In a jailhouse interview, Frederick said he was in bed when the police came to his door about 8:30 p.m. Awakened by his barking dogs, Frederick said, he thought his...

Feds detail woman's death, officers' plea Published on: 04/27/07 According to federal documents released Thursday, these are the events that led to Kathryn Johnston's death and the steps the officers took to cover their tracks. Three narcotics agents were trolling the streets near the Bluffs in northwest Atlanta, a known market for drugs, midday on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Eventually they set their sights on some apartments on Lanier Street, usually fertile when narcotics agents are looking for arrests and seizures. Gregg Junnier and another narcotics officer went inside the apartments around 2 p.m. while Jason Smith checked the woods....