Radley Balko writes at Slate on the troubling increase in the use of “no-knock” raids by police:

In the 1995 case Wilson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court for the first time ruled that at least in principle, the Fourth Amendment requires police to knock and announce themselves before entering a private home. In doing so, the court acknowledged the centuries-old “Castle Doctrine” from English common law, which states that a man has the right to defend his home and his family from intruders. The announcement requirement gives an innocent suspect the opportunity to persuade the police that they’ve targeted the wrong residence before having his home invaded. It also protects police from being targeted by innocent homeowners who have mistaken them for criminal intruders and those same homeowners from the burden of determining if the armed intruders in their home are police or criminals.

But Wilson didn’t eliminate no-knocks. In the same decision, the court recognized three broad exceptions, called “exigent circumstances,” to the announcement requirement. The most pertinent of these state that if police believe announcing themselves before entering would present a threat to officer safety, or if they believe a suspect is particularly likely to destroy evidence, they may enter a home without first announcing their presence.

A legal no-knock raid, then, can happen in one of two ways. Police can make the case for exigent circumstances to a judge, who then issues a no-knock warrant; or police can determine at the scene that the exigent circumstances exist and make the call for a no-knock raid on the spot. In the latter case, courts will determine after the fact if the raid was legal.

In the real world, the exigent-circumstances exceptions have been so broadly interpreted since Wilson, they’ve overwhelmed the rule. No-knock raids have been justified on the flimsiest of reasons, including that the suspect was a licensed, registered gun owner (NRA, take note!), or that the mere presence of indoor plumbing could be enough to trigger the “destruction of evidence” exception.

In fact, in many places the announcement requirement is now treated more like an antiquated ritual than compliance with a suspect’s constitutional rights. In 1999, for example, the assistant police chief of El Monte, Calif., explained his department’s preferred procedure to the Los Angeles Times: “We do bang on the door and make an announcement—’It’s the police’—but it kind of runs together. If you’re sitting on the couch, it would be difficult to get to the door before they knock it down.”

That comment came in a story about a mistaken raid in which Mario Paz, an innocent man, was shot dead by a raiding SWAT team when he mistook them for criminal intruders and reached for a gun to defend himself.

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