No knock warrants are a tactic available to police that has be subject to much scrutiny. Here is a story from St Louis which resulted in the death of a 63 year old man. No knock warrants are intended to be used where there is a greater risk to the officers executing the warrant. If they give any prior warning of its execution, even as much as announcing their presence, then that is likely to place the officers in danger, or lead to the probable destruction of the evidence that is subject of the warrant. Arguably, no knock warrants have become standard practice for many agencies.
Our discussion here focuses on the information that was provided to the judge to obtain the warrant. In many cases, as in this case, it is claimed that the information originates from a “confidential informant”. Unfortunately doubt is often raised over the existence of the said confidential informant and/or what exactly they told the officer. There are a number of steps that an agency can take to make sure that the information provided to the judge is bona fide.
All information obtained from a confidential informant should be processed into intelligence by someone independent of the officer obtaining it. This means that its veracity of the information and the credibility of the confidential informant are independently verified.
All confidential informants must be registered and authorised for use by a manager in the agency.
All meetings with confidential informants have two people present. and be pre approved by a supervisor.
All original notes in relation to meeting with a confidential informant are stored independent of the officer. In other words they cant be tampered with or altered after an event.
These simple steps make it significantly more likely that the intelligence being presented to the judge is legitimate. Furthermore, because all relevant is properly recorded a much better assessment can be made as for the need for a no knock warrant. If you want to read more on this try are book on Human Sources - Managing Confidential Informants. It tells you exactly what systems and processes an agency should have in place to prevent these type of incidents. And if you are still struggling get in touch. We can audit how you do things and get you a system that works for you and the public you serve.
As a brief aside, one of the products we are recommending for use in managing confidential informants is Verinote Initially designed as an electronic police note book its use as a note book for undercover/covert operations is fantastic. Working as an app on any android or iPhone it is a fully secure notebook where data is stored centrally. What ever is entered is held securely by the agency and cannot be tampered with. It is recorded to evidential standards. And it does a lot more smart things besides. Forget the paper notebook. get your agency to provide the secure app for your detectives.
If you have any questions about any of the content here or want an audit of your agencies source management systems, get in touch we an do a free expert audit for you. Ask your Chief if they want one. info@hsmtraining.com
