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Authors ›› Stevens
We recognized in Wilson that the knock-and-announce requirement could give way "under circumstances presenting a threat of physical violence," or "where police officers have reason to believe that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance notice were given." 514 U.S. at 936. It is indisputable that felony drug investigations may frequently involve both of these circumstances.
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This Court has encountered before the links between drugs and violence, see, e.g., Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 702, 69 L. Ed. 2d 340, 101 S. Ct. 2587 (1981), and the likelihood that drug dealers will attempt to dispose of drugs before police seize them, see, e.g., Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 28, n. 3, 10 L. Ed. 2d 726, 83 S. Ct. 1623 (1963).
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The Wisconsin court explained its blanket exception as necessitated by the special circumstances of today's drug culture, 201 Wis. 2d at 863-866, 549 N.W.2d at 226-227, and the State asserted at oral argument that the blanket exception was reasonable in "felony drug cases because of the convergence in a violent and dangerous form of commerce of weapons and the destruction of drugs." Tr. of Oral Arg. 26. But creating exceptions to the knock-and-announce rule based on the "culture" surrounding a general category of criminal behavior presents [...] serious concerns.
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...[W]hile drug investigation frequently does pose special risks to officer safety and the preservation of evidence, not every drug investigation will pose these risks to a substantial degree.
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The fact that this particular officer successfully used a similar method [involving asking for consent to search a car] of obtaining consent to search roughly 786 times in one year, State v. Retherford, 93 Ohio App. 3d 586, 591-592, 639 N.E.2d 498, 502, dism'd, 69 Ohio St. 3d 1488, 635 N.E.2d 43 (1994), indicates that motorists generally respond in a manner that is contrary to their self-interest. Repeated decisions by ordinary citizens to surrender that interest cannot satisfactorily be explained on any hypothesis other than an assumption that they believed they had a legal duty to do so.
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