Back before a United States Supreme Court ruling in 1999 that prohibited police from bringing members of the news media into private homes, I accompanied police numerous times as they were executing search warrants. Usually they were looking for drugs.
Let me clarify here that by accompany I mean I was usually inside the homes less than five minutes after police kicked in the doors.
I am not going to lie.
It was pretty exciting, particularly when you are 20-something, single and don’t have anybody waiting for you at home asking where have you been half the night.
I was usually at the police department about an hour or so before they left out for each raid. They would usually hold a briefing before hitting the road.
The investigating officer and usually a senior member of the department would go out a few hours before the raid in either an unmarked police vehicle or in a civilian vehicle. Sometimes one of them would borrow their wife’s car for this task.
This was an important part of the operation for a few reasons.
One is that the officers would drive the route listed on the search warrant to the suspect’s home to make sure that it was accurate. Otherwise, the evidence seized could and likely would get tossed out of court putting the whole case in jeopardy.
Another very practical reason is that the officers wanted to lay eyes on the residence where they planned to execute a search warrant and make sure that they knew the right place to go.
They also wanted to see if there were things like locked gates, large dogs, and/or security cameras there between them and the front door that might tip off the suspects before they got into the home. (When suspects get tipped off, evidence tends to get flushed down the toilet.)
In addition, police wanted to know alternate points for entering and exiting the home, such as back doors and windows so they could have officers covering those in the event a suspect tried to run. (Not that this would ever happen in the real world…LOL.)
Many times investigators had also done their homework and knew what kind of vehicle that their target drove, which was often an indicator about whether they were home.
All of this is pretty standard procedure when executing a search warrant based upon my three decades of experience covering the news.
Sometimes investigators hit the jackpot during such operations.
In 1997, Williamsburg police discovered $112,000 in a spare tire that four men were moving from one vehicle to another. They had expected to find drugs instead, but they weren’t complaining. Suffice it to say that none of the four men moving the tire claimed to know anything about the money. (Go figure…LOL.) Incidentally, the police department kept the money and put it largely towards drug interdiction.
Sometimes police search warrants turn up nothing. Confidential informants, who many times are drug addicts and petty thieves trying to get themselves out of a jam, aren’t always the most reliable sources of information.
It happens in the real world.
I bring this up because Sunday marked the three-month anniversary of the shooting death of 63-year-old Douglas Harless of Lily, who was killed in his home by a London Police officer as the agency was attempting to serve a search warrant in regards to a stolen weed eater in the dark about an hour before midnight.
The shooting happened at 511 Vanzant Road, according to Kentucky State Police. The search warrant was for 489 Vanzant Road, according to Laurel County 911 audio.
The Kentucky State Police Critical Incident Response Team is leading the investigation into the officer-involved shooting, which is standard procedure. So far, they have released next to nothing about the investigation, which is also common.
Personally, I will be curious to find out whether London police scouted the location where they were serving the warrant and laid eyes on it ahead of time. Given that they were serving the search warrant after dark close to midnight, this would have seemed to have been an important step to take.
