On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 18:43:26 -0800, you wrote: > -- how does a property owner "authenticate" a person or group claiming to be cops? > Flashing a badge is not enough, as badges for hundreds of jurisdictions are for > sale by mail order, gun shows, and probably lots of other shops. (For the > uninitiated, these are _actual_ badges and/or nearly perfect replicas...they > are absolutely undistinguishable from real badges, so say concerned cops.)
"Apart from constitutional considerations, no-knock laws are bad. If its people are to have a respect for law, a nation must have respectable laws, and no law is respectable if it authorizes officers to act like burglars, and robs the people of the only means they have for determining whether those who seek to invade their habitations violently or by stealth are officers or burglars." United States Senator Sam Ervin of Watergate fame.
