Page 65 - Police Officer's Guide 2013

Held: Although the Fourth Amendment does not specify when a search warrant must be obtained, [the
Supreme Court] has inferred that a warrant must generally be secured. Searches and seizures inside a home
without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable. One of the established exceptions to the warrant requirement
is for exigent circumstances that make a warrantless search objectively reasonable. The need for emergency aid
can provide exigency, as an the need to prevent the destruction of evidence. Lower courts have developed an
exception to the exigency rule for police-created exigency. Officers who wish to rely on an exigency cannot
manufacture one in order to avoid compliance with the warrant requirement.

The central test of the Fourth Amendment is whether the action of the police is reasonable. This approach
permits seizure of evidence found in plain view, but only if law enforcement officers have arrived at the spot from
which the observation is made in a lawful manner. Similarly, officers may seek consent to search if they are
lawfully in the place where the consensual encounter occurs. If they are, it makes no difference that an officer
may have approached the person with the hope or expectation of obtaining consent.

Some lower courts have prohibited police from relying on an exigency they created if they acted with the
bad faith intent to avoid the warrant requirement. The Supreme Court has rejected a subjective approach in
other contexts, so this bad faith approach is inconsistent with the view that objective standards best serve the
goal of evenhanded law enforcement.
Even if the police foresee that their conduct may cause a reaction, like the destruction of evidence, it would be
difficult to quantify the degree of predictability needed to determine that they had created the exigency.
Prohibiting the police from knocking on a door if they reasonably could foresee a reaction from the occupants
would create unacceptable and unwarranted difficulties for law enforcement officers who must make quick
decisions in the field.

Although police officers may have probable cause and could obtain a warrant instead of knocking on a
door without one, they are not required to seek a warrant. They may have entirely proper reasons not to obtain
a warrant as soon as they have probable cause. The defendant in this case argued that officers create an exigency
when they act in a way that would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry will be imminent and inevitable.
Banging on the door and speaking forcefully or yelling should be considered, according to the defendant. Such
a test would make it difficult for the police to know how loudly to announce themselves, or how forcefully to
knock on a door. Courts reviewing their actions would face the same problem.

Instead of following any of these approaches, the exigent circumstances rule applies when the police do
not gain entry to premises by means of an actual or threatened violation of the Fourth Amendment. Like any
other person, an officer may knock on a door, and the occupant has no obligation to open the door or to speak.

In this case, the officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment or threaten to do so before entering the
apartment. Banging on the door and yelling, Police, police, police or This is the police was entirely
consistent with the Fourth Amendment. There was no evidence that the police demanded entry to the
apartment. It was only after the exigency arose that the officers explained to the occupants that they were going
to enter. Therefore, the announced intent to enter could not have created the exigency.

Given that the conduct of the officers in this case did not violate the Fourth Amendment or threaten to do
so, they were entitled to rely on the exigency that existed when they believed evidence was being destroyed in
the apartment. The evidence found in the apartment should not have been suppressed.

Kentucky v. King, 131 S.Ct. 1849 (2011) U.S. Supreme Court.

A Peace Officer’s Guide to Texas Law 58 2013 Edition