“As warrant czar ... the police MUST get a warrant, based on pre-entry information, within 24 hours”
One other thing to add, I think that judges with the authority to issue warrants should have official email addresses and warrants could be issued via email while the officer is on the field. There could even be warrant judge specialists. It would help to upgrade probable cause based on today’s technology, I think.
On the flip side, webcam tech and surveillance cameras keep getting more affordable. Illegal searches will nail police quite effectively. Is that enough to balance abuse of power by a corrupt sheriff?
WOO-HOO! What fun the crackers (i.e., black-hat hackers) would have with that!
Adding rubber-stamp on-line warrant judges isn't going to help anything. What's needed is to allow defense attorneys to put questions of warrant legitimacy before trial-court juries. Inform the jury in trial court that unless the state proves that a warrant was obtained and served 100% legitimately, the jury should not regard any evidence gained by the warrant in any manner detrimental to the defense.
To be sure, a lot of jurors might convict someone using evidence they really shouldn't have considered, but a lot of jurors would, with the right defense arguments, quite properly refuse to go along with some of what the police would call "probable cause". Presently, when police seek a warrant there's no way for the intended target to cross-examine them and uncover information that may show that their "probable cause" is a sham. For example, if police get a warrant based upon the fact that drug activity was observed in a house two months ago, but fail to disclose to the warrant judge that the person who occupied the property then was evicted and someone else moved in, a judge might not quash any evidence stemming from such a warrant, but a jury might be loath to accept it (if nothing else, because it would show such sloppy investigation by the officers involved that their conduct on the case would be untrustworthy).