How to serve a warrant properly:
1) Knock.
2) Wait for the person to answer.
3) Identify yourself.
4) Permit the accused to verify your identity (some of the non-government employed criminals are not above pretending to be officers)
5) Serve the warrant.
Police officers need to consider that it was *this* scenario (government employees storming into citizen’s houses) against which the Founding Fathers rebelled.
I’d bet a phone call to the guy would have worked just fine; especially since he had no history of violence.
(government employees storming into citizen’s houses)
I believe that one of the original intents of the word “unreasonable” (search and seizure) was with regard to not announcing ones presence:
1. English Common Law Predecessors
The common law knock-and-announce rule was first judicially recognized in 1603.(54) In Semayne’s Case, the Court of King’s Bench stated:
In all cases when the King is party, the sheriff (if the doors be not open) may break the party’s house, either to arrest him, or to do other execution of the King’s process, if otherwise he cannot enter.
But before he breaks it, he ought to signify the cause of his coming, and to make request to open doors . . . for
the law without default in the owner abhors destruction or breaking of any house (WHICH IS FOR THE HABITATION AND SAFETY OF MAN) by which great damage and inconvenience might ensue to the party, when no default is in him; for
perhaps he did not know of the process, of which, if he had nonce [announcement], it is to be presumed that he would obey it, ....
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Caps were mine - I’m guessing that is where the “Castle Doctrine” comes from.