Perhaps the scenario I painted (shouting, nighttime) isn’t accurate. Ok.
But what about my main point? That busting down the door of a private residence in a nation with 120,000,000 gun owners is very likely going to lead to needless maiming or death of either the homeowners or the cops?
As another FReeper stated above, why not employ some patience and lie in wait for them when they go out for a Big Mac? Outside of a hostage situation, no-knock warrants are a poor choice.
Obviously the Founders never intended that search warrants should be avoided just because people might shoot you when you try to enter. The founders just wanted protections to keep cops and prosecutors from hunting for evidence when they have no basis to even be investigating you.
If there is reason to believe you're going to shoot the cops, assuming the Judge did his job and established probable cause that you are dangerous and that the items they need to acquire are in the home, then the police have every right to take precautions to protect themselves from that violence.
Is the system perfect? Do cops sometimes hit the wrong house? Do cops operate incompetently and people get hurt? Yeah, but also rarely. There are house raids going on all the time, every day, and cops retrieve drugs from houses filled with little kids and random drug addicts who pop in and out throughout the day. And yet, the cops manage to do it without hurting anyone, and rushing in and securing the location, protecting themselves and everyone else involved--99% of the time. The 1% I never see except in the news.
As another FReeper stated above, why not employ some patience and lie in wait for them when they go out for a Big Mac?
It's not just about retrieving the perp. Actually, usually it's just coincidental that a perp is arrested at all. They go in for the drugs, or the murder weapon, because they have specific information that the items are in the home. Then they arrest the perp when they get the evidence they wanted.
Can cops pick up the perp first and then hit the house? If there is probable cause to arrest the guy, sure. He'll get arrested anywhere cops can safely get him. But it doesn't always work out that cops have that sort of opportunity.