
Hmm.  The police strategy of bursting in with weapons drawn, clearly marked as
officers and yelling "Police" repeatedly.  This is used every day to bust drug
houses.  The idea is to awe the suspects into submission with surprise and
display of firepowere in order to avoid a gun fight.  As for not knocking, it's
a sad necessity in many cases since the suspects will attempt to escape or even
fight.  Usually this strategy works; if it didn't, then it wouldn't be used so
commonly, now would it?

Whether or not it was appropriate to use this strategy on the BD is not my
point, since I don't think any of us have enough information to make a clear
judgement on this issue.

I merely point out that it IS a valid strategy which is used every day.
Furthermore, we don't know of any substitute strategy capable of apprehending
potentially dangerous and armed suspects.  Do you suggest that the police
always knock with guns holstered and never arrest any suspects until they have
been allowed to inspect the officers's badges?  Just what should the police do
when apprehending potentially dangerous and armed suspects?  How far can they
reasonably go to identiy themselves?  What do you suggest they can do which
can't be faked by the "competition"?

Even if you've got deadly enemies who may pretend to be cops, that's not an
excuse to murder police.  In the case of the BD's, there was almost definitely
at most the paranoid delusion of deadly enimies who would pretend to be cops.