Opinion ID: 624984
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dangerousness

Text: Arcuri also argues that his team's no-knock entry was justified by his reasonable suspicion that announcing their presence would have put them in danger. Arcuri concedes, however, that his safety concerns were based on generalities about the dangerousness of drug dealers. For example, in the affidavit he submitted to the district court, Arcuri stated that it is extremely common for individuals selling or possessing narcotics to have some type of weapon at the location where they are selling illegal drugs from. Similarly, in his deposition, Arcuri stated, [I]t's considered a high risk because anytime you're dealing with individuals that possess or sell narcotics, they have a high tendency to have, you know, some type of weapon. Arcuri has never attempted to connect his belief that knocking-and-announcing would have been dangerous to any specific facts discovered during his investigation of the Appellants' residence. Arcuri did not recall that the municipal court or police records he reviewed indicated any law enforcement history associated with the home or its residents, and the car parked outside the house was registered to Carolyn Clark, not Randy or any known drug-dealer. In fact, Arcuri admits that his investigation revealed no particularized facts suggesting that he or his team were making a high risk entry aside from the dangers inherent to making an entry involving drugs. Moreover, it is clear from Arcuri's brief that he treated no-knock entries as the default mode of executing drug-related search warrants: Despite their investigation and surveillance, the officers were not able to learn any information indicating that Randy or any other occupants of the premises did not pose a threat to the officers' safety upon entry. Arcuri readily admits that he had no particularized basis for his safety concerns because he mistakenly asserts that the general dangerousness of drug-related criminals is sufficient justification for conducting a no-knock entry. His position is based on a misreading of two Fifth Circuit cases: Washington and Linbrugger. In Washington, this court held a no-knock entry reasonable under the Fourth Amendment where police had specific information that a convicted felon, who always carried a firearm on his person, was selling drugs from a room at a halfway house in which an informant had observed a weapon. 340 F.3d at 224. We held that such information exceeds the level this circuit has found sufficient to establish a reasonable suspicion of danger. Id. at 227. Linbrugger was a qualified immunity case concerning officers who had made a no-knock entry while executing an involuntary mental health commitment warrant. We concluded that the officers respond[ed] reasonably to a reasonably perceived dangerous situation because the target of the warrant, who had recently threatened to kill his sister and whom his father considered to be a threat to himself and others, intentionally simulated the sound of a shotgun being primed to make the officers believe he was armed. 363 F.3d at 543. Considering the totality of these circumstances, the panel had little trouble holding that the officers were not required to complete a normal knock-and-announce procedure. Id. Both Washington and Linbrugger dealt with no-knock entries that were clearly justified by reasonable safety concerns. In each case, the police knew the identity of the occupant of the dwelling they entered and had specific information indicating that the person might be dangerous. Arcuri, on the other hand, made a no-knock entry into a house when he had admittedly not established who was home and had no specific information that the inhabitants were dangerous. Despite these obvious differences, Arcuri relies heavily on the court's statement in Washington, cited in Linbrugger, that an officer's safety concerns may be reasonable even though he had no particularized knowledge that the suspect was armed. Washington, 340 F.3d at 227; Linbrugger, 363 F.3d at 542. Arcuri apparently interprets this language to mean that generalizations about the dangerousness of drug-related criminals are sufficient to justify a no-knock entry. Admittedly, some of the language in Washington, read in isolation, appears to support Arcuri's position. Washington considered the reasonableness of a no-knock entry, but in its discussion of the officer's safety concerns, it drew analogies to Fifth Circuit cases considering the reasonableness of warrantless searches. In such cases, this court has used a five-factor test to evaluate whether exigent circumstances justify a warrantless entry, of which one relevant factor is the possibility of danger to the police officers guarding the site of contraband while a search warrant is sought. See United States v. Howard, 106 F.3d 70, 73 (5th Cir.1997). [5] In this context, which is distinct from our circuit's knock-and-announce jurisprudence, this court has counted fear for safety as  a factor favorable to the Government in the exigent circumstances calculation even where the officer lacks a particularized fear. Id. at 75 (emphasis added). Thus, noting that firearms are the tools of the trade of those engaged in illegal drug activities, we have considered the general dangers posed in drug cases to weigh in favor of finding a warrantless search justified. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). This hardly establishes that the general dangerousness of drug-related criminals, by itself, justifies a no-knock entry for the execution of all narcotics warrants. [6] Indeed, Arcuri's reading of Washington as allowing for no-knock entries based on a general assessment of the dangers associated with drug crimes is definitively foreclosed by Richards, as we acknowledged in Washington, 340 F.3d at 226 (The [Supreme] Court [has] rejected the contention that all drug investigations inherently have risks of officer safety substantial enough to excuse police from the knock-and-announce requirement.). Likewise, in Cantu we characterized Richards as reject[ing] blanket rules allowing `no-knock' entries based on over-generalizations about today's drug culture. 230 F.3d at 152; see also Valdez, 302 F.3d at 322 ([The officer] justified the entry of her team's [sic] on the grounds that Defendant was a known drug dealer and that known drug dealers are prone to certain violent behavior. Such justification has been clearly rejected by the Fifth Circuit.). [7] Arcuri relies heavily on such over-generalizations. Reading Washington together with Richards and its progeny, the law in this circuit is that, as stated in Linbrugger, a police officer does not have to demonstrate `particularized knowledge' that a suspect is armed in order to justify a no-knock entry, 363 F.3d at 542, but that does not negate the requirement that reasonable suspicion must be derived from specific facts and circumstance surrounding a search. Because reasonable suspicion of danger is a lower threshold than particularized knowledge that a suspect possesses a weapon, an officer must be able to point to specific facts to explain his safety concerns but need not demonstrate that he specifically knew a certain suspect was armed. Thus, contrary to Arcuri's suggestion, Washington and Linbrugger are entirely consistent with the requirement that he point to something beyond the general dangers associated with drug crimes to justify his entry into Appellants' home. Obviously neither Linbrugger nor Washington could or did eliminate the requirement announced in Richards that, to justify a no-knock entry on grounds of officer safety, an officer must have a reasonable suspicion based on the particular circumstances that knocking-and-announcing would be dangerous. 520 U.S. at 394, 117 S.Ct. 1416. Because Arcuri admits that he had no such particularized suspicion of danger, he unwittingly concedes that his team's no-knock entry was not justified by safety concerns. In sum, neither Arcuri's concerns for evidence preservation nor for officer safety amounted to reasonable suspicion based on particular facts, so exigent circumstances did not justify his team's no-knock entry of Appellants' home. The entry therefore violated Appellants' Fourth Amendment rights.