Court Opinion

ID: 9725367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:43:27.78988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:14.520506
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GEIGER, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. As my colleagues have stated, we must be particularly mindful of the potentially dangerous and volatile situation faced by law enforcement officers who execute warrants on suspected drug traffickers. While the majority may be correct that the police are generally less likely to encounter violence if they announce their authority and purpose before entering a building to execute a warrant, the elevation of that general principle to a rule of law under facts as extreme as these may result in tragic consequences. Law enforcement officers, in attempting to conform their entry tactics to the majority’s opinion, may well face unnecessary danger. When viewed as a totality, the complaint for a search warrant in this case established that the residence was protected by television monitors and a police scanner and that several weapons were available to the occupants. The police were also aware that one of the residents of the house had been arrested with cocaine and a loaded pistol on his person and that he was facing charges of armed violence, a forcible felony, and unlawful delivery of a controlled substance. The combination of these factors, in my opinion, satisfies the test of exigent circumstances set out in People v. Ouellette (1979), 78 Ill. 2d 511, 401 N.E.2d 507, and restated by this court in People v. Hardin (1989), 179 Ill. App. 3d 1072, 535 N.E.2d 1044. The distinction between the facts in this case and those in Hardin is too fine. We are by this decision, as Justice Ward said in his dissent in Ouellette, “calling upon officers whose lives may be at stake to make nice judgments as to whether decisions that their lives are imperiled are reasonable” (Ouellette, 78 Ill. 2d at 525, 401 N.E.2d at 513). I would find that the police acted properly and would affirm the trial court.