On December 23^rd 2024, London, Kentucky police officers banged on the door of 63 year old Douglas Harless. It was just before midnight, and Harless approached the door with his legally purchased firearm.

Who wouldn't?

Police, attempting to serve a search warrant, saw Harless with the firearm and opened fire, killing the man instantly in his own home, minutes before Xmas Eve.

The search warrant was for an alleged stolen piece of lawn care equipment, a “weed eater (weed whacker if you grew up in the northeast)” worth way under the monetary threshold of what is considered felony theft.

To make matters worse, the cops got the wrong house. Harless’ home was not the intended target of the raid, and local police dispatchers had told responding officers the correct address at least five times before the officers arrived at Harless’ home.

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Lots of red flags here: a search warrant written for a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment, a judge signing off on it knowing the cops were going to go buckwild kicking in doors, the warrant being executed in the dead of night (the excuse is always “it’s for officer safety!”) and almost no repercussions for the cops themselves for committing state sanctioned murder.

This is an all-too-common occurrence in America. America’s heavily-armed D students, many of them barely able to read and write, in a hurry to execute high-risk warrants, getting the wrong house whether unintentionally or intentionally, and killing an innocent person in their own home. The officers and system empowering them face almost no repercussions, and tax payers often pay the bill for police fuck ups like the Harless Raid.

So what can we do? The problem is multi-fold, with police and their reliance on metrics-driven law enforcement and exploitation of legal loopholes and the judges and district attorneys who have a political bend and need to appear “tough on crime.”

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The Cops.

Modern media depicts dogged police officers bent over a keyboard, typing out a warrant. The information gathered to support the warrant is the result of months or even years-long undercover investigations and cultivating sources within a criminal organization detailing the exact amounts and locations of illicit materials.

This is obviously a Hollywood fabrication. In fact, most cops can barely type. When I went to police academy roughly 22 years ago, I recall literally ONE class on report writing, and even then, the instructor had a very blasé attitude about it.

If you want to truly frustrate yourself, feel free to FOIA request any police report. Any one. It won’t matter. Police reports are rife with spelling mistakes, syntax errors, grammatical homicides, changing tense mid sentence, etc etc. And the older the cop, the more likely that report or affidavit (the report that demonstrates probable cause to a judge in order to get a search warrant) is a hot mess.

And let’s talk about affidavits. In order to execute a warrant, police need a judge’s signature on the warrant itself. This is done through demonstrating the officers have “probable cause” to believe a crime has been or is currently being, committed. Probable cause is defined as “a preponderance of evidence to lead a rational person to believe a crime is being committed.” In other words, it’s subjective.

Cops often utilize “confidential informants” or “CIs” to draft their affidavits, because cops hardly ever witness crimes themselves. To be fair, cops can’t be everywhere, no matter how hard the state tries.

I mean, c’mon, the cops have a tough job sitting in their cars in parking lots, texting all day. That overtime isn’t going to pay itself.

They rely on snitches, or "informants," to tell them where crimes are happening. The informant is incentivized to work with the cops thru money or promises of favors.

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But what if a cop can’t find a CI to tell them what they want to hear? Or, what if the CI is just lying to get paid? Or, what if the CI doesn’t even exist? Informants are highly unreliable. They can be under the influence of drugs, they can be incentivized to rat against an enemy, or just be confused.

None of that matters, because they’re CONFIDENTIAL. No one can know who they are, or if they even exist! Cops can just make them up and “totally swear” they exist. And what if the informant mixes up his 6s and 8s? Was it Charles STREET or Charles AVENUE?? Doesn’t matter.

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The System.

Surely the rest of the security apparatus that presses its boot against our throats is better, right? Those judges and lawyers have to at least have a little bit of an education, right?

They do! But their jobs are purely political.

Most judges, especially at the lowest level (who sign the majority of search warrants) are elected. No judge that has to run for their judgeship wants to look weak on crime. That’s political suicide, even for politicians running for regular office. So they are apt to sign any affidavit put in front of them, assuming the cops are acting in good faith. I would imagine with how busy judges are, especially the younger ones trying to make names for themselves, are barely breezing over these affidavits. Half the time high ranking cops have direct lines to their favorite judges and just call them directly to get a “verbal” over the phone. It can happen that quick.

District Attorneys are also highly political and often looking to make names for themselves for being “tough on crime.” While they deal closely with cops on a daily basis and know all cops are fucking dipshits, they’ll push back only when an affidavit is complete dogshit; and even then, they give coaching on how to get the document in front of the judge. The whole system is designed to support itself across multiple legs.

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So what can we do?

The whole warrant/raid system is flawed from its piggy nose to its curly tail. I propose the following measures to at least improve the system (since abolishing it likely won’t ever happen):

First, cops are no longer allowed to write and execute search warrants. If a police officer has “probable cause” that a crime is being committed, they go before a civilian rules board (chosen at random, like jury duty) and make their case in writing and in person. If they cannot articulate why they need to execute a search warrant, or the search does not meet certain criteria, the affidavit dies right there. If the cop manages to make their case, the affidavit then moves up to the judicial level and a panel of judges reviews it along with the findings from the civilian panel. If they agree the warrant should be executed, they give approval.

But Jim, wouldn’t this process take too long? Wouldn’t the criminals be able to get away with whatever crimes are being committed? What if lives are depending on the speedy actions of police??

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Lol, have you ever seen a cop move fast on anything? And I would rather have cops be hobbled by the same bureaucracy we regular folks have to go through to ensure they don’t murder an innocent person in the middle of night over a $200 weed whacker.

Since none of the above will ever happen, I also propose that instead of using tax dollars to pay off inevitable wrongful death law suits, cops, and everyone involved with the execution of the warrant, be held personally liable. As part of the law suit, not a single law enforcement officer, district attorney or judge involved will be allowed to ever hold those positions again, for life.

And for every instance of “wrong house raid” even if it does not result in a death, $1 million dollars will be redirected from the police budget and put into the schools budget. Maybe if we get smarter kids, with better opportunities, we won’t get a locality with idiot cops who can't read numbers on a mailbox.

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