Should police officers be able to break down doors unannounced? ‘Broken Doors’ investigates the history, use, and impact of deadly no-knock warrants

Most of us have probably heard of no-knock search warrants. If we hadn’t before the summer of 2020, many of us do now. It was a no-knock search warrant that resulted in the killing of Breonna Taylor in March of that year, and alongside protests about the murder of George Floyd, that summer brought about a national reckoning.

Investigative reporters with the Washington Post, Jenn Abelson and Nicole Dungca, host their new investigative podcast “Broken Doors” about no-knock warrants. They are speaking with people who have been on the receiving end of a no-knock warrant, speak with officers and judges who approve them, and speak with people trying to end the use of them. Follow them in their riveting investigation into the history, use, and consequences of one of the most intrusive and dangerous police tactics.

“Broken Doors” is a new podcast from the Washington Post. It will be a six-part series investigating how no-knock warrants work from rural Sheriff’s offices to large urban police departments. Episodes so far have been about an hour long, and the first handful are available for listening now.

In the first 10 minutes of the first episode of “Broken Doors,” they give us a brief history of no-knock warrants. While they’ve certainly been garnering national attention in the past few years, they’ve been around for much longer. We learn that it was actually President Richard Nixon who implemented them as part of his War on Drugs, and there were terrible consequences almost immediately.

Black, minority, and poor communities were especially targeted as police began to implant no-knocks. Police continue to defend no-knock warrants, saying they are necessary and not used nearly as often as the public thinks.

The Supreme Court has also ruled on them, albeit stating that they should only be used in certain circumstances and only if police can prove that suspects are dangerous or will destroy evidence if police knock and announce themselves.

On “Broken Doors,” the hosts tell us that with typical search warrants, police are supposed to knock and announce their presence by simply stating, “Police, search warrant, open the door.” No-knock warrants come about when police tell a judge that they need the element of surprise on their side. With these warrants, police typically show up in the middle of the night and use a battering ram to break down the door.

Jenn and Nicole’s first stop: Monroe County, Mississippi. When they began their investigation, they were determined to look through years of police and court documents to answer their questions. They were curious about how often no-knock warrants are actually used, and furthermore, how often they were necessary. Also, how many people have died because of them?

They began looking through the Post’s database of all fatal police shootings since 2015, thinking it would help them identify all of the fatalities caused by no-knock warrants. Only, it wasn’t as simple as they hoped.

Some courts had sealed the search warrants; others didn’t keep records of them entirely. They couldn’t definitively find the numbers they were looking for with this lack of documentation. They turned towards police departments themselves and found that none kept records of no-knock warrants. They couldn’t find anyone on a state or federal level keeping track of this information over the years.

So they began sifting through lawsuits involving no-knock raids and reaching out to survivors across the United States. Besides the lack of records involving no-knocks, it baffled the two how low the bar was to get a no-knock. Sometimes, police didn’t even have names of the subjects or knowledge of children living in the targeted homes. Sometimes, they didn’t even have the right address. And in no place was the bar lower than the aforementioned Monroe County, Mississippi.

The first episode tells the story of Benji Edwards, a resident of Monroe County, whose childhood home was raided by police on November 15, 2014. He was 53 at the time, working long hours in a furniture factory and struggling to make ends meets. His friend Eva and her children were staying with him at the time. He was asleep by 9:30 PM that night, but the kids were watching a movie in the living room.

Out of nowhere, he says, the front door flew inwards off its hinges with a deafening boom. From the other side of the house, Benji startled awake and before he knew it, multiple police officers came flying into his bedroom. He was on the ground in handcuffs before he was told that the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department had a warrant for his arrest.

The officers began to literally rip apart his childhood home that his parents had built themselves, rifling through drawers, tearing paneling off the walls, ripping apart cabinets. There was $15 worth of cocaine loose on the dresser that they found pretty quickly, but that didn’t stop their search.

They kept asking Benji where he hid “the money,” but he didn’t know what they were talking about. Benji, in turn, asked to see a search warrant, but the officers standing over him didn’t even respond to his request. Nor did they leave a copy of the warrant when they left, something police are supposed to do after executing a search warrant. In fact, Benji didn’t see the warrant until years later, when our hosts Jenn and Nicole showed it to him during their interview.

The rest of “Broken Doors” hones in specifically on this Sheriff’s office. They speak with relatives of Ricky Keeton, a man killed in October of 2015 during a no-knock raid in which officers fired over 49 shots. They directly confront the judge and sheriff of Monroe County who allowed these no-knock raids. They investigate corruption within police departments and examine what happens when accountability is not the reality.

“Broken Doors” is a stunning investigation into the impact of no-knock warrants. Jenn and Nicole deliver exceptional investigative reporting mixed with riveting audio storytelling to explore the use of these warrants in the American justice system.

They examine what happens when judges can haphazardly approve these warrants, something they can now do by a simple tap of their phone. It’s a shocking, heartbreaking, enraging, and important topic that has been at the forefront of the American psyche for years now. Tune in for more episodes “Broken Doors” in the near future.