Seems to me the simplest solution is the one most overlooked in this case. Just stake the person out, and take him/her down when they come out of the home. No need for an ambush. In the PI business, this is how you catch insurance thieves doing the naughty.
You're basically agreeing to something that DOES NOT have to happen. Your being highly myopic here, envisioning a standoff. Like it's choice A or choice B. There's no need whatsoever for either. What I said in my post was something to the effect of "adequate dd". The cops don't have to have a standoff.... they can covertly surveil if necessary to learn the person's patterns, but realistically.... no one stays holed up without going out. So what if the perp has 3 innocent children and their mom living in the place. You grab them outside when they least expect it.You wait till they naively come out, without a clue that anything is going down... and then you get em. Unless they have sources within the pd, they'll have no clue anything was even going down. Even the most paranoid f comes out eventually. Maybe back in the day this would cost a lot using gumshoe cops.... but now they can all be replaced now with hidden cameras the size of a bee-bee whose images are analyzed by AI. There is absolutely ZERO need for no knock warrants.
If there is a murder warrant outstanding, someone might. Easier said than done. Are they supposed to rent an apartment and use a team of plain clothes police on a stakeout for every arrest? How many police departments actually have such equipment?
Answers in reverse order to your questions: 3-the stuff is dirt cheap, plus they're all fat with DHS money for just this type of equipment. 2-you just fell off the rails here. This is exactly what tech eliminates. 1-There will always be the extreme exception. Not a valid argument. You can't base policies on the 1 out of 500. Either way, who cares if you have to wait? One can play "what if's" all f'n day long. ==> "What if one of the children inside is a diabetic and needs their medicine and will die soon without". I mean... whatever. We can come up w stuff like that all day long. You need to expand your brain a little. No disrespect. Just sayin'. Embrace the aggregate picture and get over debating situational semantics that can be painted in any way one desires.
What about the risk that the people in the next apartment will end up as hostages? Or even people living in the same unit. The living situations for many of these criminals can be unusual to say the least.
St. Cloud Police Chief Defends Use of No-Knock Warrants (KNSI) – St. Cloud’s top cop is defending law enforcement’s use of no-knock warrants. The police tactic has become controversial in the wake of the fatal shooting of Amir Locke in Minneapolis during the execution of a no-knock warrant. St. Cloud Police Cheif Blair Anderson says no-knock warrants are needed, and they’re not easy to get. “it’s a very valuable tool for us. The standard to get any warrant is pretty high. And so the standard to get a no-knock warrant is even higher. And those warrants have to be signed by a judge. And you can’t take a warrant affidavit to a judge with a hunch, you need to be specific.” Chief Anderson says a threat matrix is used, and it’s based on a lot of variables. “the criminal history of offender, what we’re looking for them for, what intelligence we have that we can be specific about. And each one of those variables and there are many more, that gets scored, and if it rises to a certain threshold, then we decide as an agency, that we are going to ask for a no knock warrant.” He says if the police don’t have a no-knock warrant and circumstances change, officers can’t at the last moment decide to blow up the door. Chief Anderson says people who don’t think the police need to use no-knock warrants haven’t walked a mile in his shoes. “I’m a proponent because I’ve been a point man on a SWAT team. And I’m not saying that to be arrogant and I don’t mean that to be a servic. I’m saying that we don’t take these things lightly. And when we apply for a warrant like that we know the potential for more violence than normal is there and that’s the reason why we asked.” Cheif Anderson estimates that around 20% of the department’s entry warrants are no-knock warrants. He says the use of no-knock warrants has gone up over the last couple of years but so has the crime rate.
What about if it's an old building, the roof is weak, it snows that night, the whole damn collapses and two cops are crushed to death. "WHAT IF?"
Such risks are part of the threat matrix that police use before deciding to apply for the no-knock warrant. This is longstanding practice, not to be thrown out lightly.
What part about strike when they're outside alone and have no clue it's coming did you miss???? Christ almighty, I know you're not this dense.