Lawmakers are about to consider a proposal that would limit when police officers can serve warrants.
Should your local police department be able to come arrest you in the middle of the night? What about searching your home? Lawmakers are about to consider a proposal that would limit the ability of law enforcement agencies to serve warrants during nighttime hours.
That’s a proposal that Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard says would be a terrible idea. “All that does is allow a criminal to hang up a shield to say they’re in business at night. Criminals will full reign to run their sex trafficking and all the things they do at night without us having the ability to quickly get into a residence or an establishment anywhere where we don’t have the legal right to be without a search warrant.”
If they need to get into a residence quickly, says Senator Scott Surovell, they can get a judge to sign off on it. “Today, you can go to get a warrant from a magistrate. But we think you ought to go to a circuit court judge and show a reason why you should go into someone’s house at night because if you go into someone’s house at night, bad things are a lot more likely to happen and there ought to be special circumstances for that before the government can do that.”
Lawmakers will consider that proposal along with about many other changes as part of a package of reform efforts during a special session later this month.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
