Time to talk of warrants and evidence and sealing wax.
Please bear with me if I ramble a bit here.
Warrants:
IMHO, warrants serve three functions.
1) As documentation that the agents of the law have taken the time and effort to do their homework and have a sound enough argument to convince a magistrate of that fact. So the magistrate signs off on the warrant.
2) As temporary license for the agents of the law in the field to enter a location to search for the items or persons named in the warrant and seize them if found.
3) As notification to the occupants of the location to be searched that the holders of the warrant are legitimate agents of the law, have authority to enter the location named and search, and are held to the standards and conduct of the law. The holding and presentation of the warrant was sufficent to verify the legitimacy of the action to the occupants. They are not bad guys operating under the color of the law.
Point 3 seems to have been forgoten by agents of law these days, and looks to be the major point of contention here, at least by myself.
I've seen only a few warrants, and those posted on the net in relation to publicized contested cases. From what I've seen, a warrant can be easily duplicated by anybody with a cheap PC, a laser printer and a bit of time. In years gone by, most folks did not have easy access to printing presses, typesetting equipment and the like. Bad guys planning big jobs may have taken the steps needed to forge the documents to make the job run safer and simplify access to the desired booty. Average burglers and home invaders would not.
This is no longer the case. Bad guys now have at their disposal the means to make officical looking documents that pass a cursory examination, such that a homeowner or occupant would accept as valid when faced with a group of people dressed in the garb of police and demanding entry. This is why I've called for verification of the documention and its legitimacy, as feedthehogs did here.
Years back I was served a subpoena for a law suit at 4:30am by a plain clothed detective. I made him call the dispatcher and have her call the house to verify who he was. When asked for my number, I said your the police, you can get it. He was not a happy camper but complied.
LEOs here and their supporters have rejected this idea, and perhaps rightly so. I propose that its time to make warrants as impossible to duplicate as possible, and standardized across each state. Perhaps using the techniques similar to that our nation does with its currency, or software vendors do with holograms of authenticity.
Print warrants up on specialized paper that only the courts and their agents have access to. On the face to be printed on is a high color holographic watermark or something similar, bearing the seal of the state that is instantly recognizable and assures the occupant that these are indeed the good guys and not bad guys dressed up a good guys.
(I'm not going to address "knock and announce" warrants, wait times,'No-knock" warrants or the War on Some Drugs here. Those are whole other cans of worms.)
Evidence:
Based apon my limited understanding, (forensics is not my trade, nor a hobby) with advances in forensic science, its nearly impossible to totally destroy evidence of crimminal activity. Illicit chemicals burned will leave a residue, those washed down the drain will leave traces in the piping. The ancillary equipment can be smashed, but as yet not reduced to its component molecules and atoms in a short period of time. Paper documentation shreaded can be reassembled, and it takes time to burn paper, 'specially if there is a good chunk of it from an on going crimmial operation. Fire the building at a police raid, and there is the question of why the building was fired, 'specially if the building was rigged beforehand to be fired at a moments notice.
Data on hard drives can be recovered from formated/trashed disk unless the sectors containing the data is overwritten or the disk platters are physically smashed to bits. Smashing a hard drive to bits takes time, more time than waiting at the door for an answer.
