Richards v. Wisconsin

In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U. S. 927 (1995), we held that the Fourth Amendment incorporates the common-law requirement that police officers entering a dwelling must knock on the door and announce their identity and purpose before attempting forcible entry. At the same time, we recognized that the “flexible requirement of reasonableness should not be read to mandate a rigid rule of announcement that ignores countervailing law enforcement interests,” id., at 934, and left “to the lower courts the task of determining the circumstances under which an unannounced entry is reasonable under the…