Mayor: Ban no-knock warrants
Webber wants to head off potential tragedy that risky procedure can cause, as evidenced by Breonna Taylor death
No-knock warrants are rarely executed by the Santa Fe Police Department, and they wouldn’t even be an option under a proposal by Mayor Alan Webber.
Webber said Monday he is sponsoring an ordinance that would prohibit the use of no-knock warrants by Santa Fe police. He cited the March 13 shooting of Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician who was killed by police in Louisville, Ky., during a raid that started with a no-knock warrant, in which officers stormed into the woman’s home without warning.
Taylor’s death sparked a national outcry as part of the Black Lives Matter movement and also renewed calls to eliminate the use of such warrants.
“I think the issue that came up most recently in Louisville — but I don’t think it’s the only time it’s ever happened in policing — is a no-knock warrant can lead to a tragic outcome if you get the wrong apartment or your assumptions are wrong about who’s going to be inside there,” Webber said during his weekly virtual news conference.
“As a consequence around the country, I think we’re seeing a level of interest in finding ways to give the assurance to people in a community that this tool doesn’t need to be used, and we’re going to prohibit it,” he added.
Chief Andrew Padilla said “it’s been several years” since his department executed a no-knock warrant.
“We did a review over the last handful of years and there were none that popped up,” he said.
Webber said his administration wants to get ahead of the issue. “We don’t want those tragedies to occur in Santa Fe,” he said.
Webber also announced the formation of a nine-member task force that he said would “look at the intersection of public health and public safety.”
“Increasingly, we see how those issues are intertwined, that public health and public safety are two sides of the same coin,” he said.
The task force, which will be co-chaired by City Council members Chris Rivera and Renee Villarreal, initially will be chartered for three months with a “specific set of issues to look into,” Webber said.
Some issues will be specific to police, including training, workload and collaborations.
“People have said that in most cities around America that police officers are the Swiss Army knife of our community,” Webber said. “They’re asked to do everything under the sun, including respond to calls to deal with people who are homeless or panhandling, or drunk and disorderly, or simply mentally ill or behaviorally challenged, in addition to issues that are much more traditional law enforcement.”
Rivera, a former Santa Fe fire chief, described the effort as an “opportunity to transform the future of policing.”
“One of my main goals is to see how we as a city can provide the best policing for our residents and our visitors,” he said.