The DEA is making raids look like robberies — with really dangerous consequences for innocent people

A DEA agent.
(Image credit: Eric Kayne/Getty Images)

The Drug Enforcement Administration likes to use something called a "sneak-and-peek warrant," a search warrant that allows agents to enter and search a property without notifying the owner as a normal warrant would require. Officers operating on a sneak-and-peek (officially, a Delayed Notice Warrant) typically aren't allowed to take any evidence they find on-site — but they do frequently trash the place, faking a burglary to explain their break-in.

Sneak-and-peek searches were authorized by the Patriot Act and, as is often the case with this law's provisions, quickly became more useful for the federal drug war. But the trouble with fake-robbing people is it can lead to unintended, dangerous consequences, like those experienced by an Oregon storage locker manager named Shawn Riley.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.