It's a really stupid theory. Destroying evidence is just another charge to throw on and doesn't really suggest any risk of violence. Though sure, if they flush in time maybe the police lose out. But it hardly seems worth it. It ought to be possible to serve warrant without instigating a violent encounter. And it's not like the risk of destruction of evidence is anything new. You could easily destroy evidence well before the US was even founded. Might have been even easier, historically. Burn it, throw it in a river, etc. No-knock aggression should be reserved for situations where there's a very very strong expectation of violent resistance and that's it.
Also in general the severity of the charge is directly proportional to the quantity of drugs. So if the quantity is instantly flushable, how serious of a charge can it have been, and thus how much accidental damage is acceptable in the arrest?
It probably depends on the design of the sewer system, but an ex's father worked for the city sewer system. He was asked by police on one occasion to help out with a bust where they thought evidence was going to be flushed.
From their point of view what is easier throw a flash grenade into a crib or build sewer shut-off valves through-out the city. Control them, repair them. Can you prove that these drugs belonged to this particular house. That this one person flushed them. What if they are 10 people in the house. Are they all drug dealers because they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?
That is their response. It is not coherent, but this is not propositional logic. This is a militarized force that cannot be punished for their abuses, can and does inflict those abuses as will and it attracts saddists and psychopaths that cover each other asses.
You are trying to come up with technical solutions (oh install sewer traps). The problem is not technical. It legal, and regulatory. There is no, 0, nada, zilch repercussion for just throwing a flash grenade in barge in. Why install sewer traps and spends all that money? That is irrational from their point of view.
The floor boards and all that sewer stuff is just noise. All those "problems" are just a list hurdles they will never and or even think about solving, that was the main point.
I appreciate that my thought pattern (asking about sewer traps) sure sounds a lot like a clueless nerd using his technology hammer to fix a social problem he figures must be a nail.
However, I am just gathering facts to figure out what other options are available to police. If certain states, as a citizen I am judged very harshly if I don't exhaust all options before using lethal force, even if it's happening in the heat of the moment. I want the cops to do the same consideration of their other options, at least when it's an operation they get to plan out ahead of time to happen under the time of their choosing.
Wanting the cops to do the same consideration of their other options is the regulatory and legal issue rdtsc was talking about. You want the cops to do that, you have to impose penalties that will actually be enforced on the cops, and the penalties have to be harsh.
The penalties will have to be sufficient that the EV of breaking the rules is negative, but harshness should only be one tool in achieving that. It is more important that the penalties be inforced, and harshness can actually undermine that.
OK, so, to the best of my knowledge, 1 kg of cocaine is worth about $20K. Assuming cocaine has roughly the density of baking soda, this amount ought to be easily disposable in a single flush. So you could flush $100K worth of coke down a toilet in under a minute.
Imagine pushing 5kg worth of cocaine down a toilet while, most likely, incredibly strung out on said cocaine, with the SWAT team beating on your door. Couple that with the fact that they likely aren't stored in easy to open bags designed for pouring and what you're looking at is a bathroom full cocaine and a seriously clogged toilet. You've got to get rid of the plastic too, remember.
Maybe they bust you with less, but they'll still bust you.
If I am required to maintain documents in a civil case, and I destroy them, generally the other side is allowed to assume they were as bad as possible.
Does this apply in criminal trials? If there's evidence I was flushing drugs down the toilet (and such evidence would be there), can the state be allowed to assume I had a lot more of the drug than I really did? What are the policy implications?
Seems optimistic to me. If you flush in rapid succession the reservoir has to fill again. I guess that a good flush requires, depending on circumstances, 20s of refilling. That would lower the throughput significantly. Also, the suspect has to move the cocaine from hiding to the toilet. Sure, $20K is a lot of money but were not talking Pablo Escobar-like quantities here.
Edit: also clogging, not sure when this happens and not really willing to experiment.
Cocaine is far more water soluble than baking soda. Extremely, extremely water soluble -- about 2 grams of cocaine can dissolve in 1 ml of water (compare to baking soda: About .1 grams per ml of water)
But you also have to get rid of the packaging. I was imagining dumping a package of cocaine, but that's stupid: at least opening the packaging would help with the clogging by letting the cocaine dissolve. Not sure what the packaging would do with the pipes and whether this only packaging holds up as evidence.
You could also just rig an external reservoir (or have a full bucket lying around) to rapidly refill the back tank. Though that would of course be fairly incriminating.
I think the problem is that it's really hard to police recreational quantities of chemicals. Physical evidence related to crimes is usually either bulkier objects which you can't just put down the toilet, or documents which do take some time to destroy and often exist in multiple places.
A sane person would probably argue that you don't get to run roughshod over people's freedoms just because a particular law is hard to enforce otherwise. But I think that's where it's coming from. You get a pervasive environment where the guys at the top are trying to be tough on drugs and the guys at the bottom keep having to let criminals go because they flushed the evidence, and it's only natural that they'll start to push for more draconian measures.
