What can be learned from this?

[Jim Watson]

How do you get in my house for a welfare check?

[whomever]

"How do you get in my house for a welfare check?"

The LEOs here will know for sure, but my sense is that when the Omaha PD gets a call like "Hi, this is Fred in Houston ... my Mom lives in Omaha and I've been calling her for days and not getting any response" the Omaha PD will go to Mum's house, knock for a while, then force the door.

[jnc36rcpd]

We would usually investigate somewhat further than that (talk to neighbors, call co-workers, speak personally on the phone to Fred in Houston), but whomever is correct. This is done to avoid damaging property and risking a possible armed confrontation. It also reduces the possibility that Fred is just a busybody or doesn't like who mom (or ex-wife) is dating.

In most check the welfare calls, the subject is contacted, a quick visual and conversational evaluation is performed, and they are asked to call the complainant (if a friend or relative).

[Hambo]

How do you get in my house for a welfare check?

First you would have seen a police car and an FD engine or ambulance show up (non-emergency). Then we would check for a car, look in any doors and windows, knock on all doors, and listen in case someone was calling for help. If neighbors were around we would talk with them. The usual outcomes were that we would hear or see a person who had fallen or was injured and would force entry with as little damage as possible. Another was that the person was home and the phone was dead, shut off, not heard for some reason. Third was that a neighbor would say that they saw the occupant leave. When I started, we could make the call on whether or not to enter, but that changed to having a supervisor make the call.

[deputyG23]

"I’ve never been on one where law enforcement wasn’t yelling “Police, search warrant” the entire time."

A question about that - I was at a class once where we spent a day doing the slicing-the-pie thing. Two of the students were currently serving patrol officers. During a break someone opined they must use that stuff all the time, and as best I recall the response it was something like:

"Not really. When we're in people's homes for an alarm trip or welfare check we're more worried about getting into a gunfight with a homeowner who thinks we're a burglar than running into an actual burglar, so we're bellowing 'Sheriff's Dept' every few steps ... and we still end up standing in the bedrooms of sleeping people and shaking them awake".

I didn't think to ask whether those people were elderly and deaf, or drunk, or what, but I have noticed over a few decades of sleeping with my wife that sometimes a loud noise will wake up both of us, sometimes neither, or sometimes one of us. My sense is that we go in or out of various sleep cycles, and for some of them we're pretty deep down.

So, finally, the question - is that the case? Do you actually find sober/not deaf people who are sleeping so hard they sleep through, or partly through, a raid?

We have entered thousands of dwellings over the years executing evictions and have lost count of the number of people sleeping through, or just ignoring, "Sheriff's Office" yelled every three steps or so inside while clearing the premises.

[whomever]

Thanks, G23.

It would be bad to be on the receiving end of a wrong door/bad info raid, and it would really suck to be on either end of one where one was sleeping so hard the OO part of one's OODA loop didn't get past burglar.

I'm not sure there is a whole lot one can do. Anything that buys time for orient part of OODA is good, I suppose - exterior motion lights, maybe a door that requires a couple of hits. But SWAT teams are good at what they do, I think, and they are obviously trying to make the D and A parts of the target's loop as small as possible.

[Chuck Whitlock]

Generally, entry isn't forced unless you can articulate a reason for such.

One past incident comes to mind. We were sent to check the welfare of an elderly resident. The doors and windows were secured, and we were unable to see anything obvious, like some body/part visible in a window. There were flies inside in the windows and the smell of something dead in the vicinity of the front porch. Prior to making entry, a member of our local EMS crew came by and advised us that the individual in question was in the hospital. We were able to verify this. Also, our local housing authority unlocked the door without us having to force entry. We then discovered a dead cat under the front porch and that the flies were due to the remains of take-out in the kitchen trash.

So, whether entry is made or not comes down to the totality of circumstances.