Practical Eschatology: When Police Come A-Knocking: Dealing With Police At Your Door

So this is a series of four videos dealing with what to do if police come a-knocking at your door without a warrant or exigent circumstances that would allow them to force their way into the home.

The first video is of an actual interaction between a couple officers and the homeowner, ostensibly there to question his young boy about a video his son may or may not have seen at school. The homeowner refused to open the door to the officers, refused to let his son go outside to talk to the officers, and eventually used unkind words after the officers questioned whether he was a lawyer and threatened to sic child services on him. Note that the father had monitored the police radio traffic after the interaction and learned that he was to be marked on some list or record as unfriendly toward police. In following up with the school, the father was told by the principle, a school counselor, and the school's resource officer that they had no idea what video the original officers were referencing or why they would want to speak to his son.

The next three videos are from a Virginia lawyer on what your rights are when officers knock at your door. The first of these (Video #2) is a more general video warning against answering the door, or if you do so, warning against stepping outside or answering any questions. It seems primarily focused on someone that the police might be investigating for drunk driving, but the advice would be applicable to other situations where police do not have a warrant.

Video #3 breaks down and discusses a Reddit discussion on whether you need to answer the door and goes into more detail on certain points than did Video #2, including when officers have an arrest or search warrant.

Video #4 discusses the more specific situation of you opening the door to police and the officer putting his foot across the threshold to block you from closing the door. As the attorney in the video points out, any action on your part to physically force the officer to remove his foot or to close the door on their foot will probably land you in jail. He mentions a couple of Virginia cases on this subject, one of which found in favor of the defendant and one which did not. He also discusses what happens when they have a warrant in this video.