There is a long series of cases involving the 4th amendment to protect police officers from physical harm when performing their duties. If the police are not given these protections, they'll shoot first and ask questions later. There are also numerous cases determining exigent circumstances, like the ones I mentioned earlier (no warrant needed to stop a beating occurring on the other side of a door).
The opening post clearly states:
“[We] hold that the right to reasonably resist an
unlawful police entry into a home is no longer recognized under Indiana law,” the court ruled in the case of Richard L. Barnes v. Indiana.
So the court clearly states the entry in question was unlawful. Thought that wasn't the question they were asked to rule upon.
In the second case, the police chased a man they saw selling drugs on the street into the apartment complex. The man got into one of the apartments before the police could catch him. They determined which apartment it was from the smell and the sound of the toilet flushing over and over again as the evidence was being destroyed. They chose the wrong apartment, though, but caught people smoking pot, found other drugs and money (e.g. a drug dealer).
If you read the rest of the Post article:
King was convicted, but the Kentucky Supreme Court said the judge in the case should have suppressed the evidence. The state justices said police had created the emergency circumstances that they used to justify their failure to get a warrant to enter the apartment.
The Kentucky court recognizes the police have the right to enter premises under emergency circumstances.
But Alito said the police did nothing wrong. If officers don’t create the emergency “by engaging or threatening to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment, warrantless entry to prevent the destruction of evidence is reasonable and thus allowed.”
He said King could have told police they could not enter. “Occupants who choose not to stand on their constitutional rights but instead elect to attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame” when police force their way in, he said.
Alito said an exigent circumstance might not exist if police “without a warrant or any legally sound basis for a warrantless entry, threaten that they will enter without permission unless admitted.”
