Originally Posted by raymor

To all of the people commenting about routine warrants, a question. What the heck is a routine warrant? Have any of you ever served any warrants? None of the ones I've served have ever been routine. There are only those where you KNOW you're going into a place full of felons and those where you don't know. Very rarely we'd serve a municipal warrant, an unpaid ticket.

So what kind of gear to use? It does vary based on their criminal record, part of town, intelligence about who may be in the house etc. It doesn't vary as much as you might think, though, because we'd go from one fugitive to the next. No need take off your vest once you put it on. Normally we had say four to six warrants, so we gear up for a day of serving warrants - ballistic vest, boots, pepper, weapon, etc. Mostly because you never know what's going to happen that day and what you'll need. Also because the fugitive (or their cracked out boyfriend) is less likely to to try to attack a team in tactical gear than they are a couple of guys in T shirts.

I never did have a routine one, though. One time we had to raid the worst crack dealer bar in town, where everyone in there is a criminal. Next we're driving down the road and see the fugitive drive past, so we whip around, follow him, and take him when as he steps out to get gas. The next guy is hiding under a bed holding a knife, presumably to slash us with if we look under there. Any of those routine?