Officer may break and enter.
Applied in 82 court decisions — leading case Payton v. New York (1980)
Most recently applied in In Re The Detention Of L.K. (September 2020)
2021 c 320 s 8; 2010 c 8 s 1030; Code 1881 s 1170; 1854 p 129 s 179; RRS s 2082.
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(1) To make an arrest in criminal actions, the officer may break open any outer or inner door, or windows of a dwelling house or other building, or any other enclosure, if, after notice of his or her office and purpose, he or she be refused admittance.
(2) An officer may not seek and a court may not issue a search or arrest warrant granting an express exception to the requirement for the officer to provide notice of his or her office and purpose when executing the warrant.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.