Do You Legally Have Answer The Door For Police In North Dakota?

Have you ever wondered if you have to answer the door if a police officer comes knocking?

There are a lot of misconceptions about this, and the answer is situational.

Open Sesame

According to LibertyLaw.ca, the police may knock at your door and announce their presence, but you do not have to open up unless they have a search warrant.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. According to the source, there are some "exigent circumstances." These circumstances allow an officer to enter your home without a warrant. Here are a couple:

To prevent imminent bodily harm or death
To prevent destruction of evidence

Those are the two main exceptions to the rule; however, there is another instance where this may be allowed. According to the source, "Hot pursuit" allows officers to enter your home without a warrant.

Hot pursuit is when a person is fleeing police by going into their home or into the home of a third party.

Overall

For the most part, you don't have to answer the door for an officer, but in my opinion, if you've done nothing wrong, why wouldn't you? You never know if the officer is knocking on your door to notify you about something happening to a relative.

Not only that, they may also be looking to inquire about someone they are looking for, and in that case, you might want to answer the door to help out.

There you have it! As always, thanks for reading.