Can a police officer force entry through the rear door of a house without compliance with the California Criminal Code Section?

It is true that literal compliance with the provisions of that section has not always been required. However, until the opinion today, to justify noncompliance, the officers must reasonably believe that to comply with the section would endanger their personal safety, would possibly permit the defendant to escape, or that defendant might destroy or secrete contraband that the officers reasonably believed he possessed. That is as far as cases such as People v. Maddox, 46 Cal.2d 301, 294 P.2d 6, go. In the instant case none of the six officers was in peril. There was no danger that the defendant might escape. Police officers, in force, were at both the front and rear exits of the building. There could not have been a reasonable belief that defendant was about to destroy or secrete evidence, because the officers had no reasonable basis for a belief that he was in possession of contraband. It is only by the wildest surmise or conjecture that it can be inferred [64 Cal.2d 395] that a narcotic parole violator seen to move repidly through the kitchen of a house he is visiting is about to harm the police, is about to escape, or is about to destroy evidence which the officers had no reason to believe that he possessed. To hold that the forcible entry through the rear door here involved without compliance with the code section was valid, is simply to write the section out of the code. This, I submit, is not a proper judicial function.