Are You Obligated to Answer a Knock at Your Front Door?

We’ve all been there before. You aren’t expecting any guests but nonetheless, there is a knock at your front door.

A quick peek at your security camera app and you see an official-looking person in a uniform, obviously the knocker, standing back a respectful distance from the door.

What do you do now? Should you answer it? Do you have to answer it?

Under most circumstances, you are in no way obligated to answer someone knocking at your front door, including officials such as law enforcement officers. Barring their being in possession of a warrant or other exigent circumstances, they have no right to enter your home and you have no obligation to open the door to answer questions or anything else.

This is a topic that naturally provokes strong reactions from people in one direction or another, but to help bring clarity and hopefully calm to what might be a hair-raising occurrence we will be exploring this topic in more depth below.

Who Goes There?

One of the most unsettling parts of a stranger knocking at the door is that you don’t know who you are dealing with.

If you don’t recognize them, you don’t know them, and this includes uniformed persons.

I say persons and not personnel because the wearing of the uniform, including badges and all the other regalia attendant with public office, public service, or employment with a corporation doesn’t mean that is in fact who they are and what they are there in service of.

All such things are freely available to those who would acquire them, and criminals often go forth in disguise to reduce their profile, escape notice and lull would-be marks into a false sense of security.

If you happen to be such a mark, you are probably in for a bad time.

Just Don’t Answer the Door for Strangers, Period

The easy way to avoid such a hazard is simply to never, ever answer the door for strangers. End of discussion.

If you aren’t expecting someone or something, be it a delivery at a particular time or the arrival of friends or family, don’t answer the door.

Anyone that you are connected with and who needs to get a hold of you likely knows how to contact you via phone or some other means.

If someone is knocking on your door for a legitimate and innocent purpose, you might think this is rude.

Maybe it is, but the world is simply getting too wild and too wooly to take the risk, and besides what is your time worth?

Do you really want to deal with Jehovah’s Witnesses or a door-to-door lawn care or vacuum salesman?

Do you want to talk to a census taker?

Fancy enduring the guilt trip of turning away some neighborhood kid and their parent who is trying to strong-arm you into buying candy bars for their sports team that you’ll never watch?

I didn’t think so. If you aren’t expecting a caller let them leave a note or hit the road.

It Might be a Setup

The consequences for avoiding this good advice might be severe, and could even see you and your family killed.

Burglars and professional thieves often use an innocuous door knock, with or without worn or vehicular disguises, to perform advance work on homes that will make good targets.

Walking up to the door and knocking on it allows them to assess many important things, such as the schedule or probable schedule of the home’s occupants, interior condition, and the presence of lights, dogs, security systems, and so forth, and do all of this without raising alarm or attention.

More insidiously, other criminals use a door knock as an opening to storm your home, we are talking full-blown home invasion here.

The locked and secured door that is voluntarily unlocked is really easy to steamroll into, allowing them entry and a good opportunity to stuff and cuff the homeowner and any other resistance in the bargain. This is a terrible outcome that must be avoided at all costs.

Still, other scumbags might use a door knock as a distraction, one that will allow accomplices to either sneak into another entrance or barge through a back door, keeping the actual entry out of sight of most neighbors and allowing them to catch you in a pincer movement.

What about Cops?

Potentially one of the most distressing knocks at your front door will come when you have uniformed or official people out there doing the knocking.

For the purposes of argument, let us say that they are actual, genuine police officers there on official business, whatever it might be.

Do you have to answer the door for cops? No, you don’t.

The bottom line is that, official or not and however they might try to cajole you otherwise, cops cannot enter your home or compel you to allow them entry except under very specific circumstances.

The most obvious, and indeed the most likely, is if they have a warrant.

If they have a search warrant then you have to let them in, or they will open your door one way or the other and come in of their own volition with the full backing of the state’s might.

The other reason they can enter your home is if they have probable cause then a crime is being committed or had been committed, or there are exigent circumstances.

In the case of the former, the site of illegal activity taking place on the premises or any other evidence of crime taking place might be probable cause enough to permit them entry.

The other would be something like a foot pursuit with them chasing after a violent criminal who somehow entered and took shelter in your home.

So long as the pursuit was fresh, they could follow them in, and to hell with whatever you might think about it.

But, with precious few exceptions, lacking a warrant or a legitimate law enforcement reason to enter your dwelling you don’t have to let them in and you don’t even have to answer the door should they knock.

Go Away, Get Lost, Mind Your Own Business

I advise everyone to ignore the knocks of strangers and unexpected callers at their home, whether or not they are officials, police, or just strangers in plain clothes.

It will never do you any good to open the door to a stranger, and this only increases your risk to property, life, and limb at worst or waste your time and aggravates you at best.

Even approaching the door can be risky, but you are just as well served to tell people to go away if you don’t ignore them outright.

If someone takes the lack of response as confirmation that you are not home and they can carry on with whatever nefarious act they had planned on carrying out, then they will be committing a proper home invasion, and boring any legal, lawful duty to do so, such as in the case of police carrying out a search warrant, you are likely justified to defend yourself with whatever force is necessary under the circumstances.

It is far better to deal with that situation from a position of advantage, armed, unknown, and with more time and room to react, than standing at a threshold where you will be at arm’s length to one or more assailants barging in.

Conclusion

Except in cases where police or other law enforcement officials have a search warrant to enter your home, probable cause to investigate a crime, or exigent circumstances you have no obligation to answer the knocking of anyone at your door, stranger or otherwise.