The 5-4 ruling is another signal that the court is now dominated by justices who place the convenience of police -- and government agents in general -- over the individual rights supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. Although this stance is often described as “conservative,” it’s not clear what traditional American freedom, value, or virtue such an outlook is intended to “conserve.”

Dissenting justices warned Thursday that police will now feel free to ignore previous court rulings that officers with search warrants must knock and announce themselves -- giving residents at least 15 to 20 seconds to respond -- lest they run afoul of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

Police hardly ever lose their jobs or go to jail when they violate someone’s constitutional rights, of course. The only institutional safeguard the courts had found effective in the past was the “exclusionary rule,” which told police that later, in court, they would not be allowed to use evidence seized in violation of a citizen’s rights. Play by the rules, or it’s “case dismissed.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia Thursday wadded up that exclusionary rule and flushed it. His ruling says Detroit police acknowledged violating the “reasonable wait” rule when they called out their presence at the door of Booker Hudson, failed to knock, then stormed inside three seconds to five seconds later.

“Whether that preliminary misstep had occurred or not, the police would have executed the warrant they had obtained, and would have discovered the gun and drugs inside the house,” Scalia rationalized.

Suppressing the evidence would have been too high a “penalty,” Scalia said, for errors by police in failing to properly announce themselves.

Court watchers note the outcome might have been different had Justice Sandra Day O’Connor still been on the bench. She seemed ready, when the case was first argued in January, to rule in favor of Booker Hudson, whose house was searched in 1998.

O’Connor had worried aloud during arguments that officers around the country might start bursting into homes. She asked: “Is there no policy of protecting the home owner a little bit and the sanctity of the home from this immediate entry?”

She retired before the case was decided, however, and the case -- Hudson v. Michigan -- was re-argued so Justice Samuel Alito could participate.

The four dissenting justices pointed out that the decision erases more than 90 years of Supreme Court precedent. “It weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution’s knock-and-announce protection,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for himself and the other dissenters.

In fact, the Fourth Amendment contains no “knock-and-announce” language. It says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” and then stipulates that “No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause ...”

The so-called “15-second rule” was already a dangerous infringement of that right. Would most of us manage to get on some proper clothing and make it to the front door in “15 or 20 seconds” if we heard a knock in the dead of night? Is it the common practice, today, of police SWAT teams dressed in helmets and bulletproof vests, with cocked shotguns at their shoulders ready to fire, to politely allow a homeowner time to fetch his bifocals and read their warrant -- checking to make sure they have the proper name and address -- while they calmly await his grudging permission to enter?

Of course not. Here again the justices show how far they have grown cloistered from the real world. What this means is that Americans are now far more likely to be awakened in their own bedrooms by screaming men pointing flashlights and cocked firearms in their faces.

Will anyone be surprised if some innocent parties, confronted by such a home invasion, reach for their own bedside shotguns, with loss of life resulting? Or will we simply be told, “They brought it on themselves, all they had to do was obey the orders ...” of strange home invaders shouting at them in the dead of night?

If a victim complies and discovers to her sorrow that the home invader shining a light in her eyes and shouting “Police!” was not really a policeman at all, what kind of compensation should she expect from justices Roberts, Alito, and Scalia?

And wouldn’t it be more convenient to simply require all citizens to provide police with keys to their front doors, boys?

Such tactics are often justified by the concern that drug suspects might flush evidence down the toilet, using the same disposal method that the court has here applied to the Fourth Amendment. Justice Scalia simpers that a ruling to exclude the evidence against Hudson would have given “a get-out-of-jail-free card” to him and others.

So? Is it the goal of the court to see as many people jailed as possible? Is it better to lose our Bill of Rights, or to acknowledge that the Bill of Rights may make it darned hard to “win the War on Drugs” -- a so-called “war” on American citizens which is barred by the 9th Amendment, anyway?

The alternative remedies proposed by Thursday’s break-and-enter gang are pathetic. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said legislatures can intervene if police officers do not “act competently and lawfully.” He also said people whose homes are wrongly searched can file a civil rights lawsuit.

There are even public-interest law firms and attorneys who specialize in just such civil rights grievances, added the ever-helpful Justice Scalia.

Why, sure -- just as the Weimar constitution assured German citizens the (theoretical) right to file similar civil suits against the brownshirts of the Sturm Abteilung for damages incurred when Hitler’s goons shattered printing presses, burned books, and broke out all the store windows of shops owned by German Jews.

In a masterpiece of understatement, Justice Breyer replied Thursday that there is no evidence of anyone collecting much money in such cases. He might have added that in those rare cases where there is a settlement, it’s the taxpayers who pay up, not the cops -- not much disincentive for strong-arm tactics, there.

This is not “conservatism.” This is totalitarianism.