Search

"If the police knock on your door and state they have a search warrant, step outside and close the door behind you, then ask them to give you the warrant so you can read it. (If you stand inside with the door open, the police may just push past before you can react.) Make sure you actually get your hands on the warrant so you can read it properly. Don't let the officer just waive it in front of you.

You're looking for three things, to be sure it's a valid warrant: address, the date, the judge's signature.

Address checking that the warrant really does have your address is the most important thing. Police frequently search the wrong house or apartment, and claim it was just a mistake. Note that a warrant can't be for a whole apartment building or floor, it has be for a specific apartment.

Date: the date should not generally be older than two weeks. This isn't a precise number days that warrants are good for. They can be searched as long as a reasonable officer would expect to find the items listed in the warrant. Some judges have held that a particular warrant was valid even after a month or two, but these were rare cases. For simplicity's sake, most police departments just make a rule for themselves how many days the officers can wait before searching a search warrant, usually it's seven or ten days."