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Police raided George Pelecanos' home. 15 years later, he's ready to write about it
Writer George Pelecanos reads The Washington Post every morning in his home.
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Writer George Pelecanos reads The Washington Post every morning in his home.
Keren Carrión/NPR
It was August 2009 when the police raided writer George Pelecanos’ home in Silver Spring, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C., with a no-knock warrant.
He was performing his daily ritual of sitting on the couch reading The Washington Post when he saw cars enter the driveway. “I saw these guys wearing black and holding automatic rifles and battering rams,” he said in an interview at his home. The police broke down the door overlooking the driveway, and the basement door, too. Pelecanos said they put him on the floor and zip tied his hands.
The police were looking for his then 18-year-old son, Nick. The younger Pelecanos was a part of the robbery of a weed dealer, with a gun involved. So, the cops executed the no-knock warrant looking for evidence of guns or drugs.
After not finding anything, George Pelecanos said the officers started needling him about his liquor cabinet, his watch, his home. “One of the SWAT guys was looking at my books, and he goes ‘maybe you’ll write about this someday.’ And he laughed,” Pelecanos said. “And right then I knew that I would write about it. He challenged me.”
No knock warrants have been banned in multiple states
Pelecanos is known for his gritty, realistic crime stories. For television, he co-created The Deuce, about the burgeoning porn industry in 1970s New York City, and We Own This City, the mini-series detailing a real-life corrupt police ring in Baltimore. As an author, he’s known for his deep catalog of stories set in the streets of Washington, D.C.
His new short story collection is titled Owning Up. And it features characters grappling with events from the past that, with time, fester into something else entirely. There’s a story about two guys who knew each other in jail, crossing paths years later. Another has a woman digging into her own family history and learning about the 1919 Washington, D.C. race riots.
Many of Pelecanos’ crime fiction book are set in Washington, D.C.
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Many of Pelecanos’ crime fiction book are set in Washington, D.C.
Keren Carrión/NPR
But Pelecanos said he wanted to write about the August 2009 incident because he wanted to further show the effects of no-knock raids. The Montgomery County police department confirmed they executed the warrant but they didn’t immediately provide any additional details. Pelecanos did share a copy of the warrant, which states: “You may serve this warrant as an exception to the knock and announce requirement.”
The practice of issuing no-knock warrants has been under increased scrutiny since the police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in 2020, and Amir Locke in Minneapolis in 2022. They’re banned in Oregon, Virginia, Florida and Tennessee.
“They don’t accomplish anything except mayhem and violence,” Pelecanos said.
The story “The No-Knock” starts with a journalist named Joe Caruso drinking his coffee and reading the morning paper when the vehicles pull up. The same beats follow — the guns, the zip ties, the pinning down on the floor. Pelecanos writes like he remembers every sensation from that night, because, he said, he does.
It deviates further into fiction from there. Caruso wants to write about it, but he can’t. He’s too close. He starts drinking heavily, instead. Pelecanos, on the other hand, knew he could write about it, easily. But he waited for over a decade on purpose. He wanted his son’s permission, first.
“I wanted my son to grow up,” he said. “And so that I could say to you today – he’s fine.”
Owning Up to the past
“He allowed time for me to grow as a man, and develop myself as a responsible person,” said Nick Pelecanos in an interview. He now works in the film industry as a director and assistant director. He got his start working on jobs his dad helped him get. So he’s attuned to his father’s storytelling style — how he favors details and facts over sepia-toned nostalgia.
“When he writes something, you know that it’s technically correct,” he said. “And has come to his objective, as non-biased as possible opinion.”
In Owning Up, Pelecanos writes about a non-knock incident inspired by real events.
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In Owning Up, Pelecanos writes about a non-knock incident inspired by real events.
Keren Carrión/NPR
As personal as “The No-Knock” is, Pelecanos calls the title story in the collection his most autobiographical. It’s about a kid in the 70s named Nikos who works a job where he gets in with a bad crowd, and eventually gets talked into breaking into a guy’s house.
“It’s just the way my life was in that era and on this side of Montgomery County,” Pelecanos said. “It was about muscle cars, playing pickup basketball, drinking beer, getting high.”
Listening to Pelecanos talk about this story, it sounds familiar. You get the sense that history does repeat itself. That the same lessons get taught again and again. But that’s O.K., because some lessons bear repeating.
“I got in trouble occasionally,” he said. “But I always came home to the warmth of my family, you know? That’s all you need.”
Meghan Collins Sullivan edited this story for radio and the web.
new video loaded: Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
transcript
transcript
Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
The musician D4vd was charged with murder on Monday, seven months after the police said that the body of a teenage girl, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, had been found in the trunk of his Tesla. D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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“On April 23, 2025, as has been alleged by the complaint, Celeste, a 14-year-old at that time, went to Mr. Burke’s house in the Hollywood Hills. She was never heard from again.” “These charges include the most serious charges that a D.A.‘s office can bring. That is first-degree murder with special circumstances. The special circumstances being lying in wait, committing this crime for financial gain or murdering a witness in an investigation. These special circumstances carry with it, along with the first-degree murder charge, a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.” “We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Revis Hernandez nor was he the cause of her death.”
By Jackeline Luna
April 20, 2026
In this photo illustration, The Onion website is displayed on a computer screen, showing a satirical story titled Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’, on November 14, 2024 in Pasadena, California.
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The satirical website, The Onion, has a new deal to take over Infowars, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s far-right media company. If approved by a Texas judge, the deal would take away his Infowars microphone, and allow The Onion to resume its plans to turn the website into a parody of itself.
Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They’re still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgement they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children in order to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones’s followers to harass and threaten the families for years.
The families are also eager to take away Jones’s platform for spewing such conspiracy theories. The deal not only would divorce Jones from his Infowars brand, but it would turn the platform against him by allowing The Onion to mock his kind of conspiracy mongering and advocate for gun control.
The families “took on Alex Jones to stop him from inflicting the same harm on others” by using “his corrupt business platform to torment and harass them for profit,” said Chris Mattei, one of the attorneys for the families. “When Infowars finally goes dark, the machinery of lies that Jones built will become a force for social good, thanks to the families’ courage and The Onion’s vision, persistence and stewardship.”
A mourner visits the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial on the 10th anniversary of the school shooting on Dec.14, 2022 in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six people were shot and killed, including 20 first graders and 6 educators, in one of the deadliest elementary school shootings in U.S. history.
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For its part The Onion called it a “significant step in an effort to transform one of the internet’s more notorious misinformation platforms into a new comedy network for satire.” The company says it could announce its new rollout of Infowars in a matter of weeks if the judge approves the deal.
“Eight years, almost to the day, after the Sandy Hook parents first filed suit against Alex Jones, they’ll finally get some justice, and even some money,” said Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion. “This is a chance to make something genuinely new out of a very broken piece of media history.”
On its website Monday, The Onion posted a satirical message from the fictional CEO of its parent company, Global Tetrahedron, “Bryce P. Tetraeder,” stating a “dream is finally coming true.”
Jones’s posted on X Monday that “The Onion Has Fraudulently Claimed AGAIN That It Owns Infowars!!!” adding that “The Democrat Party Disinformation Publication Is Publicly Bragging About Its Plan To Silence Alex Jones’ Infowars And Then Steal & Misrepresent His Identity!”
On a podcast in March, Jones alluded to the impending demise of Infowars, saying, “We’re getting shut down. We beat so many attacks. But finally, we’re shutting down like the middle of next month,” before insisting, “We’re going to be fine.”
Jones suggested Monday he would appeal any court decision to approve the leasing deal. And even if he loses control of Infowars, Jones could continue to broadcast from another studio, under another name.
Jones’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
More than a year ago, a federal bankruptcy judge rejected The Onion’s first attempt to buy Infowars through a bankruptcy auction, saying the process was flawed. Since then, the bankruptcy court clarified that because Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, is not itself in bankruptcy, its property should be handled instead by a Texas state receiver. That cleared the way for the new pending deal to lease Infowars to The Onion, with the hope that a future sale could be approved.
In papers filed in state court, the Texas receiver said he “determined that licensing the Intellectual Property is in the best interest of the receivership estate.”
The deal calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, which the receiver says will “cover carrying costs to preserve and protect the assets of the receivership estate” until an appeal filed by Jones is decided and the path is cleared for a sale.
Jones’s personal bankruptcy case is proceeding in federal bankruptcy court, where a trustee continues to sell off Jones’s personal property, including cars, homes, watches and guns, with proceeds intended for the families.
A memorial to massacre victims stands near the former site of Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2013 in Newtown, Connecticut, one year after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first graders and six adults at the school.
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US negotiators to head to Pakistan and Iranian cargo ship seized – a recappublished at 00:37 BST 20 April
Tankers in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday
Here’s a recap of the latest developments.
US negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday with the intention of holding further talks on ending the war, Trump says – but Iranian state media cites unnamed officials as saying Tehran has “no plans for now to participate”.
The prospect of further high-level negotiations – a White House official says Vice-President JD Vance will attend – comes amid reports of fresh attacks on commercial vessels.
Trump says the navy intercepted and took “custody” of an Iranian tanker attempting to pass through the US blockade, “blowing a hole” in the ship’s engine room in the process.
Earlier, in the same post announcing his representatives would travel for more talks, Trump renewed his threat to destroy Iranian energy sites and bridges if no deal is reached.
Reports in Iranian media over the weekend suggest Iran is continuing to work on plans to potentially apply a toll to ships passing through the strait – although it’s unclear if such a move will be implemented.
Iranian state TV cites unnamed officials as saying that “continuation of the so-called naval blockade, violation of the ceasefire and threatening US rhetoric” are slowing progress in reaching an agreement.
Trump also accused Iran of violating the ceasefire, saying more commercial ships have been attacked by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
A UK maritime agency reported two commercial ships came under fire in the strait on Saturday.
Iran’s foreign minister had said on Friday that the strait would be opened – which was shortly followed by Trump saying the US naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place until a deal is reached. Iran has since said the strait is closed again.
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