Police officers set up a controlled buy of crack cocaine outside an apartment complex. An undercover officer watched the deal take place from an unmarked car in a nearby parking lot. After the buy occurred, the undercover officer radioed uniformed officers to move in on the suspect. He told them that the suspect was moving toward the breezeway of an apartment building, and he urged them to get there quickly before the suspect entered an apartment. In response, the uniformed officers drove into the parking lot, left their vehicles, and ran to the breezeway. As they entered it, they heard a door shut and detected a very strong odor of burnt marijuana. At the end of the breezeway, the officers saw two apartments, one on the left and one on the right; they did not know which apartment the suspect had entered. Because they smelled marijuana smoke emanating from the apartment on the left, they approached that apartment’s door. 

One of the officers who approached the door later testified that they loudly banged on the door and announced, “This is the police.” This officer said that the officers then could hear people and things moving inside the apartment. These sounds led the officers to believe that drug-related evidence was about to be destroyed. After announcing that they would enter the apartment, the officers kicked in the door and entered. They found three people in the front room, including eventual defendant HK. (The suspect they had been chasing was not among the three, however.) During a protective sweep of the apartment, the officers saw marijuana and powder cocaine in plain view. In a subsequent search, they also discovered crack cocaine, cash, and drug paraphernalia. HK was later charged with drug possession and drug-trafficking offenses. He unsuccessfully sought to have the evidence suppressed as the result of a search that, in his view, violated the Fourth Amendment. After being convicted, he appealed and renewed his arguments about the search and the evidence obtained. Did the warrantless entry of the apartment violate HK’s Fourth Amendment rights? Should the evidence obtained in the search have been suppressed?