Teenage brothers Thomas and Darren Russell were in their second-floor apartment in the 9200 block of South Justine Street in February 2009 when officers announced they had a warrant to search both units of the two-flat. Thomas Russell, then 18, opened the door and found officers with their guns drawn, according to the lawsuit. Russell said that he put his hands in the air and asked permission to lock up his 9-year-old black Labrador, Lady, before they entered.
9 Horrifying Botched Police Raids
Police departments across the country have been buying up military style equipment for years, and increasingly use "no-knock" raids to arrest suspects accused of drug-crimes.
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But the extremely aggressive tactics often lead to disaster and embarrassment.
Police are often amped up for a SWAT-style raid, and suspects or innocent people behind the wrong door often believe that they are being attacked.
Sometimes they fire a weapon at cops thinking they are being burglarized. Sometimes the cops fire at them because they see something in their hands. Sometimes the police just make elementary mistakes.
What follows is a baleful litany of botched raids that include chainsawing through the door of the wrong address, executing friendly family dogs in front of weeping children and slamming grandmothers into the wall.
Last week in Fitchburg Massachusetts the FBI conducted a 'no-knock' raid and chainsawed through the door of Judy Sanchez's apartment. They held her at gunpoint in front of her three year old child for 30 minutes.
About then they realized they had busted through the wrong door.
From the story about the event on MSNBC
"I took two steps, face the second door, and I heard the click of a gun, and saying, ‘FBI, get down,’ so I laid down on my living room floor,” Sanchez told WHDH.com. "I was screaming, ‘You have the wrong apartment, you have the wrong apartment,’ over fifty times. And then I seen the big blade coming down my door."
For the FBI this was supposed to have been the culmination of a two-year investigation into a drug and weapons-dealing operation.
In two years they couldn't figure out the actual apartment.
Sanchez said she and her daughter now have trouble sleeping at night and she now keeps a baseball bat near her bed.
The FBI plans on reimbursing Sanchez for the door.
From the New Haven Independent:
A state police raid on a Winthrop Avenue apartment netted no drugs or arrests—but it left Tomas Torres hospitalized and his apartment in tatters.
Torres (pictured), who’s 54, said state cops broke down the door of his first-floor Winthrop Avenue apartment Wednesday afternoon, punched him in the face, stomped on his head, and then laughed at him as they tossed his apartment looking for drugs.
Police said he tried to jump out the window, then resisted their efforts to detain and handcuff him.
They had the wrong guy, said Torres. The police found nothing in his apartment and released him to go to the hospital, where he said he was told he has a fractured arm, he said.
It’s the second recent incident in which an unarmed New Havener has accused a state drug cop of brutality. (Click here to read about the previous one.)
Read about the whole thing here.
From the Chicago Tribune:
Police refused the request and came into the house, the lawsuit said. When Lady came loping around the corner with her tail wagging, Officer Richard Antonsen shot the dog, according to the suit, which alleged excessive force, false arrest and illegal seizure for taking the dog's life.Thomas Russell was arrested and charged with obstructing police but was later found not guilty. No drugs were found in the Russell family's apartment, though police recovered drugs in the building's other unit, the family's lawyers said.
From NBC Miami
Broward Circuit Court Judge Ilona Holmes, her sister and her sister’s family says they were ordered at gun point by several Broward Sheriffs Deputies on Easter Sunday to come out of her sister’s home with their hands up.
...
"They said, ‘Come out with your hands up!’ She said, ‘I am Circuit Court Judge Ilona Holmes. I am armed.'"
They all slowly went out through a side door. “She was putting the gun down. They yelled, ‘put the gun down! Put the gun down!’ Right there, the cop had his gun pointed at her.”
Judge Holmes, surrounded by deputies with guns drawn, slowly put the gun on the grass, announcing it as she went. She was holding a cell phone in the other hand. When she began to place that on the ground, police began yelling.
"When she went to put that down, they yelled, ‘Get away from the gun!’ She said ‘everybody calm down. I'm putting my cell phone down’."
At that point, a higher-ranking deputy recognized her and called on his team to lower their guns, according to Carmita.
From the Boston Herald in January of 2011.
A stumbling Framingham SWAT officer accidentally fired his rifle and shot a beloved grandpa to death as he lay face-down on the floor of his own home, authorities admitted yesterday, sparking incredulous outrage by the 68-year-old retiree’s family.
“Eurie Stamps’ death was the result of a fundamentally unjustifiable shooting by law enforcement officers who are charged with protecting public safety,” said Anthony Tarricone, a lawyer representing Stamps’ children. “When an innocent man dies this way at the hands of police, there really are no excuses that can satisfactorily explain away such a tragedy.”
From the Daily News:
Embarrassed cops on Thursday cited a "computer glitch" as the reason police targeted the home of an elderly, law-abiding couple more than 50 times in futile hunts for bad guys.
Apparently, the address of Walter and Rose Martin's Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002.
What followed was years of cops appearing at the Martins' door looking for murderers, robbers and rapists - as often as three times a week.
It took several years to fix the glitch.
Rickia Russell suffered permanent injury when police raided her house and threw a flash-bang grenade in her direction. It rolled under her legs and when it exploded it burned the flesh off them.
The police were looking that day for a drug dealer, narcotics and a firearm, but found nothing.
From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
On the night of Feb. 16, 2010, 18 officers were executing a search warrant on the apartment at 5753 Sander Drive based on a tip that narcotics were being sold at the address by someone named David Conley.
In what Bennett called "a cascading series of errors," a Minneapolis police SWAT team smashed down the door with a battering ram without warning, when the search warrant police had obtained required officers to announce themselves before entering.
Police had applied for a "no-knock" warrant but did not get it, Bennett said.
Police insist they shouted "search warrant" before knocking down the door, according to police reports, and say the grenade was dropped on the door threshold and not rolled toward Russell. Officer Cliff Taylor wrote in after-action reports that he was the one who dropped the flash-bang grenade.
....
Russell was arrested on a misdemeanor for having a "disorderly house" but never charged. She sued the city in federal court last year.
The city had to pay out $1 million in damages.
Jose Guerena went to sleep after a late-night shift at his night job. His cousin had recently been killed by a squad of men. He awoke to a noise that sounded like a car-alarm and then a loud knock on his door.
He told his wife to hide with a child in a closet and pulled out his rifle. He kept the safety on.
His front door busted open and police fired 71 rounds at him. They did not call a paramedic for an hour. And Guerena was pronounced dead at the scene.
No evidence has turned up showing that Guerena is guilty of a crime.
Officers originally claimed that Guerena fired on them, but later admitted that the safety on his rifle was still engaged.
From the Daily Mail:
But a search of the home found nothing illegal. Officers found a handgun and body armor in the house.
The five SWAT team members remain on active duty. No criminal charges have been filed and no disciplinary action taken
Here is a helmet video of the raid.
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