Denver – Kirsty Shelton was at home preparing lunch and watching television with his daughters and grandmother when they were surprised by a strong team from his apartment for a Swat team that was looking for a man who lived in the hall.
Shelton’s mother told them that they had the wrong apartment, but, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday against Denver’s officers, she and her daughter received the order of outside at gunpoint.
When the officers entered the apartment, they met two girls, aged 5 and 6, in their room. According to the images of the Chamber of the Body of the June 2023 incident, an officer told them that they could play there and that he would get their grandmother, but the girls began to shout.
Then, the police put the family, including another adult who had just left the shower, a closed police car for about an hour and took over their apartment while they continued looking for the suspect, according to the demand. He says that the police knew that the man they were looking for lived in apartment 307, no 306 where the Shelton family lived, and that the numbers were clearly marked. He states that the police did not admit having made a mistake, but instead denied that the raid has happened.
The commander of the operation wrote in a report after the action that, due to the design of the Apartment building, the family was “contacted, advised of the situation and evacuated by their own security,” says the demand.
Shelton said the actions of police officers traumatized their family and demanded that they obtain extensive advice.
“The Police promised an investigation, but instead covered the raid, not producing its report until today, more than a year and a half after the incident. They continue to pretend that this terrifying raid never happened, ”he said in a statement.
The Denver police declined to comment due to the pending litigation, as well as an internal investigation.
Two of Shelton family lawyers, John Holland and Dan Weiss said some individual officers reports did not mention that they even entered the family department while looking for a suspect who was sought for serious violent crimes. The man was arrested hours later in the apartment directly in front of his, says the demand.
Holland and Weiss filed the claim in the State Court under the Law of Police Reform of 2020 of Colorado, which does not allow the officers to try to block the demands under the claim of qualified immunity, as they can in the Federal Court. He alleges that at least 10 officers violated the family’s constitutional right to be free from illegal searches and seizures, and that the family was subjected to excessive force.
Last year, a 78 -year -old woman whose Denver’s house was wrongly sought by a Swat team looking for a stolen truck won a verdict of $ 3.76 million. The American Civil Liberties Union, which helped represent it, said the police obtained a home raid order after the owner of the truck, which had four semi -automatic guns, a rifle, a revolver, two drones, $ 4,000 in cash and an iPhone inside – tracked the phone to the house using the Find My application and transmitted that information to the police.
It is rare for SWAT teams to enter the wrong location, said Thor Eells, former Swat member and commander of the Colorado Springs Police Department and the executive director of the National Association of Tactical Officers. At the national level, the cases of tactical equipment that go to wrong places have decreased significantly in the last decade, mainly due to better training and a departure from drug -related operations, he said.
But when the police make an error and suspect that they have entered the wrong location, they cannot go back immediately because you should look in the location to ensure that there are no threats, he said.
“Once they start the entrance, they will not stop until they ensure the apartment for the security of all involved,” said Eells, who refused to comment on the case of Denver.
Tactical operations experts say that sending a SWAT team to arrest someone in an apartment building is a challenge because people move and come out frequently, units numbers may not be clear and shots can pass to another unit.
When the time allows, officers can make surveillance, obtain the plan planes from the target location and send someone to review it before an operation, said Mark Lomax, former executive director of the National Association of Tactical Officers and a Specialty withdrawal for the State of the State of Pennsylvania.
