Via: Baltimore Sun
Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about.
As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down.
Oh, but it gets better. While raiding the wrong house, the police manage to do $1,200 worth of damage by destroying the front door. Mr Leonard is still waiting on payment.
Oh – and we’re not done. Since the police trashed his door, Leonard left it in his front yard for them to come pick it up. In response, the city fined him $50 for leaving trash in his yard.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
so.. whatever happened to having a warrant? or was this probable cause? wtf
They did have a warrant, a “no knock warrant” which essentially means “kick the door in before they know you’re coming, otherwise they can run, reload, or flush the coke.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-knock_warrant
However, they also don’t have to ID themselves as police… which leads me to wonder what would happen to me if I opened fire on the unannounced, unidentified intruders who were, from my perspective, breaking into my house.