Posted on 07/28/2005 8:42:34 AM PDT by skyman
A family says on a quiet May evening members of the Utah County SWAT team erroneously invaded their Springville home and roughed them up without cause.
The next day, the Chidester family, including Lawrence, his wife Emily and their adult son Larry, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Utah County and six SWAT team members.
According to court documents, the Chidesters say the SWAT team arrived on the street outside their home May 25 at approximately 10:30 p.m. They say the officers then proceeded to man-handle them in the execution of a search warrant -- albeit for the wrong address. The police unit's intended target, the suit claims, was the residence next door.
"Larry Chidester was asleep in his residence when he heard a loud bang or crash outside and exited to investigate the source of the noise," court documents say.
He observed Utah County SWAT team members departing their police vehicle and heading toward their neighbor's home. The sound he had heard was flash-bang devices detonated by the officers. However when SWAT team members saw Larry, they went after him, the suit claims.
"The officer pointed his firearm at Larry and started running towards him, yelling, 'There's one!,' " the document states.
Despite the fact that Larry had his hands in the air and told the officer repeatedly "I'm not resisting," the suit states the SWAT member continued to run over or tackle him, "and shoved his face into the ground and rocks."
The suit claims Larry Chidester was later transported to the emergency room at Mountain View Hospital in Payson to be treated for injuries.
Two officers then kicked open a side door of the home and entered Lawrence Chidester's bedroom as he was dressing, according to the suit.
"A law enforcement officer grabbed Lawrence and threw him to the floor ... the officer held a firearm to the back of Lawrence's head in the presence of his wife, Emily Chidester," the documents say.
Afterward, when the family was questioned about their names and address, the suit claims SWAT team members "admitted ... they were in the wrong house and they had made a mistake."
The Chidesters said the addresses of both homes were clearly marked by curbside mail boxes.
In the federal suit, the Chidesters claim that the members of the Utah County Sheriff's Office were "grossly negligent ... and acted with deliberate indifference" of their rights. They say the SWAT team members had no probable cause for their arrest or detention.
The family is seeking an undisclosed amount in damages to be determined at trial.
Though Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy said the Chidester home was not the SWAT team's original objective, he said the Chidesters became involved in the raid "as an ancillary issue."
"The warrant was for the house nextdoor but in the service of that warrant they became involved ... they had contact with us," Tracy said.
He said he could not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit since he had not yet reviewed it.
"We dispute the accuracy of their version of the events," Tracy said, regarding what's been reported to date about the nature of the incident.
ROFLMAO!!!!!
"Stop hitting the butt of my rifle with your face, you might scratch it!!!!!!"
Couple of guys do a home invasion and abduct you and yours. Might be nice to have a little 'assistance' under those circumstances.
Some of comments are guys talking about defending themselves, i.e., they don't need no stinkin cops.
Well, I have a fairly respectable gun collection, including some nice assault weapons and several thousand rounds of ammo, but I don't walk around my house like I'm a Marine at a checkpoint in Iraq.
That's the beauty of having police officers, boys. We don't have to feel compelled to walk around bristling with weaponry 24/7 to defend our lives and property.
And these comments about brown-shirts, well, that's just over the top. These guys are our neighbors, boys. They got wives and kids and mortgages. They ain't brown-shirts.
Is it your impression that the real brown shirts DIDN'T live next door to people and DIDN'T have families? What, did they just spring from the forehead of Hitler fully formed?
Supreme Court has ruled they are under no obligation to render aid. We are on our own. Considering the militarized "Us Vs. Them" mentality most cops carry around these days, that probably isn't a bad thing either. I'd rather trust to my own shooting skills than one of these idiot wanna-be Rambo's on the "extra-"Special Weapons and Tactlessness Squad. In fact, with todays unConstitutional gun control laws on the books, they'd be obligated to gun me down for carrying the necessary tools to defend myself from the very same bad guys they can't seem find an address for.
Hey, I don't want anybody to experience it, dumbass. But the way all you guys are screaming Nazis and brown-shirts, you sound like a bunch of those 60's hippies that hated all cops and preferred anarchy.
You're insulting all cops, questioning their intelligence and questioning if we even need them. Do any of you guys actually know any cops? Do you think they are perfect people?
Seems fishy to me. It happened in the evening, but by the end of business the next day, a lawsuit had been filed? Hmmmm. . . .
Seems odd to me that the family recovered sufficiently from the event and managed to get a lawsuit filed in less than 24 hours.
If you have an attorney friend or even know a bit about civil rights litigation yourself, it could be drafted and filed within a few hours. You might also want to keep in mind how motivated people can be when they are really PO'd.
Apparently you have never sat at a review board and read about the actions of the few who think they are.
The problem is that individual officers are almost never held accountable for their actions. Usually the department gets sued and settles for a moderate amount of money and the officers get out with a letter in their file - at most.
It's not until individual are held personally liable but civilly and criminally that this sort of abuse will end. If the officers knew that they faced a mandatory 30 days in jail for busting into the wrong house, it is doubtful that it would ever happen again.
And they make a mistake almost every day as well. Ask yourself if these "no knock" warrants are really worth the risk.
It seems that small town police forces are now trying to play Rambo and find ways to justify these raids when all they have to do is wait until the person walks out of the house and detain him until the house is searched.
That happens all the time?
The brown shirts were neighbors to those that they terrorized in the name of "order" as well. I'm pretty sure that many of them had wives and kids as well. Not sure about the mortgage part.
How are exactly are they different again?
So you are saying that this family planned the raid?
Yea, several.
And the professional ones hate the Rambo gung-ho pumped-up hardasses as much as anyone, but they ain't going to say much about it in public.
BTW, holding cops to the highest standards of professionalism isn't "cop-hating." It's a good thing, and if the citizens don't do it, no one will.
WTF???
1. Clear and present danger (e.g. the case you describe where somebody hears screams coming from a house and calls the cops).
2. Hot pursuit (e.g. the cops are chasing a crook and see him jump in your window).
3. Blanket permission granted as a condition for parole.
AFAIK, that's pretty much it.
Back in '76 my roomie Ralph and I had a knock on our appartment door about 6 PM.
Ralph went to the door and 2 men ID'd themselves as FBI agents. They had a Federal warrent with Ralph's name on it. They laughed and apologised, the Ralph they wanted was of a different race. (Ralph the roommate had recently been bonded which triggered an alert somewhere)
You have got to be freaking kidding.
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