Posted on 02/15/2008 9:24:24 PM PST by bshomoic
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― Two months ago, a terrified mother called 911 to report strangers breaking into her North Minneapolis home. The intruders were not violent criminals but members of the Minneapolis Police Department's SWAT team. They were raiding the wrong house after an informant gave investigators bad information.
The I-TEAM tracked the 17 hours that led up to the raid.
Shortly after seven in the morning on Saturday, Dec. 15, a young woman walked into the downtown police precinct and said her boyfriend had threatened her. She told police Jermaine Brown belongs to the Rolling 60's Crips street gang, and she claims he pointed a gun at her inside his home where they live together at 1321 Logan Avenue North.
Officers from the department's Violent Offender Task Force (VOTF) had been targeting the gang's drug dealings for months. They are brought in to check out her information.
By dinner time, the investigation put the VOTF officers outside a house on Oak Park Avenue North. Police had heard members use it to store guns and drugs.
As VOTF officers watch the house, Jermaine Brown walks out. The officers, including their supervisor Lt. Andy Smith, arrest Brown and take him to jail. Then they decide to go after guns his girlfriend has told them about.
Several hours later, VOTF officers meet with Hennepin County Judge Herb Lefler at his home. They convince him it is urgent to move fast before someone ditches the guns since Brown is now behind bars.
The judge agrees to allow them to conduct two high-risk search warrants. One is for the house where they found Brown. The other is for the Logan Avenue address his girlfriend said is their residence and where, she said, he has hidden more guns. That includes the gun he allegedly used the night before to threaten her.
The SWAT team is called in to conduct the raids. Less than 90 minutes later, the SWAT officers raid that first house on Oak Park Avenue. Police find three guns in the home along with mail addressed to Brown.
Despite clues that this was actually Brown's home, the SWAT team is still sent to its next stop.
It is now just after midnight on Dec. 16. Yee Moua is watching television while her husband and six kids are safe in their beds.
Strange sounds, including breaking glass, frighten her. She thinks it is violent criminals so she calls 911 while her husband wakes up and grabs his shotgun.
Vang Khang, Moua's husband, fires three shots from the second floor bedroom. The intruders fire back more than 20 rounds through the door. It's recorded on a 911 phone call tape.
On the same tape, men can be heard yelling "Get to the floor!" and "Where's the gun?"
It turns out that the intruders are not criminals. They are members of the MPD's SWAT team hunting for Jermaine Brown's guns at the wrong house. Officers take Khang into custody and search his bullet-riddled home for weapons.
His wife, Moua, can be heard pleading with the officers to tell her what happened.
Police see lots of family photos and Hmong decorations in the Khang home. However, the only gun they find is the shotgun Khang used to protect his family.
That night a police spokesman defends the raid in which two officers were hit. Their protective gear prevented them from getting hurt.
"I don't think it was a mistake on our part, we did everything correctly," said Sgt. Jesse Garcia on that Sunday night in December.
Two days later, Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan meets with the Khang family. He admits mistakes were made and promises Khang that he won't be charged with shooting at the SWAT officers.
He also hugs one of the young children who went through the shootout in their own home.
"The fact that nobody was very seriously injured or killed, we were very lucky," said Dolan
He promised a full investigation of what went wrong and to find out who dropped the ball on the front of the case.
"I don't blame the SWAT team. I do take into consideration whether to consequences were the mistake was made intentionally," said Dolan.
The I-TEAM has looked into what could have prevented the mistaken raid. It's standard in cases like this to do surveillance outside a house and check for any police calls to the address.
Investigators also could have run a simple property search online and learned that the Khang family owned the house on Logan Avenue since moving there four years ago.
So far, the I-TEAM has found no evidence that any of those steps were taken on the Logan Avenue house to confirm the information provided by Brown's girlfriend.
Brown has been charged with assault and as a felon possessing firearms. By then police had confirmed his real address is on Oak Park Avenue where they arrested him. Brown denies the guns found there are his, and claims they belong to his girlfriend.
His attorney, Hennepin County public defender Mary Moriarty, told the I-TEAM that Brown will give police a DNA sample on Wednesday to prove he has connection to the guns police found during the raid at the Oak Park Avenue home.
Meanwhile, the Khang family has hired two lawyers to represent them. The lawyers include includes former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger.
"The police were the ones there illegally and they started this problem," said Heffelfinger.
The legal team also includes Sia Lo, a prominent Hmong American attorney. Lo said the raid shook trust between police and the Hmong community.
"They fought so hard to make sure they that are going to be respected and see this happen is a tremendous blow to the sacrifices they made," said Lo.
The attorneys say it will take a lot more than patching up bullet holes and replacing glass to heal an innocent family's pain.
Dolan said he wants to make them feel safe at home again.
"To come out of this event successfully for me would be having this family back in the city of Minneapolis and feeling comfortable being there. Anything beyond that is going to be a horrible loss for us," he said.
Well, sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between a criminal and your neighborhood Officer Friendly.
I’d like to see a simple law. Your city SWAT team breaks into one wrong house...take away fifty percent of their budget for the next year. Call it enhancement to do the right job. I’ll bet they really don’t screw up after that point.
This is a first, at least to my knowledge
Usually they don’t even apologize
No, don’t penalize the whole department. If they break into the wrong house, they need to promptly pay for all repairs, medical bills, and be liable to having to pay punitive damages. They should also have to have several independent checks on criminal informant information to help further reduce this thing from happening.
Why not just go after the really guilty ones. Criminal penalties all around for any death or injuries, no matter who shoots first, plus the most senior officer involved is fired, police chief gets a month without pay, and whoever went to the judge for the warrant gets 3 months without pay.
And, just to make sure we do it right, if the raid is at the wrong address, for whatever reason, the police are presumed to be acting purely as private citizens. Their employment as police can not be mentioned at any trial.
Love how he wakes up and grabs his shotgun. He obviously has not been brainwashed yet by the government. He still thinks it’s his responsibility and right to protect his family.
Not unusual these days. Here’s one, that was especially heinous, in that the police went so far as to plant phony eveidence at the scene afterwards. BTW, they shot it out with a 92 year old woman. She lost.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15853675/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/22/national/main2205048.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2205048
I’m far, far, from being anti police. But, they do need to get serious and creative in finding ways to prevent this from happening. Punishing the cops, in most cases, is not right, it’s the system they follow that’s messed up.
By the way, driver happened to be black, neighbors white. Driver just happened to take a neighborhood shortcut to avoid an accident on a main road.
I tend to agree.
There’s no excuse.
Did Khang get his shotgun back?
And provide a new family dog to replace the one they shoot.
I have pets that don’t obey voice commands that are out exercising at certain times of the day and night. My worst fear is that something like this happens and the cops won’t let me get them up, and they either a) die from fright, especially if gunshots are fired; b) they get kicked or stepped on by cops and are permanently injured or die; c) they are shot by the cops; d) they get out of the house’s open doors and are hit by a car or picked off by a neighborhood dog.
Of course my 1st worst fear is that they shoot me or my wife, but our pets are a part of our family. Cops don’t give two sh1ts about destroying the wrong house or popping off people who think their home is being invaded, much less animals.
“I don’t think it was a mistake on our part, we did everything correctly,” said Sgt. Jesse Garcia on that Sunday night in December.”
This flaming idiot ought to be fired and sued, then re-hired and fired again.
Is there such a thing as being fired “with extreme prejudice?”
“Whoops... Sorry, citizen. We thought you were someone else” PING
That line stood out to me too. It turned out they were criminals didn’t it.
Usually there is no one left alive to accept the apology.
Call it the Reno effect.
>>>>Punishing the cops, in most cases, is not right, it’s the system they follow that’s messed up.
Whack the SWAT and the chief’s budget every time it happens, and it will stop.
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