Posted on 08/17/2008 12:46:00 PM PDT by ellery
Armed with a battering ram and shotguns, Buffalo police looking for heroin broke down the door and stormed the lower apartment of a West Side family of eight.
The problem is that the Wednesday evening raid should have occurred at an apartment upstairs.
And, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, according to Schavon Pennyamon, who lives at the mistakenly raided apartment on Sherwood Street with her husband, Terrell, and six children.
Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point shotguns at her young children before admitting their mistake and then raiding the right apartment.
She says she’s left with a broken door, an injured husband, jittery children and — what bothers her most — still no apology from police.
“They know they did something wrong and they were still ignorant,” said the 29-year-old Pennyamon. “At first, I just wanted an apology. Now, because they want[ed] to be ignorant and rude, I have to take it to the next level.”
She filed a report with the department’s Professional Standards Division and also contacted Mayor Byron W.
Brown about the incident. Pennyamon said Friday evening she also has retained a lawyer and intends to pursue legal action.
Police brass acknowledge that officers with the Mobile Response and Narcotics units entered the wrong apartment.
“As the officers were in the lower apartment, one of the detectives reviewed the search warrant application and realized it was for the upper [apartment],” said Dennis J. Richards, chief of detectives.
“It appears to be an honest mistake and we certainly apologize to all involved,” added Michael J. DeGeorge, Buffalo police spokesman.
Police declined to comment, however, on Pennyamon’s allegations of assault and other police impropriety. The internal investigation with the Professional Standards Division is now under way to determine exactly what happened.
“We wouldn’t be comfortable discussing the internal investigation,” Richards said. “We can say comfortably that over 1,100 search warrants were executed last year and 580 to date this year and that, with such a high volume and such a fast-paced environment, it is understandable that mistakes could happen.”
Pennyamon remains unconvinced it was a mistake. She says officers told her they had “raided the house before” and she believes they felt entitled to do it again — warrant or not.
“The way they make it seem is ‘we can do whatever we want,’ ” she said.
Pennyamon’s troubled by what she says is an arrogance by police officers and an unwillingness to “serve and protect” those who need it.
“It’s a sad situation. I’ve always looked up to the police. I’ve always expected them to be on my side.”
Pennyamon was called home from her job as a certified nursing assistant at a local health care facility at about 6:30 p. m. Wednesday to find police at her house, her children partially dressed on the porch and her husband — a U.S. Air Force veteran — injured. She said police were rude and unapologetic.
It was a harsh welcome to the neighborhood for the family. They’ve only lived at the apartment on Sherwood Street, on the far West Side just south of West Ferry Street, for two weeks after she says they moved from the East Side to escape crime. Now, Pennyamon said, the family already is looking to relocate again.
“I don’t know what was going on upstairs, but it gives police no right to bust in my doors,” she said. “That’s just ridiculous.”
Richards said police protocol dictates that search warrants are executed by police first announcing their presence and then quickly and forcefully entering a property with guns drawn for their own protection.
“Police have been faced with fortified doors and windows. In numerous locations, they’ve been met with individuals armed with weapons or attacking animals,” he said.
Pennyamon said the event left her husband with physical injuries and left a lasting impression on the children.
She said her husband, Terrell, suffered a dislocated arm after he was yanked up by police during the raid and is expected to return to his doctor Monday to possibly have glass — left behind by the door window police broke to get into the apartment — surgically removed from his foot.
Pennyamon’s 5-year-old daughter now sleeps with her.
“My 12-year-old and 6-year-old don’t want to be home at all,” she said, adding that her younger children cower or run to the back of the house when they hear anyone approaching.
“ ‘That’s the police,’ they say,” Pennyamon said.
Police said no arrests were made in the subsequent raid at the upstairs apartment.
Was that the Florida shootout that got the Silvertip Ammo and 9/mm's in a bad light? The drug dealers are not better armed than my locals. They have .40's and 10mm, and a few .45's. They get nervous and testy when I admire their hardware.
In the nearby city, the 9 is still the choice of the gangbangers, according to the drive-by news stories.
The problem with 100 guilty escaping to avoid the one innocent mistake is probably that the 100 guilty will go on to kill 25 more innocent people for having let them go.
So you kill 25 innocent people letting 100 bad guys go in case of an innocent mistakes.
Not reasonable IMO.
Franklin IMO lived in less godless times.
People had honor more. They knew what shame is so they would not live on what we call welfare.
There was also more respect of other people and life.
They feared God more and behaved better as a consequence.
Franklin also had a bunch of bastard children out of wedlock, so I admire the inventiveness of the guy, but he isn’t always speaking Gospel IMO.
When I was a kid they kept the peace....and were called "Peace Officers". Now they enforce the laws and are called "Enforcement Officers". The name is kinda scary in and of itself....isn't it.
As I recall......in the old days we had much more peace.........and less law.
What you are saying is that the risk of harm to the officer outweighs the risk of harm to the innocent, or even a not so innocent but who still believes that instead of fighting the police, he is under a home invasion by thugs and tries to fight back. I say a law officer knows there are risks associated with the job. People are getting killed because they are trying to defnd their homes and families from invaders. How can you justify that?
The War on Drugs marches on...
I like the sound of that ,,,,more actions on the part of the police should to bust the criminals ,,,, but they go after the easy ones ,,, gave the people upstairs the chance to get away ( just a thought,,could have been an inside job. )
Keep in mind there area bad guys with guns under their pillows, crippled mothers and in the baby cribs.
If police could really be the mind readers you would wish for them to be, they would probably know by reading minds that they got in rare cases the WRONG DOOR.
I think they need to triple check before it goes to warrant.
They need to verify no mistake was made in the warrant.
They need to have a few people review and be responsible to check addresses before going in.
I think people thought some things were so easy to do that they did them poorly.
Ended up that knowing the correct address is among the most important thing to do.
Probably a mistake like this makes that state more careful
for a year, but they need to make better procedures to do what they can to eliminate this as much in the future, because the bad guys aren't going to turn themselves in all the time.
At some point they go in and there is no way to know there is nobody else there of interest or who could kill them. This gets back to having to be mind readers again.
Really? Why not? Gotta get home and catch the next episode of your favorite cop show where your tactics are glorified?
#1 You never know who else was inside and connected to the crime without going in.
Are you actually saying that because there may be some risk, everyone should be subject to overwhwelming force? You talk as if every dealer is sitting on an arsenal. Thats in the movies. Have you forgotten that a person is presumed innocent, so maybe tearing his house apart based on an unverified tip might be a little unreasonable.
#2 You never know what other bad things they have inside and who has them still without going in.
So knock on the door, serve the warrant, and move in and secure the home. Not many people are really looking to shoot it out with police. If that scares you, join the fire department.
Up until 50 years ago, people would have felt shame to take charity in welfare as a regular thing.
They would have respected older people more.
People were of a higher quality in Franklin's time.
Let those 100 guilty people go today, and probably 25 innocents would die.
Nothing to do with God and police in the thought I wrote down.
Mistakes are mistakes, the police did NOT try to make this mistake on purpose in the story.
My #1 and #2 are good IMO.
If you have a good solution to stop bad people from doing bad things then feel free to stop all this.
Calling crimes legal isn't a way to stop bad people from doing bad things though.
And yet cops currently use SWAT teams to ‘rescue’ suicidal people. Frequently resulting in the shooting of the suicidal person. We see dogs shot, cats stomped to death and innocent people killed. Automatic weapons aimed at 2 year olds.
Is it working? nope, law enforcement is seeking to further militarize their organizations and use more and more force.
Oh and is drug use down? Are drugs hard to get?
This most certainly is a breach of rights issue. The rights of innocent people to be secure in their homes -- which is the right that was breached here and has been breached countless times across the country.
So its ok for cops to strike innocent people who aren’t even under suspicion for a crime?
Why not wait for the bad guy to leave the house?
I know thats too much like police work and not as exciting as a full blown raid.
If they don’t listen to the police when they enter under a warrant and start reaching for things when they say stop...YES! Police can’t tell if their innocent or reaching for a suicide belt.
If something causes police to enter your home (warrant or mistake), you always cooperate, then when it all clears start complaining.
Police everywhere are NOT trained to come in second.
Some common sense should prevail.
“There has been no right established I know of to be a criminal and to have that criminal’s home be off limits to the law.”
huh? The power is derived from the people. Any power not expressly given to the govt is maintained by the people.
People do have a right to live their lives and not have civil servants destroy it. They also have rights not to have their lives taken or damaged.
Everyones home is off limit until a judge determines there is reasonable cause to search it. And then the search must be limited to defined objectives.
It is the cops who are acting like thugs and the cops who are wrong. Time to fire them and put them in jail.
“This is about mistakes that we’d all like to see happen less since we know law officers will throughout the future will be having to chase down the future bad guys.”
Except there was no chasing. They couldn’t read the warrant. Sounds like criminal negligence to me and not a ‘mistake’.
As an example:
As a kid, I was coming back from playing RB at a private club.
I got pulled over by 6 cop cars, 8 police all with guns drawn.
I had my palms on the wheel for them to see and cooperated.
It was scary as hell.
I was not who they were looking for.
They left, I was shook up, but did not get hurt.
My car matched the description of someone else who just robbed a place near where I was at.
I had my hands in plain sight and in my case offered to take them to 15 witnesses of where I had been the last two hours.
Things happen, but you have to cooperate and expect that cops aren’t always going to be perfect.
Situations may not always be right and you should not cause them to get worse if you can.
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