I am no lawyer, but this seems like a government taking and should be covered under the Takings Clause. The government made the decision to destroy this man’s shop for its own interest - the pursuit of a fugitive. No opinion about the merits of that decision matters, only that they took it. They could have just waited him out (turns out he escaped anyway, making them look like keystone cops). But they chose to take the property and then proceeded to damage it for their interests. They are responsible for compensation under the Takings clause.
This happened to a family here locally. They literally destroyed the home looking for a fugitive that had decided to hide in the home’s crawl space. Access to that space is from the outside of the home. Broke out the home windows, threw smoke bombs that killed the family cat, the kids trying to tell them the perp was in the crawl space, the frantic father shoved into the backseat of a squad car….
It was horrific what they did and totally uncalled for.
They refused to listen, destroying the home before they even bothered to check the crawl space where everyone was saying the fugitive was.
You may not be a lawyer
But if you were; and I were on your jury; I would be demanding a 3x punitive damages on top of actual; paid by the offending commanding officers - not the taxpayers
That would stop this shit