Posted on 08/24/2015 6:31:56 AM PDT by Red Badger
WORCESTER (CBS) — Marianne Diaz and her fiancé, Bryant Alequin, felt their lives were in danger when a SWAT team raided their third-floor apartment on Hillside Street with guns drawn.
Diaz says she grabbed her seven-year-old and 18-month-old girls and prayed while Worcester police officers and State Police troopers executed a search warrant.
“It was terrorizing, and the worst thing I’ve ever been through in my life. They were loud, vulgar, and disgusting in behavior,” she said.
It happened on Wednesday around 5:30 in the morning.
Alequin says he was in the bathroom getting ready for work.
“I was scared, honestly. They put me in handcuffs, they were very tight, and it was ugly,” he said.
Turns out they were not the people police were looking for.
“I just want there to be a full-on investigation, and give us an explanation as to why they did this to my family and why they terrorized us the way they did,” Diaz says.
The family’s attorney, Hector Pineiro, says his clients rights were violated.
“You can imagine 10 officers looking and pointing guns at a naked 23-year-old mother protecting her two kids. The horrific language and pointing of weapons at children cannot be justified under any circumstances,” he said.
Police have raided the apartment before, but Diaz moved in back in May with her fiancé and two children.
The person that used to live there does have a criminal record, but Diaz and her family have never been in trouble with law.
“They came into my house like that when they did not have their facts right,” Alequin said.
The DA’s office released a statement saying “The search warrant was executed based on the best intelligence at the time. He (the target) had been in the dwelling in the days before the execution of the search warrant.”
Pineiro strongly disagrees.
“It’s clear to me that the (district attorney’s) office is not going to look into what happened because he’s already giving the blessing they acted on the best intelligence, which is a complete joke,” he said.
The family has not yet decided if they will file a lawsuit.
Come, now. That would spoil the fun of these tyrants.
Unbelievable, isn’t it?! Are we in the US or did we move? I feel lost in a strange, stupid and nasty land.
“They not only had the wrong house, since the guy hadn’t lived there in months, THEY HAD THE GUY THEY WERE SEARCHING FOR ALREADY IN CUSTODY SINCE AUGUST 6th.......................................”
It will be interesting to see how they “explain” this in court! I see no way that Wooster can avoid a payout here. Probably won’t even want to get it in court because it will further expose their incompetence. Of course, OTOH a judge did issue the warrant so the judiciary will be exposed as well.
Yes, quaint, in a Eighteenth Century sort of a way ... like the American Constitution.
Could be. Or it could be a case of *justify having a SWAT Team* during budget time.
I notice that it is hard to get Rush Limbaugh on the radio in MA
As long as there are public sector unions it will not faze these police departments. These kind of screw ups should come out of the leading officers hide, either he is fired or he gets demoted and and pay cut. Until then they will not change their tactics.
I have friends and relatives who are police officers and if someone did this to their family there would be hell to pay and pay back, but this family gets not even an apology for this cluster%*(& of an operation.
In the 1970’s we lived next to a bunch of nut ball neighbors who were always causing problems with everyone in the neighborhood. One day they decided to take a warrant out for my Dad because he had cut grass on the property line with a weed eater and piece of grass landed in their grass, I kid you not(the judge threw this out of court and tore into the neighbors and their attorney for such idiocy and the wasting of his time).
These lowlifes had a friend who was a deputy in the sheriff’s department who showed up in the evening at dinner time with another deputy to serve the warrant. They knocked and asked to come in Dad said sure officers and they stepped in and one deputy started cursing and ranting about arresting him if he didn’t have money to hand them for bond payment then. Dad said deputy would you please not use that language in front of my kids they are all very young and I don’t use that kind of language around them, we were all at the dinner table eating. The deputy essentially said I will blanked blank blank what I want and if you say another word I will arrest your blank blank now.
Dad said to Mom go get the money, he counted it out the deputy served the papers and wrote out a receipt and they left with another barrage of profanity and threats and went next door to tell their friends who had taken their warrant what happened.
Dad picked up the phone and called the local asst. chief of police, told him what happened and he was royally pissed at the deputies unprofessional behavior. He contacted the sheriff and explained what his deputy had just done. The next day the sheriff called my Dad to apologize and you will not have to deal with this deputy every again except for today. Later that day the deputy showed up at my Dad’s business and apologized profusely to him and my Mom.
They knew full well it was the wrong address.
Using the “wrong address” excuse just permits them to search *additional* houses. After all, someone *might* have some electronics worth stealing / drugs worth planting / dogs that need shooting.
Pretending they made a “mistake” has the added bonus of ensuring people will take them at face value and assume it was a “mistake”.
It’s not accidental. It’s tactical.
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