A federal court case has been launched after a SWAT team in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area busted into the wrong house, shot the family\u2019s dog, handcuffed the children and forced them to \u201csit next to the carcass of their dead and bloody pet for more than an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case has been outlined by Courthouse News, and Mike Riggs at a Reason.com blog wrote, \u201cShawn Scovill of the taskforce may have raided the wrong house, but he didn\u2019t want to let the opportunity to rifle through someone\u2019s things go to waste. So he and his team ransacked the Franco house for over an hour, and managed to find a .22 caliber pistol in the \u2018basement bedroom of Gilbert Castillo,\u2019 which the suit says they attributed to the head of the Franco household, Robert Franco.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to CN, a claim over the attack on the family has been filed in federal court by a team of lawyers representing the family. The plaintiffs are the nine people in the Franco home on the evening of July 13, 2010, including three children, and the case seeks $30 million for the civil rights violations and other damages.<\/p>\n
Defendants include the St. Paul police department, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and members of the Dakota County Drug Task Force.<\/p>\n
Robert Franco explains in the claim the attack officers raided the wrong house, and Task Force Officer Scovill, who set up the raid, \u201cprovided false information to a Minnesota District Court judge in order to obtain a search warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to CN, Franco alleges, \u201cDefendant Scovill lied when he informed the district court judge who reviewed Scovill\u2019s search warrant application that Scovill had obtained information from the confidential informant that the plaintiff\u2019s home was the properly targeted house and that the address and the identity of the individuals who resided therein were the plaintiffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint explains what officers should have known: that a neighbor should have been the intended target.<\/p>\n
CN reported, \u201cPlaintiff Roberto Franco was not named in the search warrant, nor was any person who lived in the raided house named in the search warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added the complaint, \u201cPlaintiff, Roberto Franco, had never been discussed or considered a suspect by law enforcement, Scovill or any of the defendants directly involved or indirectly involved in the raid, relative to any alleged involvement by Franco in any distribution of contraband prior to the wrong house raid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franco pointed out that the neighbor\u2019s name was actually on the warrant.<\/p>\n
Instead, the SWAT team \u201cnegligently raided the home\u201d and spent the next hour \u201cphysically brutalizing all the above-named occupants of said house,\u201d according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
Added Riggs, \u201cSince the DEA is named in the suit, the Francos\u2019 legal team will likely find itself going head-to-head with Obama administration lawyers, who argued a similar case earlier this year before the Ninth Circuit.<\/p>\n