In the 30 years since the Crime Bill fueled the militarization of police and the explosive growth of SWAT teams, SWAT teams continue to terrorize innocent homeowners and then receive qualified immunity from the courts.
In an amicus brief in Jimerson v. Lewis, The Rutherford Institute has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to hold a law enforcement official accountable for a raid gone awry after his SWAT team entered the wrong home, which belonged to a family of two parents and three young children, deploying a flashbang, breaking the front windows, and breaching the door. The SWAT team raided the wrong house after their commander failed to match the house’s street address number with a search warrant and ignored other noticeable differences.
“General incompetence, fatalities, and property damage have become unfortunate characteristics of botched SWAT team raids. In some cases, officers misread the address. In others, they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “All too often, botched SWAT raids have resulted in one tragedy after another with little consequences for law enforcement.”
In March 2019, a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer contacted the SWAT team commander of the Waxahachie Police Department in Texas for assistance executing a search warrant that night on a suspected methamphetamine stash house with a street address number of 573. The DEA officer sent photos of the front of the target house. The commander took a nine-member SWAT team to the location with the DEA agents. The first house the SWAT team mistakenly approached was number 583, which the commander realized did not match the photos before entering. The commander saw that the house on the left appeared to have the same window layout as the photos and thought the number was 573 even though he could not clearly see it. But that house was actually number 593 and the home of Karen Jimerson, James Parks, and their three children. Unlike the photos of the target house, Jimerson’s home had no fence and had a wheelchair ramp. Despite these differences and being unable to see the house number, officers ran to Jimerson’s house, deployed a flashbang, broke the front windows, and breached the door. The officers began a protective sweep and told two females to get on the ground before realizing it was the wrong house. Jimerson reported some pain in her side and was taken to the hospital.
An internal police department investigation determined that “reasonable and normal protocol was completely overlooked,” and the Chief of Police acknowledged that these kinds of mistakes should not happen. The SWAT team commander was suspended for two days without pay. The family filed a federal lawsuit, alleging a Fourth Amendment violation for the wrongful raid of their home. Although the district court would have let the case proceed, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that even though the officer’s efforts to identify the correct residence were “deficient,” the officer was entitled to qualified immunity from the lawsuit. In asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, Institute attorneys argue that when police fail to follow the clear commands of a search warrant and instead invade an innocent third party’s home, those officers violate clearly established Fourth Amendment law and should not be entitled to qualified immunity.
Erin Glenn Busby, Lisa R. Eskow, and Michael F. Sturley with the University of Texas School of Law Supreme Court Clinic advanced the arguments in the Jimerson v. Lewis amicus brief.
