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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Spring Lake Park Police GOOFED UP.

Please click onto the comments for the story.

posted by Bob at Tuesday, March 27, 2007

2 Comments:

Blogger Bob said...

A mistake, a raid, a couple terrified
As a drug sting fell apart, cops stormed a Spring Lake Park home. Guns were drawn. Obscenities shouted. But the residents were innocent, and now they want an explanation.
BY DAVE ORRICK
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 03/27/2007 12:28:02 AM CDT


The man leveled his gun at Nicole Thompson's face.

Moments later, he had the mother of four on the ground with the barrel to the back of her head. According to her and her husband, the man screamed, "If you move, I'll shoot you in the f-- head!"

It is an experience she can't get out of her mind. The gunman, it turned out, was a cop. And the whole thing - 12 armed officers storming the family's split-level Spring Lake Park house - was a big misunderstanding.

Now, a month later - flinching every time there's on rap on the door and awaking from nightmares - Thompson and her husband say they've yet to receive a proper explanation or a sincere apology from police. Reports made by officers involved say they did apologize, but the

Listen to the 911 call and raid. (Wanring: Some material contains explicit material.) Thompsons don't recall it that way.
"We're not afraid of the bad guys as much as we're afraid of the good guys," Brad Thompson said. "Do I call 911 again, and who do I call now that I've complained about them?"

Brad Thompson said he's sympathetic to the dangers officers face, and his attempts to bring closure to the episode included inviting officers over for coffee to explain what happened and why. After a lack of adequate response to their phone calls and e-mails, the couple said, they filed a written complaint with Anoka County officials this month. They haven't decided whether to sue.

Through a captain, Sheriff Bruce Andersohn, who oversees the drug task force officers involved, declined to comment.

Capt. Bob Aldrich said only: "We've received their complaint and have had numerous contacts with the complainants to try to resolve the situation. Some of that will be waylaid by the complaint. It's under investigation. At this point, until the investigation is done, we're not going to say much about it."
The agency shouldn't be afraid of apologizing, said D.P. Van Blaricom, a former police chief in Bellevue, Wash., who runs a consulting business on police practices. "Eighty-five percent of lawsuits would be solved

Brad Thompson and his wife Nicole discuss the incident where an armed drug task force burst into their house unbeknownst to them. (Joe Rossi, Pioneer Press)if the cops just said, 'I (messed) up and I'm sorry.' "
DRUG STING GONE BAD

It all began as a drug investigation.

According to reports from police and prosecutors, audio recordings of the incident, and the Thompsons:

A confidential informant for the Anoka-Hennepin Drug Task Force set up what he and cops thought would be a drug sting targeting Ryan Robert Baker, 30, of East Bethel. In fact, Baker's intention was to rob the informant without selling him any drugs, according to theft charges to which he pleaded guilty this month.

Shortly after 1 p.m. Feb. 16, Baker and the informant, who was not identified, drove to Spring Lake Park. The informant wore a radio transmitter, and cops listened as Baker told him to drive to the 8300 block of Able Street Northeast. The police, following from a distance, didn't know where Baker was heading. Baker picked the Thompsons' house, apparently at random.

The Thompsons run a video and film production business out of the house, so they were home. They've never had a run-in with the cops, and neither of them knew the informant or Baker. Wade Cordts, an intern for their company, also was at the house. The Thompsons' four children, ages 8 to 18, weren't home.

Nicole Thompson heard a knock at the front door. She answered it and saw two men struggling over a wad of cash. One of the men asked about drugs. She yelled to her husband, who ran to the door and pinned the two men against a wall outside the house. Cordts helped keep them there while Nicole Thompson called 911.

"I need a policeman please," she says in a recording of the 911 call. "Two gentlemen just rang my doorbell, and they're fighting on my doorstep. No, I don't know them. My husband and another gentleman who lives with us are out there right now trying to restrain this guy, but I don't exactly know what's going on."

Amid the sounds of a struggle over the wire planted on the informant, cops heard him say he was being robbed. A supervising detective called out over the police radio, "This is a rip-off. Bust, bust, bust."

An audio recording given by the Anoka County Sheriff's Office to the Thompsons documents the incident, as heard through the muffled microphone on the informant. A salvo of screamed profanities announces the officers' presence. Some of it is inaudible; some of it is clear, like, "Anybody f-- moves, you get a boot in the head, understand?"

'EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES'

That's hardly the language used by the police - a combination of officers from several jurisdictions assigned to the task force - in official reports.

"I exited the vehicle took my badge out, held it in my left hand as far as I could," wrote Detective John Potter, one of the first on the scene. "I announced that I was the police and ordered everyone to the ground."

To Brad Thompson, the group of plain-clothed men who poured out of a beat-up minivan looked "like bikers," not police. And while he doesn't deny they may have had badges in view, all he saw was the guns pointed at him.

"I didn't know for sure they were police until the handcuffs came out," he said.

Police reports are littered with references of "exigent circumstances," a phrase drawn from legal rulings that give police the authority to enter a home without a search warrant if they fear they could be in immediate danger. The Thompsons didn't understand why a dozen officers were combing through their house; they hadn't been read their rights and no one told them what it was all about.

Between 15 and 45 minutes later, the officers realized the Thompsons, as police reports state, were "innocent."

Van Blaricom said that's when it's crucial for cops to chill out. "If you go in gangbusters and you see that what you anticipated isn't what you've got, that's time to shift," he said. "Otherwise, you've just made victims of everybody."

But shifting mindset isn't so simple, said Mylan Masson, director of the Law Enforcement Program for Minneapolis Community Technical College. Officers in a raid are afraid of the unknown. And their adrenaline is pumping, causing a surprising array of physical changes, including literal tunnel vision, reduced hearing and a lack of language skills. That's why, in a raid, they are apt to swear profusely. "Your mind and body is reverting to a position where it wants to stay alive," she said.

When the danger passes, there's often an "adrenaline dump," she said, and the effect can range from traumatic tears to apparently callous laughing, as the Thompsons say some of the cops did.

They uncuffed the Thompsons and Cordts, explained that a confidential informant had given them bad info, left a business card and, with a remark about "It's Miller time," they left.

Police reports say the officers apologized and that Brad Thompson appeared understanding of what had happened.

Nicole and Brad Thompson said it was in the following hours and days that the trauma set in, and Masson said that's common - and that the officers probably felt it too.

"You say, 'I'm fine,' but then a while later, you start shaking and reliving it and saying, 'Oh, my God. I could have been killed,' " she said. "The police, they're going back to their homes, and they're feeling remorse: 'Oh, my God, we could have hurt someone today.' "

Dave Orrick can be reached at dorrick@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2171.

10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

85% of lawsuts could be solved with an apology, but government never apologizes....even when they are wrong beyond a doubt.

6:34 PM  

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