PANEL OKS $103,000 FOR BAD COP RAID

Project Apartments Invaded By Mistake

San Francisco -- The San Francisco Police Commission agreed yesterday to
pay $103,000 to settle a lawsuit by residents of a housing project who
allege that police mistakenly raided their homes in 1998.

Twenty-one residents of the Martin Luther King Jr./Marcus Garvey complex
will be compensated $78,000 under the tentative agreement, which calls for
police to meet regularly with complex residents.

The balance of $25,000 would cover attorney fees under the settlement,
which the commission approved without discussion yesterday but which now
requires approval by the Board of Supervisors.

On the early morning of Oct. 30, 1998, police descended on the projects at
Turk and Ellis streets, raiding 13 addresses to crack down on a gang.

But King-Garvey residents said that police had been ill-prepared with wrong
addresses, and that innocent grandmothers and small children had been
manhandled and handcuffed as riot-geared officers stormed their homes.
Residents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit for damages.

"We don't want this ever happening again," said attorney Matthew Kumin, who
represented the plaintiffs.

Police said the raid had resulted in 13 arrests and the seizure of seven
handguns and $4,000 in cash. Five of the 13 people arrested were convicted.

The housing project was supposedly a hideout for a gang called the Knock
Out Posse, and police at the time said some residents had thanked them for
their intervention.

But the residents who complained said that doors had been kicked in and
that officers carrying laser-scoped guns had pointed their weapons
indiscriminately at small children and grandmothers and shot to death a
5-year-old pit bull named Bosco.

The owner of the dog, Andre Dow, has refused to settle the case, but the
settlement awards $10,000 to the woman and family who lived where the dog
was shot.

Lela Martin, a then 58-year-old foster parent of more than 20 children over
the years, would get $12,000 in the settlement. She said her severely
disabled 22-year-old foster daughter had urinated on herself when an
officer yelled and trained a gun on her, shouting commands she could not
understand.

In another claim, Trevella Silas would receive $12,000 under the settlement.

Silas, then 21, said officers had come to the wrong home when they burst
into her apartment, leaving her son crying as they strode past presents set
out for his second birthday party the next day.

"I guess we won't be getting invitations," one officer allegedly joked,
suggesting that the operation was a fitting gift for her son's birthday.

"They ended up shattering a lot of innocent people's lives," said Kumin.

Kumin said that police had since changed tactics in such raids, but that
the raids had damaged police-community relations that now needed to be rebuilt.