SHOT BY COPS; NOW HIS HOME IS RAIDED

Family Calls It Payback; Police Cite Drugs, Rifles

Standing ankle-deep in a stew of broken furniture, tangled clothes, broken
ceiling tiles, spoiling food and water, Sherrie Walton said she's had enough.

"I love our house, but we just can't stay here," Walton said. "I can't just
up and leave, but we're putting this house on the market and getting out."

Thursday night, for the second time in two weeks, Detroit police raided the
east-side Detroit home Walton shares with her son, Shawnnto, and three
other children. Shawnnto Walton, 28, was featured May 18 in a Free Press
series focusing on shootings by Detroit police officers.

On Friday, Detroit police officials defended the raids, saying they
resulted from surveillance and undercover work. Sgt. Rodger Johnson said
narcotics officers confiscated three assault rifles, more than two pounds
of marijuana and $5,418 in cash during the first raid.

On the second raid, police found a scale they believe was used to weigh
marijuana and one assault rifle.

Deputy Chief Sidney Bogan said police did not raid the home because of the
newspaper story, but because of neighbors' complaints about activities there.

The family's stored copies of news stories with pictures showing the
paralyzed Shawnnto Walton were left spread on beds, tables and counter
tops, Sherrie Walton said.

Walton said she will move out of Detroit.

"I mean, wouldn't you?" she asked.

The family's lawyers called the raid retaliation by Detroit police and
spoke Friday with federal law enforcement officials.

Neither Sherrie nor Shawnnto Walton were at home when the raiding crew of
about a half-dozen plainclothes and uniformed officers arrived Thursday night.

However, William Simms, Sherrie Walton's son-in-law, said he arrived
shortly after the police.

"They were just being ornery" as they kept him outside while the search was
under way, Simms said.

Walton said Chico, her 16-year-old son, was slapped on the head and taunted
by police about his "crippled-ass brother."

Shawnnto Walton was left unable to move from the shoulders down after being
shot in the back by a police officer in 1997. The city paid him $3.2
million in December to settle a civil lawsuit arising from the shooting.

Last year, criminal charges that Shawnnto Walton tried to shoot the police
officer who shot him were dismissed after a key witness recanted and other
officers disputed the official version of the incident. He pleaded no
contest to a charge of fleeing and eluding police. Before the shooting,
Shawnnto Walton was on lifetime probation after a series of minor felony
drug convictions.

"They paralyzed him. Isn't that enough?" asked William Dobreff, one of
Walton's lawyers. "Now they have to go and wreck his house, too?"

The Waltons' other attorneys, Thomas Loeb and Milton Greenman, said the
raid was payback for Shawnnto Walton's role in the newspaper series.

The lawyers were in contact Friday with U.S. Attorney Saul Green, who has
begun an initial probe into some of the police shootings and how local
authorities investigated them.

Green declined to comment on the latest incident.

Loeb said: "I am absolutely appalled. Just how stupid do they think
citizens are? Are we really to think that this was really a drug raid?"

Greenman said the first raid, the day after the newspaper article appeared,
may have been a coincidence, but the Thursday night action was "clearly
retaliatory."

The raiders , who did not find any drugs, left the two-story brick home a
riot of upended and broken furniture, strewn clothing and scattered food.
The outer steel casing of a small home safe was pried apart, but the strong
box was unopened.

In the basement, pieces of a bedroom set were broken. Clothing was tossed
on the floor, mixed with food that was spilled from a freezer. A cabinet
toppled in the raid knocked a pipe loose, leaking water onto the floor.
Ceiling tiles were pulled down.

"They even killed my poor little flowers," Sherrie Walton said.

A workman helping to install a deck and pool at the house was allegedly
roughed up by police during the raid and held overnight for observation at
a hospital.

Handyman Willerton Inman said he was Maced and punched while handcuffed.

"I was just working on the pool and they dragged me in," Inman, 32, said.
"I work construction. I don't do no crime."

He said he has had no trouble with authorities since he was 17, when he
said he served 6 months for carrying a concealed weapon.

The warrant for the Walton house said a black teenage male -- between
5-feet-9 and 5-feet-ll, and weighing 155 to 165 pounds -- was selling drugs
at the house.

The general description matches Chico Walton.

To read the entire Free Press special report, "Detroit Police: Lethal
force, lasting questions," go to www.freep.com/detroitpolice

Contact JOE SWICKARD at 313-223-4557 or swickard@freepress.com.

Staff writer Cecil Angel contributed to this report.