71-YEAR-OLD MAN FILES LAWSUIT OVER POLICE DRUG RAID, SEARCH

The plaintiff says he was just visiting a neighbor, but officers say
he made a grab for a lawman's gun.

DURHAM -- An elderly man who says he was punched in the face, held
against his will and strip-searched by police during a drug raid at
the home of a friend last May has filed a civil suit against the city
and several police officers.

The suit, filed by James Cates, 71, is the latest in a case that has
involved an SBI investigation, a review by a citizens board and
allegations of police brutality by the Durham NAACP.

Named as defendants were Durham police officers Ronald Pendergrass,
Larry Smith, M.T. Sykes, J.R. Cleary, D.W. Waddell, J.M. Bloesch and
R.D. Walker and Freddie Rivera, an emergency medical technician.

Cates said that police violated his rights when they entered the house
of Catherine Capps at 1706 Gunter St. carrying automatic weapons and
wearing masks. He says they subjected him to a strip search even
though he was not named in a search warrant and was only visiting his
elderly friend.

Police said Capps, who was 73 at the time and has since died, was
targeted as a drug dealer after a confidential informant bought drugs
from an elderly woman at Capps' address. No drugs were found during
the raid.

Police said Cates was punched twice in the face only after he tried to
grab a weapon from Smith. In August, the Durham Police Department
cleared Smith of any violations. And District Attorney Jim Hardin and
the citizen's review board later said police did nothing wrong in the
raid.

But Cates' attorney, Keith Bishop, said Monday that Cates could not
have made the bold move toward Smith's gun that police allege because
Cates was seated at the time and can't raise himself from a chair
without help.

"Any person seeing Mr. Cates would know he lacked the capacity to take
a gun," Bishop said.

Bishop said police should have conducted only a routine weapons search
of Cates, which would mean patting Cates down. But police conducted
the more invasive strip search instead.

Bishop, who says he will seek "millions" in damages, even questions
whether police had the right to enter the house in the first place.

"I looked at the search warrant, and it seemed shockingly skeletal,"
Bishop said. "But more importantly, she [Capps] was deaf, so I don't
see how she could have made a deal through the door."