NIGHTTIME DRUG RAID - WRONG HOUSE

Loretta Bernhardt's Chihuahua growled, detecting something. Uh-oh,
Loretta thought, her husband was up.

It was a Hallandale Police narcotics raid, deliberately sudden and
terrifying to give the raiders the advantage of surprise -- all
typical, except for this:

Wrong apartment. Wrong building. Mixed-up search warrant. Innocent
people terrorized. Wrong man arrested, humiliated and jailed in his
wife's underwear.

It happened Feb. 9 in Hallandale. Edwin J. Bernhardt, a race horse
exercise rider, spent a few hours under arrest for resisting arrest.

Sgt. Paul Winters, the raiding party's supervisor, drove Bernhardt
home later that night. He apologized and promised to have the door and
window repaired.

``We Irish have to stick together,'' he told Loretta Bernhardt, who
grew up as a milkmaid in County Galway.

Next: Trouble. The Bernhardts' lawyer has notified the city of Hallandale
that they intend to sue for false arrest and other offenses.

The lawyer, Gary Kollin, advised the Bernhardts not to pose for news
photos or give interviews. ``They're both suffering from
post-traumatic stress,'' he said.

Sgt. Winters and Detective Andrew Raphael, the lead investigator, did
not reply to requests for an explanation. Chief Lawrence Farragher
would not talk about the case except to say it is under internal
investigation.

``We investigate anything when there's a complaint,'' he said. ``I'm
not saying this is a complaint here, or if we feel certain procedures
are not followed to our liking.''

Some police information was obtained from public-record documents --
the application for a search warrant and the warrant itself -- and
other interviews.

That Tuesday was a stormy night. The raiders came at 8:45 p.m. Eddie
Bernhardt, 46, was asleep. He goes to work at 4 a.m., exercising
horses at Gulfstream Park. His wife has a job at a horse-boarding
farm. That night she came home about 8. She ate, then settled onto the
living-room couch to watch some television. She had a package of M&Ms
and a can of Diet Coke.

When the Chihuahua growled, Loretta Bernhardt's first thought was to
hide the M&Ms from her husband. She has a sugar problem and isn't
supposed to eat candy.

An assault rifle A window crashed, glass tinkling to the floor. An
assault rifle poked through the hole. A shout:``Get down! Get down!''
Something was bang-bang-banging on the door. Now Eddie Bernhardt woke
up. Naked, he leaped out of bed and ran into the living room just as
the door crashed open.

``Two guys come in first. They push Eddie against the refrigerator,
right off the living room,'' Kollin said, reading from a hand-written
account by Loretta Bernhardt.

``What the hell's going on?'' Eddie Bernhardt shouted.

``Shut up, shut up,'' the police shouted back.

``One guy grabbed me and pushed me to the ground and handcuffed me and
had a rifle pointed at me,'' Loretta Bernhardt wrote.

Handcuffed on the floor

Her husband was handcuffed on the floor near the refrigerator. About
then, he realized these were not robbers, but the police.

``What are you doing?'' he asked. ``You've got the wrong
person.''

A detective in street clothes appeared, giving orders: ``Pick him up
and put him in a chair.'' Someone did that.

``What are you arresting me for?'' Bernhardt asked.

``Crack cocaine,'' the detective answered.

A masked policewoman went to the bedroom, took a pair of boxer
undershorts from the laundry bin and pulled them onto Bernhardt's
body. The shorts are his wife's.

The apartment is small -- living room, kitchenette, bedroom and
bathroom -- adequate for a working couple who follow the horse-racing
circuit, but pets are allowed so the place is a little crowded. The
Bernhardts have the Chihuahua Pippin, a chummy black Labrador named
Bow and a fuzzy gray tabby cat called Clyde.

When the handcuffed Bernhardts looked around for Bow, he was cowering
in a corner. A police officer was holding Pippin. Another was holding
Clyde.

Trying to count officers

Loretta tried to count the police in the place; she lost track at
15.

Her address, 611 NE Third St., is five blocks north of Gulfstream and
a fraction of a block east of Federal Highway, the name of U.S. 1 in
Broward. The building is one of six one-story structures in a row, all
20 by 82 feet, each with four apartments. They look as if they were
all built for one original owner, but now there are different owners
and -- at least by daylight -- there are obvious differences.

The building where the Bernhardts live is white with red trim at the
roofline and red brick facing between the windows on their end. It has
a barrel tile roof. Their apartment, closest to the street, has a
light gray door and a large number 1 on the mailbox.

The next building is nearly identical but in disrepair, apparently
vacant. These two buildings are called the Cool Breeze, but without a
sign.

Row of buildings

The third building in the row, 619 NE Third St., is painted tan with
green trim. The front apartment has a green door with the number 17.
This is one of five buildings of the El Morocco Motel and the only one
in the row with a roof of plain shingles -- not tile. Four tan
buildings over, the El Morocco has a medium-size electric sign on a
post.

According to Detective Raphael's application for a search warrant, he
supervised a controlled purchase of crack cocaine sometime in the
first week of February. The buy was made by a person called
Confidential Informant #413. The application says Raphael sent CI 413,
with $20 in police money, to the door of apartment 17. A black man
opened it. Three minutes later the informant returned to Raphael
without the money and handed the detective a chunk of crack.

Watching and making note of those movements is standard police
procedure, intended to prevent mistakes later when a raid is made. But
somewhere in the chain of events starting that day, mistakes were made
anyway and were not corrected until too late.

Descriptions mixed

Raphael's affidavit, presented to Broward Circuit Judge Joyce Julian
the day before the raid, mixes descriptions of the right place and the
wrong place. It mentions the El Morocco and apartment 17 and the
shingled roof of the place where the buy was made, and the black man
who opened the door. But instead of 619 NE Third St. -- the right
address -- it incorrectly says the buy was made at 611, where the
Bernhardts live. They are white.

The mistake is compounded by a detailed description of 611: the
white-painted concrete block construction. The red brick facing on the
end wall. The white fence between 611 and DiAnno's, the restaurant at
the corner of Federal Highway.

One reason for the confusion might be that the police had been active
lately in that neighborhood and presumably have seen all the
buildings. Twice in January, they made drug raids on different
apartments at 614 NE Third St., directly across from the Bernhardts.

Hector Miranda, owner of the El Morocco, says they have made a few
raids there. He doesn't know anything about Eddie and Loretta
Bernhardt, but he has a registration card from the man who rented his
apartment #17.

The tenant checked in on Dec. 22 as Omar Wilson and paid a week's
rent, $175. He gave a North Miami address that used to exist, but is
now the parking lot of a Walgreens store.

Miranda expected Wilson to stop by the office last Tuesday: ``He was
supposed to pay that day. He was behind $60 rent for the previous
week, but I didn't see him.''

Last Saturday, he said, Wilson's girlfriend came to the El Morocco
office. He let her in the apartment to get Wilson's clothing.

``Where is he?'' Miranda asked.

``He's in jail,'' she said.

It's true. Winters, the detective sergeant at the wrong-address raid,
had come to the El Morocco at 3 a.m. on Friday and arrested Wilson on
1997 charges of aggravated assault and resisting arrest. The Broward
County Jail booking sheet doesn't mention cocaine, but it lists the
right address: 619 NE Third St., #17.