POLICE RAID THE WRONG HOME

Neighbor Of Real Target Says Officers Burst In Without Warning

RALEIGH -- Earl Richardson's Monday night was coming to a quiet close. He
sat on his plaid couch, lit a cigar and watched the 10 o'clock news.
Suddenly, he heard a crash at his front door. A second later, he faced a
man in black pointing a rifle at him.

"Get on the floor! Get on the floor!" yelled the man, a member of the
Raleigh Police Department's Selective Enforcement Unit.

Richardson, 66, said he obeyed, lying on the floor while police opened
cabinets and went through rooms in his Beverly Drive house as they searched
for guns and drugs.

After 30 minutes, Richardson said, one police officer told the others, "We
got the wrong house."

Police acknowledged Thursday they mistakenly entered Richardson's house in
Southeast Raleigh's Worthdale neighborhood. But they said they aren't to
blame.

They did not know that 1424 Beverly Drive, for which they had a search
warrant, actually is two dwellings with separate entrances. Richardson
rents the house. The real target of the raid, Christopher McKay, rents an
apartment at the rear of the house. Richardson's door bears a street
number. McKay's door has no marking.

"You see it on TV, but you never think it's going to happen to you,"
Richardson said. He said he thought five officers participated in the raid,
during which they punched a hole through his front door and tore off the
interior frame.

After police realized their mistake, they went around back to McKay's
apartment, knocked on the door and arrested him without resistance on three
felony drug charges. Police said that they seized a Rossi 38-caliber
revolver and 16 rounds of ammunition. Also found in the search, police
said, were hand scales, a pager, plastic bags, a gym bag, $510, "assorted
paraphernalia" and about a gram of marijuana -- the weight of a paper clip.

Richardson said they brought a handcuffed McKay to his house and sat McKay
in a kitchen chair to question him for about an hour. Everyone left around
midnight, Richardson said.

"They never said directly to me that they had the wrong house. Neither did
they apologize," said Richardson, a retired mechanic with the New York City
Transit Authority. "I hate to play the race card, but I find it hard to
believe that this would happen in some other neighborhoods in Raleigh."

Police Chief Mitch Brown was not available for comment Thursday, but Capt.
Michael Longmire, head of the investigative division, said the department
began an internal review of the raid Tuesday morning.

"Hopefully, we'll learn something from this," Longmire said.

The raid was one of hundreds the special unit carries out every year and
one of many launched purely on the word of an informant.

Documents accompanying the search warrant say that within the past two
weeks, an informant told Detective R.A. McLeod that McKay was selling
marijuana from 1424 Beverly Drive. The informant said he had been in
McKay's residence and had seen the drugs. Longmire said the informant did
not point out to police which door led to McKay's apartment.

McKay's driver's license and his entry in the telephone directory have him
living at 1424 Beverly Drive. But property records list a 1424 and a 1424
1/2. There are two CP&L accounts for that address. Four of McKay's nine
traffic infractions put him at 1424B Beverly Drive.

On Monday, hours before the raid, Detective McLeod said he picked up trash
at 1424 Beverly Drive and found marijuana seeds, plastic sandwich bags
containing "marijuana residue" and pieces of paper bearing McKay's name.

Longmire said that the detective reported seeing McKay enter and leave
Richardson's house in the days before the raid.

"That is not true," Richardson said. "I'm home most of the time. [McKay]
has no key to my house. We no more than speak to each other. I wouldn't
hang with a 26-year-old kid."

Longmire also said that before the officers entered Richardson's house,
they knocked at his door and said, "Police, search warrant."

"That's an outright lie," Richardson said. "I would have heard them. The
window of the room I was in is right next to the front door. The only thing
I heard was the crash."

The distinction is important because "no-knock" raids are unconstitutional
unless the police can show that announcing themselves before entering would
endanger someone. In April 1997, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
just because a defendant might get rid of evidence does not allow the
police to conduct a no-knock raid.

In obtaining a search warrant from a magistrate or judge, police do not
need to explain how the search warrant will be executed.

Richardson grew up in Raleigh, spent nearly 40 years working for the New
York City Transit Authority and retired to Raleigh in 1991. He moved into
his portion of 1424 Beverly Drive three years ago.

Richardson, who says he suffers from high blood pressure, said that the
stress of his brush with the law left him with a headache Tuesday. He went
to a Kaiser Permanente clinic where his blood pressure was "190 over
something; it was high," he said.

The owners of the house, Alex and Antonia Sanders of New York City, could
not be reached for comment. Albert Perry of Raleigh, who manages the
Beverly Drive property, said Thursday that replacing the door, its locks
and its frame -- all destroyed in the raid -- will cost about $500.

Longmire said the landlords can make a claim with the city's insurance
department.

Richardson said Thursday he is considering a lawsuit.

Anne Saker can be reached at 829-8955 or asaker@nando.com