ANOTHER POLICE RAID ON A HOME YIELDS NO DRUGS, BUT MUCH TRAUMA

NEW YORK -- Police officers broke down the door of a Brooklyn apartment,
guns drawn, tossed a stun grenade into the front hall and handcuffed
everyone inside, including a mentally retarded 18-year-old girl who was
taking a shower. They were looking for guns and drugs. They found only a
terrified family.

"I thought America was invaded, that some force, a foreign force, came to
kill us," said Basil Shorter, 62, a retired baker, describing the police
raid of his Crown Heights apartment May 1 that turned his family's morning
routine into a harrowing confrontation. "My family was helpless. I was
helpless."

Police officials insisted Thursday that the officers had done nothing wrong
and that the raid was done by the book. They said a confidential informant
told them that drugs and guns were being sold from the Shorter apartment
and from another apartment on the third floor of the building, at 1602
Union St., and that a judge authorized and signed a search warrant for
both. A gun and small amounts of drugs were found in the third floor
apartment, they said.

But the raid on the Shorter residence was the fourth in a series of
high-profile cases since late February in which search warrants either
failed to yield any contraband or were carried out at the wrong location.

As drug dealing has increasingly moved inside from the streets, narcotics
officers have come to rely more and more on the search warrants in their
efforts to stamp out the drug trade.

Critics contend that some no-knock search warrants -- in which officials
rely on the word of a confidential informant to obtain the warrant --
violate people's constitutional right against unreasonable searches and
seizures. The warrants authorize police to break down doors with battering
rams in their search for drugs.

And they worry that cases like the Shorters', in which a family is
traumatized but no drugs are found, could make the city liable to pay
millions of dollars in damages in civil suits.

"These types of aggressive actions hold the potential for enormous
recoveries from the city from future administrations," said City Councilman
Sheldon Leffler, who chairs the council's public safety committee. "It's
the next regime that will have to pay the piper. I think there is a need
for tightening up the procedures."

The Shorter family retained a lawyer, Harvey Weitz, who has won a number of
multi-million dollar jury verdicts in the past. Weitz said Thursday that he
would sue for $200 million in damages.

"Something's wrong with police procedures if families like the Shorters go
through this kind of terror," Weitz said.

According to police and the Shorters, the raid took place at 6:15 a.m.
Shorter had just bathed and his daughter Phebi, 18, was in the shower. His
wife, Cecelia, 47, a home health attendant, and younger daughter, Isis, 14,
were also in the apartment.

Suddenly, the door burst open and police threw in a stun grenade, which
exploded. Police use such a grenade to disorient the apartment's occupants.
In this case, their informant had told them that the apartment was watched
by armed guards 24 hours a day.

Mrs. Shorter said that she was worried that Phebi, who is mentally
retarded, would misunderstand orders and get shot. "I said, 'She's mentally
retarded, please don't shoot, please don't shoot,' Mrs. Shorter recalled
Thursday.

She said police covered Phebi with a robe and handcuffed her but did not
heed her warning that her daughter was menstruating and needed a sanitary
pad. She said they only gave her one after she was visibly bleeding.

At 7:30, police freed the Shorters when they did not find any drugs. They
left the apartment and asked the building superintendent to fix the door at
police expense.

"This is the fourth case in recent months that I know of," Weitz said. "And
I've never once seen or heard anything from the City of New York which says
we're going to re-evaluate how we execute these warrants."

The other recent cases include:

- -- On Feb. 27 police raided the Bronx apartment of Ellis Elliot. Elliot,
who thought he was being robbed when his door was opened, took a gun and
fired a shot. Police then sprayed at least 26 bullets into the room. No one
was injured; no drugs were found. Officials later said that that they had
hit the wrong apartment.

- -- That same day the police broke down the door of another Bronx apartment
only to find an 18-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant napping
with her two children. No drugs were found. Police officials later said
that they had hit the right apartment, but believed the drugs had been moved.

- -- On March 18 the police raided the apartment of a family in Brooklyn only
to find a grandmother watching television with her daughter and grandson.
Police officials later acknowledged that it was the wrong apartment: the
officers had apparently misunderstood the directions from undercover
detectives.

Chief Martin O'Boyle of the Organized Crime Control Bureau defended both
police procedures and the raid on the Shorter house. He said that as drug
dealing has moved indoors, his bureau has increased the number of search
warrants it executes, to 2,900 last year.

In the past, he said, a year in which 500 warrants were executed was
considered busy. And in about 85 percent of the raids last year, O'Boyle
said, police found what they were looking for.

In some cases, the police send undercover officers to make what they call
"controlled buys" after receiving tips about drug and gun selling from
confidential informants. They did not in this case. They did follow other
procedures, though, including having a sergeant look at the apartment doors
with the informant to make sure they were the correct addresses.

Talking of the information supplied by the confidential informant in the
Shorter case, O'Boyle said: "What we believe at this point is that the
information was good. Why would our source give us bad information on one
apartment and good information on the second apartment in the same building?"

And privately, several investigators said that drug dealers sometimes
figure out ways to operate from the apartments of the most unlikely people,
sometimes without their knowledge.

Shorter, who was born in Jamaica and lived in England before he became a
U.S. citizen, wept as he recalled the sense of shame of seeing his
neighbors watch a police raid in his home. "I was so embarrassed," he said.
"Everyone passed in the hallway, looking at my house."

His daughter Phebi, who talked and sang to herself during the news
conference, looked up at her father and said, "He's crying."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski