TWO SUITS FILED OVER POLICE NO-KNOCK RAIDS AT WRONG HOMES

Two families whose doors were broken down last year in mistaken raids
by police officers with drawn weapons filed federal lawsuits yesterday
seeking damages and a change in the procedures of the New York Police
Department.

The suits focused on the kind of "no knock" raid that led to the death
in May of a 57-year-old Harlem woman, Alberta Spruill, which brought
an apology from the city and stern questions from public officials
about the department's practices.

One of the suits was filed yesterday by Marie Rogers, 63, a former
Correction Department officer, and her husband, Robert, 64, a former
New York housing police officer. The couple said their home in
Springfield Gardens, Queens, was invaded as they watched television at
8 p.m. on Oct. 15, 2002, by about 20 police officers with revolvers
and shotguns.

"I really thought that I would die that day," Ms. Rogers said.

The suits filed in Brooklyn Federal Court seek new department rules
governing the use of no-knock warrants, court orders permitting the
police to enter residences without any notice to surprise the
occupants. The raid that caused Ms. Spruill's fatal heart attack
included the use of a concussion grenade that has been used by the
police in such raids to distract and disorient suspects.

The second suit filed yesterday said a grenade was used as the police
"blew open" the door of an East Flatbush woman, Williemae Mack, at 6
a.m. on Sept. 3, 2002. She and her twin 13-year-old sons were asleep,
and guns were pointed at both boys and they were handcuffed by
shouting officers, the suit said.

The suits said no contraband was found in either raid and suggested
that the raids were based on incorrect information from narcotics
informants and poor supervision of the officers. Police officials said
this summer that the use of concussion grenades had been sharply curtailed.

But the lawyer who filed both suits yesterday, Norman Siegel, said
that in recent years the department has increasingly relied on the
no-knock warrants that permit the surprise entries. He said police
data showed that officers search more than 460 addresses every month
in the city, and that the vast majority of those searches were
conducted under warrants that permitted the no-knock entries.

The city's Law Department declined to comment, saying that its lawyers
had not reviewed the suit. The Police Department did not respond to a
request for comment.

Last October, months before the Harlem raid in which Ms. Spruill died,
the Police Department's chief of patrol, Nicholas Estavillo, sent out
a memorandum outlining search warrant procedures. The memorandum
directed that supervising officers "must conduct observations" of the
address in question before permitting such raids. He added that any
observations that appeared to conflict with information from
confidential informants "should be a 'red flag' that additional
investigative steps must be taken."

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, said yesterday that "there is every reason to believe
that memo has not been enforced." He said the lawsuits filed yesterday
could establish rules limiting the police's use of the no-knock warrants.

Yesterday, Robert Rogers, the Springfield Gardens man whose house was
raided, said that it would have been easy for officers to have learned
who lived at his address and that there was no sign of narcotics.
Instead, he said, they burst through the door, shouting.

"That was the most frightening experience of my life," he said. "I
don't think anybody should have to go through it."