NYPD'S NO-KNOCK SEARCHES ARE DOORWAY TO DISASTER

Days after cops ransacked the home of Marie and Robert Rogers and held the
Queens couple at gunpoint in a mistaken drug raid last year, their attorney
issued a prophetic warning.

"We must do a better job of no-knock search warrants," lawyer Norman Siegel
said during an October press conference. "Otherwise, someone might wind up
dead as a result of how we implement this procedure."

Today someone is dead. Her name was Alberta Spruill.

Spruill, a 57-year-old church volunteer, suffered a heart attack and died
May 16 after flak-jacketed cops broke down her door and lobbed a stun
grenade into her small Harlem apartment in a mistaken search for drugs.

Marie Rogers, 62, a retiree from Springfield Gardens, had a similar
experience seven months ago, although a stun grenade wasn't used in the
raid on her apartment - and she lived to talk about it.

"When I heard about what happened to this woman, I broke down and cried,"
Rogers said. "You would have thought that I knew her. Then I was angry."

On Oct. 15, Rogers and her husband, Robert, were in their home watching
television - "Cops," as it turns out - when police in riot gear plowed
through their front door without warning. When Robert, 64, a retired
housing cop, heard the noise, he instinctively went for his licensed
revolver, dropped to a knee and waited.

"I thought I was going to die," he said. "I thought the people coming into
my house were trying to kill me."

Robert is certain he would have been shot if he hadn't tossed his gun aside
before the cops came in. As for the drugs and weapons they were looking
for, police found nothing. They had the wrong address.

Spruill was laid to rest yesterday, just days after her family's lawyers
announced a $500 million lawsuit against the city. Part of the family's
case hinges on evidence that the incident was hardly isolated, a fact to
which other raid victims like Michael Thompson can attest.

On Oct. 14 - the day before cops ransacked the Rogers home - Thompson was
eating breakfast in his home in St. Albans, Queens when he heard a noise
like thunder.

Before he could finish his orange juice, Thompson's mahogany front door was
in pieces, his French doors inside were broken and guns were being pointed
at his chest. After searching his home, and the apartment of an upstairs
tenant, the red-faced cops learned their mistake: they had the wrong house,
Thompson said.

"They had the whole house surrounded," said the 41-year-old nurse and
student. "If I ran or resisted, who knows what the result would have been.
It was just a matter of time before there was a tragedy," Like the
Rogerses, Thompson is suing the city.

A police spokesman said the department would not comment on the Spruill
case or any other cases where lawsuits are pending.