Elyria, Ohio:

With guns pointed directly at him, Jerry Agee said he dared not move from his face-down position on his living room floor.

Minutes earlier, the 57-year-old had been making eggs before work just after 6 a.m. Thursday. Then, he said, he heard a loud bang on his door and someone yelling, “We’re coming in!”

Then police broke down his door with a battering ram, yelling at him to get on the ground, Agee said,. They ordered his girlfriend, who had just gotten out the shower, to come out of their bedroom with her hands up, he said.

“She was naked, and they didn’t even let her put nothing on,” he said. “I was mad because I felt like she was being violated.”

Agee said he counted at least eight police officers coming into his Foxhill Lane apartment.

[...]

They were searching for a man who is a suspect in a large-scale drug ring in which police made more than a dozen raids around the county on Thursday.

Agee said he told officers repeatedly he didn’t know the man, but that he’d seen him around the building, based on a picture they showed him.

Once police admitted to him that they had made a mistake, Agee said they searched for another 10 minutes and then left.

“They didn’t say sorry or nothing,” he said. “All they said was, ‘Do you have any questions?’ and then left.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 11:34 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.