Doggycide in St. Paul, Minnesota

In which a paramilitary drug raid, wrong address, police brutality, child abuse and pet-murder, complete with subsequent courtroom confusion, all converge into the perfect police incompetence clusterfuck:

A St. Paul, Minnesota family claims in a lawsuit that police officers who conducted a wrong-door raid on their home shot their dog, and then forced their three handcuffed children to sit near the dead pet while officers ransacked the home. The lawsuit, which names Ramsey County, the Dakota County Drug Task Force, and the DEA, and asks for $30 million in civil rights violations and punitive damages after a wrong-door raid, also claims that the officers kicked the children and deprived one of them of her diabetes medication.

That’s just the CliffsNotes version; the always-invaluable Courthouse News Service has all the sordid details, including this little tidbit:

     Lead plaintiff Roberto Franco claims the task force raided the wrong house: that they should have gone next door.
     Franco claims that Task Force Officer Shawn Scovill, who orchestrated the raid, "provided false information to a Minnesota District Court judge in order to obtain a search warrant. […]
     The complaint adds: The search warrant specifically named Rafael Ybarra as the intended target suspect. Plaintiff Roberto Franco was not named in the search warrant, nor was any person who lived in the raided house named in the search warrant.

Looks like this Ybarra fellow should count himself lucky. That’s one hell of a botched raid he missed out on.

(via @radleybalko)

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Doggycide Bingo Index

Confirmed hits:

Dead dog

Cops shot first

No apology given

Rest of family threatened and brutalized

Falsified warrant leads to wrong address

Shooting near children (who are forced to sit next to bloody corpse)

Cops barged in illegally (with falsified warrant)

Total: 7/25
No bingo.

Tags: St. Paul, Minnesota • drug raids • no-knock raids • police brutality • James Franco • Shawn Scovill • Dakota County Drug Task Force • Drug Enforcement Administration • DEA