Grandmother awarded 拢2.95m payout after SWAT team mistakenly raid her home based on 'Find My' phone data
The retired US Postal Service worker was at home in January 2022 when a SWAT team descended on her place of residence in Colorado in the search for a stolen vehicle.
Wednesday 6 March 2024 12:15, UK
A 78-year-old grandmother has been awarded a $3.76m (拢2.95m) payout after her home was mistakenly raided by a SWAT team, based on information from Apple's "Find My" phone app.
Ruby Johnson, a retired US Postal Service worker, had just stepped out of the shower in January 2022 when a SWAT team demanded she come out of her Colorado home with her hands in the air.
Wearing only a dressing gown, she opened her front door to see an armoured vehicle parked in her front garden, police vehicles along her street and men in full military-style gear carrying rifles.
They were searching for a stolen vehicle containing four semi-automatic handguns, a rifle, a revolver, two drones, $4,000 (£3,100) cash and an iPhone.
Ms Johnson's lawsuit alleged that police obtained a search warrant for her home after the owner of the vehicle tracked the phone to her property using the Find My app, and passed that information on to police.
According to the lawsuit, Detective Gary Staab wrongly obtained the warrant to search Ms Johnson's home because he did not point out that the app's information is not precise and provides only a general location for a phone's whereabouts.
On Friday, a jury sided with Ms Johnson.
She was awarded $1.26m (£990,000) in compensatory damages and $2.5m (£1.96m) in punitive damages, according to a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado, which filed a lawsuit on her behalf.
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According to the group, the jury also determined that Denver police Detective Staab and Sergent Gregory Buschy violated the state's constitution by "hastily seeking, obtaining and executing a search warrant" on her home without probable cause or proper investigation.
They also said the police used a battering ram to get into Ms Johnson's garage, even though she had explained how to open the door, had broken the ceiling tiles to get into her loft, and broke the head off a doll created to look just like her.
However, the group's legal director, Tim Macdonald, said the greatest damage was inflicted on Ms Johnson's sense of safety in the home, where she had raised three children as a single mother.
"For us, the damage was always about the psychological and the emotional harm to Ms Johnson," he said.
Landmark case
The lawsuit was brought under a provision of a sweeping police reform bill passed in 2020 - soon after the murder of George Floyd.
It is the first significant case to go to trial, the ACLU of Colorado said
Previously, people alleging police misconduct could only file lawsuits in federal court.
There, officers are generally shielded by qualified immunity, which protects officials, including police, from lawsuits for money as a result of duties carried out while doing their jobs.
Lawyers listed in court documents for Detective Staab and Sergeant Buschy were not immediately reached for comment Tuesday, according to Sky News' US partner, NBC News.
Denver police, who were not named as defendants in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the jury's verdict.
According to NBC News, a spokesperson for the department said an internal affairs review of the incident resulted in no formal discipline for the officers and that Detective Staab and Sergeant Buschy remain employed with the department.