Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about.
As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down.
Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife, a 29-year-old credit analyst, were frightened and humiliated by the incident. But for the past two months, he's wanted just one thing from the city: for someone to pay for the damage to his front door.
And he said trying to get the city to help in the aftermath has been even more frustrating than the police's initial mistake.
"My city is not working for us," said Leonard, who has lived in the Medfield neighborhood north of Hampden since October 2007. "We were victimized and now get zero cooperation from every office we deal with."
No-knock raids can be carried out through warrants signed by judges, or by police who determine at the scene that announcing themselves would present a safety threat or lead to the destruction of evidence.
Critics say the confrontational tactic, often involving masked and armed officers, is increasingly being used in situations that don't require such a volatile response.
A 2006 Cato Institute study found that hundreds of raids are conducted nationwide each year at wrong addresses, sometimes resulting in death.
In one highly publicized incident in Maryland last year, a SWAT team rushed the home of the Berwyn Heights mayor and shot and killed his family's two dogs. Police said the mayor and his wife were unsuspecting victims of a marijuana smuggling scheme, but defended the actions of the officers involved in the raid.
The General Assembly passed a law requiring greater accountability for SWAT team use. Leonard said the Berwyn Heights incident flashed in his mind as his dog, an 80-pound chocolate Labrador named Figo, raced upstairs from the basement after police began ramming the door on Feb. 25. After the initial confusion, Leonard said his attention turned toward securing his home.
He nailed his broken door shut and for a time entered and exited the home through the alley. Eventually, he and some relatives did a "fair but amateur" job installing a new door. But he wanted the city to pay for the remaining work.
