Family sues after SWAT team raids their apartment by mistake
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
June 21, 2009
Kenyan immigrant Nancy Njoroge had been living in the United States for a year when a Montgomery County SWAT team burst into her Gaithersburg apartment at 4 a.m., handcuffed her and her two teenage daughters, and searched her apartment, court records show.
Police found nothing.
The reason: Njoroge lived in No. 202 of her apartment complex. The police had a search warrant for apartment 201.
After rejecting an offer from the county’s claims adjuster of a “couple of movie passes,” the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the county on the family’s behalf for unspecified damages, according to ACLU records filed in court.
The ACLU said the purpose of the lawsuit was to hold the police department accountable for its mistake.
“Officers had but one apartment to locate, in a quiet and well-lit hallway in the dead of night, without distraction and with clearly marked doors and numbers,” ACLU lawyer Fritz Mulhauser said in a letter to the county.
Njoroge and her daughters have suffered emotional distress since the attack and have seen their work and school lives disrupted, according to their lawyers.
“I have a lot of problems,” Njoroge told a police investigator about a month after the 2005 incident. “From that day, when I see a police car, I shake.”
Adding to her duress, Njoroge said she was wearing a “very short nightdress” when she was made to lie on the floor for 30 minutes after the police handcuffed her, and her family back in Kenya heard of her alleged troubles with the police.
“My name is already spoiled,” she said.
When the police realized their mistake, they freed Njoroge and her daughters, apologized for the botched raid, and offered to fix her front door, court records show.
Police later served the search warrant on the correct apartment, where they found 600 grams of cocaine and $27,820 in cash, according to a report by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which partnered with the county on the drug investigation.
Court records don’t give a clear reason why the police raided the wrong apartment, and the county attorney assigned to the case did not respond to inquiries for the story. But in court records, a SWAT team leader indicated that it was an isolated incident.
“In six years as the supervisor of the tactical section, I have led approximately 600 raids,” Sgt. Darin Magee, whose job was to lead the SWAT team to the correct apartment, said in a statement. “This is the first such error that I have made and I hope this will be considered when the situation is judged.”
asuderman@washingtonexaminer.com
