A Pennsylvania family is suing the federal government, Drug Enforcement Administration officers, and their local police department, claiming the parties violated their Fourth Amendment rights when officers mistakenly raided their home.
According to the federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the McLaughlin family was awoken by “repeated, forceful banging” on the front door of their Bucks County home around 4:30 a.m. on May 16, 2024. Resident Robert McLaughlin claims he was startled by the loud noise downstairs. Fearing for his family’s safety, he allegedly “shouted towards the front door in an attempt to scare off the intruders.”
Officers then used a “battering ram” to breach the front door and dragged McLaughlin into the front yard, pointing assault rifles directly at him and forcing him into handcuffs, “all while still being undressed,” according to the lawsuit. McLaughlin also alleges officers forced his wife and children out of the home and into the front yard in their pajamas and underwear, where they saw him being detained. McLaughlin claims he “attempted to deescalate the situation by not only identifying himself, but also stating his address, several times.”
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported the story on Friday, the raid was targeting Jose Correa, a man who federal prosecutors say “was a member of a New Jersey-based drug ring that spread the drugs under the orders of the Latin Kings street gang.” His trial is “pending in federal court” in Newark, New Jersey, the Inquirer reports. According to the lawsuit, officers intended to execute a warrant for Correa at 905 Morgan Drive, a different address from the McLaughlin residence.
Wrongful home raids by law enforcement are nothing new. For instance, in 2022, Texas cops entered the wrong house and held a couple at gunpoint in the middle of the night. Also in Texas, cops raided a home based on faulty info, realized they had the wrong address, and continued the operation anyway. Between 2017 and 2020, Chicago police accidentally raided homes at least 21 times, according to an inspector general report.
One family’s “nightmare scenario” made it all the way to the Supreme Court last year.
In 2017, the FBI burst into the home of Georgia woman Curtrina Martin. Agents handcuffed her then-fiancé, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, while they held Martin at gunpoint and “screamed” at her. “But law enforcement would not find who they were looking for there,” Reason‘s Billy Binion explained at the time, “because that suspect, Joseph Riley, lived in a nearby house on a different street.”
The family attempted to sue the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows citizens to bring certain tort claims against the federal government. The federal district court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed their case, holding that the Supremacy Clause—which asserts that federal law takes precedence over state law—barred the family from bringing the suit, according to the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that represented the family. In a 9–0 ruling last June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Supremacy Clause did not prevent Martin from suing the federal government and sent her case back to the lower court, reported SCOTUSblog. Still, the Supreme Court found that key exceptions to the FTCA could still apply in Martin’s case, depending on the 11th Circuit’s findings.
The McLaughlins are suing under the same law—the FTCA—”for the negligent and wrongful acts and omissions of employees of the United States.”
Brian Fritz, the McLaughlins’ lawyer, tells Reason that his clients’ rights “exist for a reason, and when they’re not observed by those acting under law enforcement, something should be done about it.”
Fritz says a jury would determine any damages owed to the family. For now, what is most important to his clients, he says, is ensuring that this does not happen to another family.
