An iPhone app led a SWAT team to raid the wrong home. The owner sued and won $3.8 million.
A 78-year-old Colorado woman was awarded $3.76 million after a jury determined that a SWAT team looking for a stolen truck wrongly searched her home in 2022.
Jurors in a state court determined that the two Denver police officers who were sued – a detective and a sergeant – obtained a search warrant for Ruby Johnson's home without probable cause or proper investigation, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which helped represent the woman in a lawsuit.
Calling the decision "precedent-setting," the ACLU said in a Monday statement that the verdict is one of the first under a new Colorado law that allows people to sue individual police officers over violations of their state constitutional rights.
“This is a small step toward justice for Ms. Johnson, but it is a critical case under our state’s constitution, for the first time affirming that police can be held accountable for invading someone’s home without probable cause,” Tim Macdonald, legal director of ACLU of Colorado, said in a statement. “This decision is the next step in ensuring that the rights in the Colorado constitution are secured for all people in our state.”
The Denver Police Department, which was not sued, declined to comment on the jury's verdict when reached Thursday by USA TODAY.
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Woman was in bathrobe when police raided her home
Information from Apple’s “Find My" iPhone app led Denver police to obtain a search warrant to raid Johnson's home on Jan. 4, 2022.
The SWAT team was hunting for a stolen pickup truck that investigators believed had four semi-automatic handguns, a rifle, a revolver, two drones, $4,000 cash and an iPhone inside of it, according to The Associated Press. The owner of the truck shared the "Find My" location with police, who tracked it to Johnson's home in Denver's Montbello neighborhood on the city's far northeast side, according to the lawsuit.
Johnson, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker and grandmother, had just gotten out of the shower and was still in her robe and slippers when a SWAT officer on a bullhorn commanded for her to exit her home with her hands raised. When she opened her front door, Johnson was greeted by an armored military personnel carrier on her frontlawn, marked police vehicles along her street and SWAT officers in full military gear armed with tactical rifles with a K9 German Shepherd in tow, the lawsuit states.
The women was then placed in the back of a marked police vehicle guarded by an armed and uniformed officer as the team "ransacked" her home of 43 years, the ACLU said.
"Donning body armor and automatic weapons, police officers searched Ms. Johnson’s home for stolen items from an incident that she had absolutely nothing to do with," according to the ACLU, which claimed that officers were not trained to understand the Apple technology.
Johnson has since moved from the home and has "developed health issues due to the traumatic and unlawful search," the ACLU claimed in its statement.
“Not only was her privacy violated, and invaluable possessions destroyed, but her sense of safety in her own home was ripped away, forcing her to move from the place where she had set her roots and built community in for 40 years,” ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Deborah Richardson said in a statement. "Though the outcome of this trial will not fully undo the harm of that fateful day, it puts us one step closer to justice for her and others who have found their lives turned upside down because of police misconduct.”
Police reform bill allows for individual officers to be sued
The lawsuit against Denver police Det. Gary Staab and Sgt. Gregory Buschy accused Staab of wrongly obtaining the search warrant and Buschy, his supervisor, of wrongly approving it.
The Colorado Constitution requires that search warrants be based on probable cause supported by a written affidavit before police can invade the privacy of someone’s home, according to the ACLU. Because Apple's "Find My" app only provides a general location of where the iPhone could have been, jurors decided that police did not have probable cause to search Johnson's home.
The lawsuit is one of the first resolved under a provision of a police reform bill passed in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. State lawmakers created the right under the bill for Colorado residents to sue individual police officers for state constitutional violations in state court rather than federal court.
The city of Denver will be responsible for paying the $3.76 million awarded by the jury, ACLU Colorado spokeswoman Erica Tinsley told USA TODAY. However, it is possible that the officers could be ordered to pay up to $25,000 if the city proves in a separate lawsuit that the officers acted in bad faith.
USA TODAY left a message Thursday with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston's office that was not immediately returned.
Contributing: The Associated Press
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]