A Denver judge has awarded a 78-year-old grandmother $4 million in damages after a botched SWAT raid that relied almost exclusively on Apple’s Find My iPhone software.
Jurors concluded that Denver Police Department officers violated the state constitution by rashly seeking a search warrant at Ruby Johnson’s home without a proper investigation, wrote the ACLU of Colorado, which filed the lawsuit on Johnson’s behalf against Detective Gary Staab and Sgt. Gregory Buschy.
SWAT officers surrounded Ruby Johnson on Jan. 4, 2022, in Denver as they searched her property for a stolen truck and weapons. Johnson won a $3.76 million jury verdict earlier this month under a new Colorado law that allows people to sue police for violating their state constitutional rights. Last week, a Denver judge increased the award to $4 million. (Denver Police via AP)
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On January 4, 2022, Johnson was watching television when she heard a loudspeaker blaring outside her home in the Montbello neighborhood of Denver. The police ordered everyone in the house to come out with their hands up.
Johnson walked out her front door in a dressing gown, bonnet and slippers, stunned by the sight of an armored vehicle parked on her front lawn. Officers with rifles and K9s surrounded her property.
“I didn’t want them to go in there and shoot,” she told 9NEWS earlier. “I went out, and then they asked me: ‘Do you have a gun on you?’ I said, ‘No, why would I have a gun pointed at me?'”
Jurors found that two Denver police officers acted “with willful and wanton disregard” for Ruby Johnson’s constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, according to the ACLU of Colorado. Johnson was living alone in her home when special forces raided it in January 2022. (Courtesy of Joanna Kulesz/ACLU of Colorado)
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Police were looking for a pickup truck and a gun that had been stolen from a Denver hotel garage the previous day, according to the lawsuit and 9NEWS. Police obtained a search warrant for Johnson’s home based on pings from the Find My app on an iPhone that was left in the truck.
Apple’s Find My app uses information from Wi-Fi, GPS and cellular networks to determine the approximate location of people and their devices, according to the lawsuit. Staab’s affidavit included a screenshot of the app with a circle encompassing “at least six different properties” where the phone might be, according to the lawsuit.
Staab improperly obtained the order because he failed to mention the limitations of Apple’s Find My technology, which is “readily accessible” online, according to the suit. The filing characterized the detective’s statement as a “hastily prepared, bare-bones, materially misleading” piece of work.
Johnson sat in the back of a police car for hours while officers searched her home, causing unnecessary damage, the lawsuit alleges. She told police where her garage door opener was, but instead they used a battering ram to break the door and its frame, the lawsuit states.
Denver SWAT officers raided Johnson’s home on Jan. 4, 2022, after an officer said the Find My app on a stolen iPhone was pinging near the home. The phone was in a pickup truck that had been stolen the previous day, but officers did not locate any stolen property at Johnson’s home. (Denver Police via ACLU of Colorado)
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Police also damaged the interior of her home, including smashing the head of a prized doll figurine customized to look just like Johnson and using a kitchen broom handle to break up the ceiling so they could search the attic, according to the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, jurors found that Staab and Buschy acted “with willful and wanton disregard” of Johnson’s constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the ACLU of Colorado wrote. They originally awarded Johnson $1.26 million in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages.
Last week, Denver District Judge Stephanie Scoville increased the award to as much as $4 million, the ACLU of Colorado told Fox News.
The case is the first to be litigated under a provision of the comprehensive police reform law passed in Colorado in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd, according to the ACLU. The new law gave citizens the right to sue individual officers for violating the state constitution, whereas previously those who claimed police misconduct had to sue in federal court, where the legal doctrine of qualified immunity often shields government officials from liability.
“This is a small step toward justice for Ms. Johnson, but it is a critical case under our state Constitution, affirming for the first time that police can be held liable for breaking into someone’s home without just cause,” wrote Tim Macdonald, ACLU’s Legal Director in Colorado.
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The Denver Police Department declined to comment on the jury’s verdict. A spokesman told Fox News in an email that an internal review of the incident did not result in formal discipline for the officers and did not change the search warrant policy.
“Officers were acting on a search warrant approved and signed by the District Attorney’s Office and a judge,” the spokesman wrote.
The SWAT raid destroyed Johnson’s sense of security in her own home, according to the ACLU.
“While the outcome of this trial will not completely undo the damage of that fateful day, it brings us one step closer to justice for her and others whose lives have been turned upside down by police misconduct,” ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Deborah Richardson wrote in a statement. .