Kelly Angell was at home with her boyfriend and five children, earlier this year when her 16-year-old daughter told her men outside were pointing guns at her 13-year-old sister.
They were not criminals or gang members. They were members of the City of Pittsburgh’s tactical team.
A lawsuit filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania Wednesday claims the SWAT team raided the Angell family’s home in Monroeville Borough on Jan. 22 in search of a man wanted in relation to a non-lethal shooting. The lawsuit said officers broke into their home, destroyed their belongings and when they did not find the man they were looking for, set off tear gas inside the home to try to flush him out.
The basis of the raid, according to the lawsuit, was that Monroeville Borough Police picked up cell phone location data showing the shooting suspect was in the area. But that man had never been inside the Angells’ home—which the lawsuit said the officers acknowledged after three hours at the scene.
As Angell ran to her front door to see who was pointing guns at her daughter, the officers shot several distraction devices through her windows, into her living room and her children’s bedrooms.
Around 20 officers then broke down her doors and swarmed inside, removing and detaining Angell and her family members as they searched the home, the lawsuit alleges.
Officers knocked holes in the family’s walls, broke their furniture, smashed their televisions, ripped ventilation ducts from the walls and punctured air mattresses, according to the lawsuit.
It took officers three hours to search the home, while Angells and her family remained outside in the sub-freezing temperature, the lawsuit said. They did not have the chance to put on shoes or coats, according to the lawsuit.
A sergeant from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police arrived later and told the family the SWAT team should not have broken into their house, and confirmed the raid was initiated based on a cell phone ping “in the vicinity.”
Monroeville Borough Police Detective James Monkelis told Angell that someone would fix the home’s doors and windows the next day, according to the lawsuit. However, nobody ever came. The City of Pittsburgh Law Department told her the city would consider repairing the damage only after multiple estimates had been submitted, the lawsuit said.
To date, the windows on the third floor of the house have not been repaired, according to the lawsuit, and the family has been unable to clean the tear gas residue from their carpets, floors, furniture and walls.
“They left a heavily damaged house which could not be secured and was contaminated,” Margaret Coleman, the family’s attorney, said in a press release.
According to the lawsuit, neither the City of Pittsburgh nor Monroeville have repaired any of the damage the officers caused in the failed raid.
“We were completely violated because these officers didn’t do their jobs,” Angell said. “Even after they realized they were wrong, they never showed any compassion toward my children. They acted like it was no big deal.”
“This case exemplifies the excessive militarization of routine police work,” Coleman said. “The SWAT team is a paramilitary unit that uses terror and overwhelming force to gain immediate compliance from civilians. We cannot allow these tactics to become standard police practice.”
The lawsuit claims the City of Pittsburgh, police officer Stephen Mescan, Monkelis and the SWAT officers violated the family’s fourth amendment rights, particularly clauses governing unlawful entry, use of excessive force, unlawful detention, failure to knock and announce, damage to property and failure to intervene.
