Denver Police sent a SWAT team in an armored truck with military-style weapons to a 77-year-old grandmother’s home, where she lived alone, to illegally search for a stolen cellphone that was never there, according to a lawsuit obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
Ruby Johnson, a retired postal worker, said she was watching TV when she heard someone on a loudspeaker ordering everyone in the house to come out with their hands up. She was there alone, confused and afraid — and left traumatized by the ordeal.
“I didn’t want them coming in there shooting,” Johnson told 9News. “I came out, and then they asked me, ‘Do you have a gun on you?’ I said, ‘No, why would I have a gun on me?’”
According to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU on Johnson’s behalf, Apple’s tracking software was the sole basis for the warrant used to ransack the woman’s home. Police were trying to locate an old cellphone from a stolen truck, using the “Find My” app, which they claim led them to Johnson’s home,
However, the ACLU alleges that the app did not pinpoint the precise location of the device, and it could’ve been at several other houses near Johnson’s street or even discarded on the street.
The lawsuit filed on Dec. 1 against Denver Police detective Gary Staab, who sought the search warrant, accuses him of drafting a “hastily prepared, bare-bones, materially misleading affidavit” that led to the violation of Johnson’s civil rights and caused her severe physical and emotional distress.
The day before the SWAT team ascended on Johnson’s home, someone stole Jeremy McDaniel’s truck from the Denver Hyatt. It contained four semi-automatic handguns, a tactical military-style rifle, a revolver, two drones, $4,000 in cash and an old iPhone 11. It is unclear why the items were in McDaniel’s vehicle that he left parked in the Hyatt’s secured garage.
