ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
(AP) — An Albuquerque man and his wife have sued police and the chief of the
department, alleging that officers violated their civil rights when they
ordered them out of their home at gunpoint and put them in handcuffs.
Brendan
Rogillio and his wife, Renee Diamond,
claimed police ordered them out of their home at gunpoint in August 2010 after
following a tip about a robbery in which a man stole cash and a digital scale
from a store. The Albuquerque
Journal reported (http://bit.ly/Mfde77
) that a woman who had gotten the license plate number from a truck involved in
the robbery gave it to police, who used it to find Rogillio's address.
The couple was not
involved in the robbery, and Rogillio didn't match the description of the
Hispanic robbery suspect; Rogillio is fair-skinned and has strawberry blond
hair.
Even so, police
began surveillance on his home within a half-hour of the robbery and watched as
Rogillio arrived home from an errand, chatted with a neighbor and went inside.
Diamond got home 40 minutes later.
Police didn't
obtain a search warrant but used a loudspeaker to order the couple out of the
house with their hands in the air. Rogillio, a mechanical engineer at Sandia
National Laboratories, came out and was immediately handcuffed and
questioned.
Diamond, an
attorney, was showering when police ordered the couple out of the house, so she
came out in a towel. She was handcuffed with her hands behind her back, and a
female detective helped cover her when her towel kept slipping off, the lawsuit
said. Diamond asked to be put into a police car so she wasn't exposed.
An officer then
brought a witness to the home, who said Rogillio was not the man who committed
the robbery.
The couple
eventually was released, though the lawsuit claimed that police continued to
point guns toward their home and followed Diamond inside.
Police deny
wrongdoing, and their actions were upheld as reasonable by the Police
Oversight Commission.
"Why order
them out of their home?" the couple's attorney, Shannon
Kennedy, said. "Why wait until he's home and make his wife
emerge at gunpoint? At any point, they could have just walked up and said, 'Did
you witness anything?' Instead they use it as an opportunity to play SWAT with
an innocent couple."
The couple's
lawsuit alleged that the department's administration has adopted a de facto
policy allowing officers to use overwhelming force, such as pointing assault
weapons at citizens, while maintaining that the intrusion is minimal.
The lawsuit names
individual officers and leadership, including Chief Ray Schultz.
Supervisors at the
Police Oversight Commission said that an "investigative detention,"
such as in this case, does not require probable cause.
The city
acknowledged in a court filing that officers did not attempt to get an arrest
warrant or a search warrant. But it says that no warrant was required.
And although
Rogillio may not match the description given by one witness as Hispanic, the
city said that at least one witness gave a different description.
The city
acknowledges some of the facts but denies claims of unlawful entry, warrantless
arrest, excessive force and overall improper training.
"They did not
have any personal involvement or knowledge of any areas of constitutional
violations as alleged ... and therefore have no liability," the city's
court filing said.