Cops Claim Body Cam Footage Of Wrong Address Raid Would Be ‘Dangerous’ To Release To General Public

Legal Issues

from the but-the-raid-itself-increased-the-public's-safety? dept

Cops continue to wonder why people don’t trust them. Go figure.

At the center of this latest “we’re better than you” posturing by law enforcement is the raid of the wrong house by self-proclaimed “trained and experienced” officers, who mistook one Arab male for another before rushing into a house and pointing guns at everyone.

Now that there’s an official complaint in place and a civil rights lawsuit underway, the Raleigh police department has decided the public would be better served by keeping its recordings of the raid under wraps. Here’s Charlotte Kramon and Jeffrey Billman reporting for Indy Week:

On Tuesday, the Raleigh Police Department asked a judge to block the release of body-camera footage from the botched raid of Amir and Mirian Ibrahim Abboud’s home in April 2021. On Thursday, the judge obliged.

According to court records, an RPD SWAT team “suddenly and without warning, broke and busted open the Abbouds’ front door with a battering ram, pointing their long, AR-styled firearms at Mr. Abboud, Mrs. Abboud, and their 11-month-old son.” Though the search warrant was ultimately based on mistaken identity—State Bureau of Investigation agents confused Abboud with a neighbor who is also of Arab descent—the police refused to pay for the damage, court records show. 

Sounds like a lot of stuff cops do all the time: raid houses, break stuff, screw up, and refuse to apologize. Victims of these assaults are expected to just suck it up because law enforcement often needs to move fast and (literally) break things.

In this case, the Raleigh PD actually went to court to argue against the release of body cam footage of this botched raid. It didn’t have to do this but it did. Worse, it got a court to agree with its arguments — arguments that were patently ridiculous.

The RPD pointed out that an attorney for the Abbouds had released home security footage of the raid online, which the police said made releasing the body camera footage redundant. At the same time, the RPD claimed that releasing the body camera footage might expose confidential information about search warrant execution or damage officers’ reputations. 

It’s only in cases like these that government entities seem to feel redundancy is a bad thing. And if no harm was done to officers by the release of the home security footage, it seems no harm would occur if the PD released its own footage.

But after arguing the public had all the footage it deserved, the RPD went on to argue that the supposedly “redundant” footage would somehow “expose confidential information” or “damage officers’ reputations” if it released its own footage. Not only that, but the PD’s lawyer claimed releasing footage of a wrong house raid captured on home security cameras would somehow endanger the RPD itself.

At Tuesday’s hearing, RPD attorney Sherita Walton told Houston—who was appointed by Senate leader Phil Berger last year—that the Abboud raid was “valid on its face” and insisted that none of the officers did anything wrong. Walton said releasing the footage would be “dangerous.” (The SBI also asked Judge Houston to withhold the footage.) 

All of these arguments are equally stupid. Footage can be edited to remove “confidential information” and protect the identities of the officers involved in the wrong house raid. As for “damaging reputations,” what even is the point of this argument? The involved officers did what they did and any reputational damage is due to their own actions. It has nothing to do with the residents of a house that was only raided because the cops screwed up. And there’s no “because it might make us look bad” public records exception. And if the officers “did nothing wrong,” it’s hard to believe releasing footage of such outstanding police work would be “dangerous.”

Unfortunately, as Indy Week points out, body cam footage is not considered a public record under North Carolina state law. That doesn’t mean it can never be released. It’s that the presumption of opacity prevails unless the state AG or a presiding judge determines otherwise.

Then there’s the particulars of the raid itself. It wasn’t a no-knock raid. But it was as close to a no-knock warrant as warrants get, with so little difference between the two it may as well have been no-knock.

According to a complaint filed on December 7 in Wake County, Raleigh police officers “wrongfully executed a ‘Quick Knock’ warrant on the Abbouds’ home”—meaning the cops knocked and kicked in the door before the Abbouds had time to answer—though they weren’t suspected of criminal activity. The police “invaded the privacy of their house with long guns drawn, terrorizing them and their child,” the complaint allege.

Knock-and-announce is already a misnomer, as it suggests officers will announce their presence and give occupants enough time to answer the door and (possibly) grant officers’ access to the house. “Quick knock” is some imagined liminal space between knock-and-announce and no-knock, where officers knock once while shouting “Police!” and immediately attempt a forcible entry.

I’m sure it works out well for North Carolina law enforcement. It means they don’t have to meet whatever standards are in place for a no-knock warrant but still get all the advantages of a no-knock, with the only separation being the fractions of a second needed to yell the word “police” once to satisfy the (lol) constraints of a “quick-knock” warrant.

As Radley Balko reported last year, the constraints on warrants like these are pretty much non-existent in North Carolina. Here’s the money quote from University of North Carolina’s Jeffrey Welty’s report on warrant requirements in the state:

Among the conclusions are: (1) there is no explicit authority for North Carolina judicial officials to issue no-knock warrants; (2) judicial officials sometimes issue such warrants anyway; (3) no-knock warrants seem to be very rare; (4) when an application for a no-knock warrant is granted, the resulting warrant does not always include an express judicial determination regarding the need for a no-knock entry or an express judicial authorization of such an entry; and (5) quick-knock entries, where officers knock and announce their presence and then immediately force entry, may be widespread.

Unsurprisingly, data on no-knock and quick-knock warrants is hard to come by. Pretty much the only option is tracking every criminal case that involves a warrant and that’s something that’s difficult to scale, not just in terms of expense (state and local courts tend to charge even more exorbitant per-page fees than even the rightfully-reviled PACER system) but in terms of practicality.

But what can be surmised from the limited data is that “quick knock” warrants are a handy replacement for no-knock warrants, giving officers the same leeway to immediately engage in a forcible entry without asking them to satisfy the minimal requirements of a no-knock warrant. They’re basically the same thing. The only difference is the “announcement” that accompanies the sound of a door being bashed in.

It’s all amazingly shitty and stupid. And now there’s this added to it: cops arguing (successfully!) that their reputations might be harmed if the public is allowed to observe their actions after the fact. And, for now, that’s how it remains. The challenges to this burial of apparently embarrassing footage will continue, but for now, cops have the upper hand. The mistakes they made will remain under the cover of judicially-granted opacity.

Filed Under: body cameras, footage, north carolina, raleigh, raleigh pd, search warrant, transparency