Pubdate: Mon, 28 Sep 2015
Source: News Journal, The (Wilmington, DE)
Copyright: 2015 The News Journal
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/1c6Xgdq3
Website: http://www.delawareonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/822
Author: James Fisher
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)

QUADRIPLEGIC WOMAN SUES STATE POLICE OVER RAID TACTICS

A Rehoboth Beach couple - the wife a quadriplegic with cerebral 
palsy, the husband a disabled veteran taking medication for 
schizophrenia - say Delaware State Police officers beat and used a 
stun gun on the husband after finding him giving his wife a sponge 
bath when the family home they were in was raided in a search for 
drugs in June 2014.

The couple, Ruther and Lisa Hayes, allege in a federal lawsuit that 
police commanders failed to train officers in the "constitutional 
bounds and limits concerning the use of force," especially when it 
came to interactions with disabled people.

Their two nephews were the targets of the raid and were arrested at 
the home, but police charged only one of them with drug crimes. He 
eventually pleaded guilty to a single charge: possession of drug paraphernalia.

In the lawsuit's narrative, members of the DSP's Special Operations 
Response Team entered a bedroom to find Lisa Hayes on a bed and 
Ruther Hayes cleaning her with a sponge bath. Lisa Hayes's wheelchair 
was in the room; five other family members in the home had already 
told officers that Lisa Hayes could not move her legs.

But with weapons pointed at Lisa Hayes, the police officers used 
profanity and "shouted at her to do that which she could not: stand 
up," the lawsuit says.

When Ruther Hayes tried to cover her with a sheet, the lawsuit says, 
officers pushed him down, punched him repeatedly and hit him twice 
with a stun gun. After the raid, Ruther Hayes was detained and 
charged with resisting arrest. The charges were later dropped.

Cerebral palsy makes speaking difficult and means Lisa Hayes relies 
on a wheelchair. In an interview, she said the raid made her fearful 
of even entering her mother's home, where the raid took place.

"I feel not only degraded, humiliated; I feel like they didn't treat 
me as a human being," Hayes said Sunday. "I relive that day when they 
came in on me and them yelling at me to get up when they knew that I 
couldn't get up."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware is representing the 
Hayes family in the lawsuit. The defendants named in the lawsuit 
"violated our clients' rights that they have under federal law," said 
Richard Morse, an attorney with the ACLU. In a statement, Morse said 
"the use of excessive force on Mr. and Mrs. Hayes is unconscionable."

The DSP raid happened at the Claymont home of Lisa Hayes's mother 
around dawn on June 30, 2014. The Hayes family arrived there the day 
before, intending to stay for two weeks so that their young daughter, 
Legacy, could attend an ice skating camp each day in Newark.

Just before 6 a.m., the lawsuit says, Ruther and Lisa Hayes were in a 
back bedroom of the home. Lisa Hayes's two children and her mother 
were in the living room when officers burst in through a front door. 
The three of them were told to sit, and they did, while telling 
officers repeatedly about Lisa Hayes and her disability.

"You don't have to keep saying she is disabled. We get it," one of 
the officers  the lawsuit refers to them as operators - allegedly responded.

Also in the home were the two men police really wanted: Joey L. Guy, 
30, and Louis H. Scott, 33. Lisa Hayes is their aunt; the two men 
lived in the Claymont home. A search warrant obtained from Justice of 
the Peace Court stated there was probable cause to look for drugs, 
paraphernalia, records of drug transactions, guns and ammunition and 
cash in the home, the lawsuit says. The warrant authorized police to 
search anyone they found in the house.

Scott was asleep on a couch, and was immediately handcuffed when 
operators entered the house, the lawsuit says. Guy was asleep in a 
bedroom; he, too, was quickly handcuffed and detained, according to 
the suit. Both nephews told officers their aunt was disabled. Scott 
told officers his aunt could not walk, and an operator replied, 
"That's enough out of you," according to the lawsuit.

Officers approached the bedroom where Lisa and Ruther Hayes were, and 
Ruther Hayes heard noise and looked out of the room, the lawsuit 
says. Lisa Hayes was in the bedroom, half-dressed during the sponge bath.

"Mr. Hayes asked the operators to wait while he covered his wife and 
turned to shut the door," the lawsuit says. But officers  identified 
in the lawsuit as a trooper named Christopher Popp, a Cpl. Doughty 
and a Cpl. Torres - "rammed it open."

This is what the lawsuit says happened next:

"Several operators leveled their assault rifles at Mrs. Hayes, who 
was lying on the bed naked from the waist down, and shouted, 'This is 
a raid! Get the [expletive] up!' Mrs. Hayes cried, 'I can't get up!' 
The operators screamed their commands again."

"Mrs. Hayes' wheelchair was right next to the bed, and right next to 
the operators, as they pointed their assault rifles at her and 
screamed at her to stand ... Her lower body, which was unclothed, 
went into spasms and her legs locked open."

Ruther Hayes backed up, said he was a disabled veteran and gave the 
officers a military ID card. He "tried to lay a sheet over Mrs. Hayes 
in order to cover her," and at that, operators "grabbed Mr. Hayes' 
arms and held him in place... [and] began to punch him repeatedly. 
Because Mr. Hayes [a disabled veteran] did not immediately fall, an 
operator said, 'he must have been well trained.' " Cpl. Doughty, the 
lawsuit says, was one of the officers throwing punches.

An officer discharged a stun gun on Ruther Hayes's shoulder, and he 
fell to the ground, "smashing his nose into the hardwood floor and 
drawing blood. After the operators had Mr. Hayes on the ground, they 
continued to punch him," and stunned him a second time. Buy Photo

"Mrs. Hayes was lying on the bed, unable to move, while she was 
forced to listen and watch as the operators beat and tasered her 
husband. She was scared that they were going to kill him." Lisa Hayes 
cried that she was having a heart attack; at that point, officers 
"stopped beating Mr. Hayes and called for a medic."

The whole time the officers were in the bedroom, the lawsuit says, 
"the nephews were the subjects of the search warrant and both of them 
were already under [police] control."

Court records show no drug-related charges were filed against Guy, 
one of the nephews, in the wake of the raid. He was detained after 
the raid for a violation of probation charge stemming from a March 
2014 conviction on two drug possession charges.

Scott, the other nephew, was charged in October 2014 with possessing 
drugs, illegal possession of prescription medication and possessing 
drug paraphernalia, court records show. In November, he pleaded 
guilty to the paraphernalia charge, and the other drug charges were dismissed.

The named defendants in the lawsuit are Popp, Doughty, Torres and a 
Cpl. Ballinger, as well as Nathaniel McQueen Jr., superintendent of 
Delaware State Police, and the agency itself. A spokesman for the 
Delaware State Police, Sgt. Richard Bratz declined to comment on the 
lawsuit when contacted about it Monday.

"As with any lawsuit filing, we would not be able to discuss its 
specifics or details due to the pending litigation," Bratz said.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to award Ruther and Lisa Hayes 
damages for suffering the effects of excessive force, battery, 
emotional distress, false arrest, negligence and other alleged 
counts. The lawsuit also asks the court to compel Delaware State 
Police to change its policies and training "to avoid further 
instances of excessive force, improper use of Tasers, discrimination 
against disabled persons, and other police misconduct."

Also named in the lawsuit are 75 "John Doe" defendants - all the 
officers who participated in the raid, policy-making officials in the 
Delaware State Police and police commanders who made the decision to 
send the agency's Special Operations Response Team to the house that 
day. Those are placeholder defendants, the ACLU said, whom the 
organization expects to name during the lawsuit's discovery process.

"We don't know exactly how many officers were involved or what their 
names are," said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU of Delaware's executive director.

Lisa Hayes said the raid changed her husband's personality and 
worsened his mental state, making his schizophrenia more acute. Lisa 
Hayes has studied to work in the counseling field, and she completed 
an internship late last year in the Cape Henlopen High School's 
counseling office, she said. But the mental anguish she feels about 
the raid, she said, has halted any progress she was making toward that career.

When her family went back to the home where she grew up for 
Thanksgiving last year, she said, it triggered distressing memories 
of the raid, and she retreated to her car after dinner.

"When I do go there now, I don't go in the house," Lisa Hayes said. 
"My mom goes to the car to see me."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom