A family was terrorized when a Denver police SWAT team recklessly raided the wrong apartment while looking for an attempted murder suspect two years ago, then tried to cover up their mistake in falsified police reports, according to a lawsuit filed in Denver County District Court last week.
Police were hunting suspect Danny Garcia on June 6, 2023, when they swarmed around the door of an apartment in a multi-story apartment building with assault rifles drawn. Police reports completed prior to the raid indicated their target was apartment 307, where Garcia lived.
But bodycam video shows the officers surrounding apartment 306, located directly across the hall. Several armed SWAT team members banged on and then rammed the door while screaming that they knew Garcia was in there and for those inside to open the door and come out with their hands up.
The first to exit was Sharon Shelton-Knight, the mother of plaintiffs Kirsty Shelton and Brittany Shelton and the grandmother of two children who were inside. She emerged to find assault rifles pointed at her chest, and emphatically told the police they were at the wrong apartment and that Garcia was in No. 307.
“My grandchildren are in there,” she said.
Police disregarded what she said, the complaint alleges, and hustled her down a stairway.
Shelton-Knight is diabetic and needs to wear shoes, the lawsuit says, but was forced to walk out in her pajamas and barefoot in front of her neighbors, which was physically painful and also humiliating. She also has high blood pressure, and recounted that her heart was racing, she felt faint, and was deprived of access to her medicine.
Several police officers then entered the apartment with their weapons drawn and encountered Kirsty Shelton, who repeated that the suspect lived across the hall and that her children were inside. She is also diabetic, has a history of experiencing a stroke and relies on a walker and wheelchair to get around, she claims.
Both women asked officers to let them back into the unit so they could calm the frightened children down, but the officers refused, the lawsuit says.
Video shows the police entering a bedroom where two young girls are cowering on a bed, and one screams, “Don’t hurt us!” as an officer enters the room. He is then heard trying to calm them down.
At this point, the officers allowed the girls’ mother to come back into the apartment and accompany them to a back bedroom. The complaint says the girls, who saw armed officers both inside their home and aiming guns toward them through a window, “burst into tears and were screaming.”
Kirsty Shelton was then told to take the children out of the apartment. The lawsuit says she “had to carry her youngest in her arms” down the stairs, noting that “she cannot pick up more than 10 pounds without excruciating pain.”
Her sister, Brittany Shelton, who had just stepped out of the shower and put on a slip dress when the raid began, experienced “severe stress” as she watched the SWAT team rush into their home, and heard her nieces “screaming in fear” as she herself was afraid that one of the officers would shoot and kill her, the complaint says.
Officers kept the family confined in a locked police car for one or two hours, during which Kirsty Shelton had a panic attack, she claims. They were let out when the children complained of needing to use the bathroom.
The lawsuit charges 10 of the police officers involved with improper and unconstitutional invasion, assault, excessive force, and unreasonable search and seizure of the plaintiffs and their apartment, in violation of the state constitution and the Colorado Enhanced Law Enforcement Integrity Act, a 2020 law that prevents police from blocking lawsuits under the claim of qualified immunity.
It says the officers did not have probable cause or a reasonable suspicion to believe the plaintiffs had committed any crime, had no legal basis to enter and search their apartment, and forced their way in despite a plate with the apartment number “plainly visible” on the wall next to the door.
The suit claims that all members of the family have been “traumatized by these assaultive events,” which caused them “a collage of PTSD symptoms,” including excessive fear, exaggerated startle response, flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, and cold sweats. All have sought mental health counseling.
The two girls continue to experience fear and terror at loud noises like sirens from police, ambulances, or fire trucks, resulting in crying spells, sleep difficulties, and separation anxiety, the complaint says.
“The children recount nightmares involving the SWAT team, including killing their mother, which made one of them inconsolable,” it says, and claims that one of their girls has slept in her mother’s room since the event.
The plaintiffs seek a jury trial to determine actual, compensatory and punitive damages for past and future pecuniary losses for physical sickness and injuries, mental and emotional pain and suffering, and legals costs, and ask the court to indemnify the City and County of Denver, who are not named defendants in the suit, in order to make them responsible for paying damages.
The lawsuit also alleges that some of the officers tried to distort and cover up what happened by filing false after-action reports that “fabricate a much more pleasant, normal and lawful interaction with the residents of apartment # 306.”
In his report, Lt. Kyle Smith, the Incident Commander, claimed that, “Due to the layout of the 3rd floor, occupants in apartment #306 were contacted, advised of the situation and evacuated for their safety.”
Another officer, Anthony Tak, reported that as police were carrying out their plan to raid apartment 307, “an elderly female exited 306 and was advised of the situation” and then evacuated.
“What kind of alternate universe is this?” John Holland, one of the family’s attorneys, told the Denver Post. “(It is) a robust attempt to rewrite the history and falsify it,” he said. “Pugnacious, aggressive falsification.”
The police department has not disclosed interviews from internal investigations of the officers involved in the incident, the lawsuit says.
“The city is actively closing ranks behind their SWAT team and refusing to disclose information,” said Dan Weiss, an attorney for the family, reported USA Today.
In a statement, Kirsty Shelton said, “The police promised an investigation but instead covered up the raid, failing to produce their report to this day, over a year and a half after the incident. They continue to pretend that this terrifying raid never happened.”
The lawsuit says the Denver Police Department’s “long and disturbing history of such coverups is again maliciously present in this case. Plaintiffs are not even treated as regrettable collateral damage; they are entitled to a truthful account.”
Denver police did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Atlanta Black Star. The department has declined to provide comment to other news organizations, citing the pending litigation as well as an ongoing internal investigation.
Last year, a jury awarded 78-year-old Ruby Johnson $3.76 million in damages, finding that two Denver police officers violated her right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure in 2022.
In that case, the SWAT team was hunting for a stolen pickup truck and weapons. Police tracked the truck to Johnson’s home, where she had just gotten out of the shower and was still in her robe and slippers when a SWAT officer with a bullhorn commanded her to come out with her hands raised.
When she opened her front door, Johnson, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker and grandmother, was greeted by an armored military personnel carrier on her front lawn, marked police vehicles along her street and SWAT officers in full military gear armed with tactical rifles with a K9 German shepherd in tow, the lawsuit said.
