(WASHINGTON) -- A police SWAT team bursts into a home with little warning, only to quickly realize that it's the wrong address and the occupants inside are innocent victims of the officers' mistake.
The scenario has played out in American communities for years -- sometimes resulting from bad intelligence, others from inadvertent officer errors -- often leaving property damaged and families traumatized.
Legal immunity for cops can mean little restitution.
A major case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday could clear a path for some victims of wrong-house raids to sue for damages under an exception to immunity under federal law.
"It's just a simple matter of fairness," said Patrick Jacomo, an attorney with Institute for Justice, a nonprofit legal advocacy group litigating the case.
The plaintiffs -- Trina Martin, her teenage son Gabe, and ex-partner Toi Cliatt -- have spent seven years seeking to sue the FBI for damages after agents mistakenly raided their Atlanta home in 2017.
"I thought someone was breaking in, and it was so chaotic that I thought they had a mission, and the mission was to kill us," said Martin in an interview with ABC News Live.
Toi Cliatt, who scrambled out of bed at the sound of flash-bang grenades exploding in his living room, described seeking shelter in a closet before the agents detained him.
"They threw me down on the floor and they were interrogating me, and they were asking me questions. And I guess the answers that I was responding to them with didn't add up," Cliatt said. "And that's when I realized that they were in the wrong place."
"The lead officer came back and he gave us a business card and he apologized and then he left," said Martin.
The couple said their home sustained $5,000 of damage from burned carpet, broken doors and fractured railings. The emotional trauma is harder to quantify. "It's countless," Cliatt said.
Martin's 7-year-old son Gabe, who sought cover under his bed in terror during the incident, says the experience dramatically altered his life.
"I see the world differently now. I didn't really have a childhood growing up because of that," said Gabe, now 13. "So, it really kind of changed me as a person."
The FBI denied the family's claims for restitution. The Trump administration, which is defending the agency at the Supreme Court, argues sovereign immunity shields the government from damages claims.
"Cops are human and they make mistakes. And a lot of times the mistakes that are being made are because there's not enough due diligence, there's not enough research going into it," said Anthony Riccio, former First Deputy Superintendent of Chicago Police Department. "The result of it can be devastating for the family impacted."
Most law enforcement agencies don't keep track of wrong house raids or publicly report data, legal experts say. Civil Rights advocates estimate hundreds of cases of wrong-house raids nationwide each year; most victims are not compensated for the physical or emotional harm that often results.
"We have a right to be safe in our homes, and when officers are acting bad -- for lack of a better word -- then individuals have the right to hold them accountable," said Anjanette Young, a Chicago social worker whose apartment was mistakenly raided by police in 2019.
Young's case has become one of the most high-profile examples of the problem. Body camera video from the incident captures the 49-year-old handcuffed naked and bewildered in her living room just after 7 p.m. on a Thursday evening.
"You got the wrong house. I live alone!" she is heard on tape pleading with the cops. "Tell me what's going on!"
Young says it took officers 40 minutes to realize they had the wrong address. They left her without any remedy, she said.
"I've been diagnosed with major depression and PTSD, and as a clinician myself, I understand what that means," she said. "Time does not cure it. It is something that you live with and you have to learn how to manage it."
A 2023 review by Chicago's inspector general found that officers had committed at least 21 wrong-house raids over a four-year period. Young sued the city of Chicago and received a nearly $3 million settlement in 2021, but other victims aren't so lucky.
"The problem with the Anjanette Young case was the information given to the officers was fictitious. A paid informant provided fictitious information in order to get money from the police department," said Riccio. "When the officers showed up to execute the warrant, they were in the house for seconds before they realized, this is bad information."
The impacts can be severe.
An Austin, Texas, police SWAT team responding to a gunfight, blew up the front door of Glen and Mindy Shields' home in 2023 causing thousands of dollars in property damage. The suspect lived across the street. The city denied any wrongdoing and -- as is often the case -- claimed immunity.
When cops showed up outside Amy Hadley's home in South Bend, Indiana, in 2022, her teenage son emerged with his hands up as some officers began to openly question whether the suspect lived there. They raided the home anyway. Police later said they had indications the suspect had posted to Facebook from inside.
"Police not only have things like qualified immunity to protect them, but in a case where the police work for the federal government, they have entire doctrines that effectively act like federal immunity," said Jaicomo.
Trina, Toi and Gabe now hope the Supreme Court will help them pierce that shield.
Congress carved out an exception for federal law enforcement immunity from civil liability suits in 1974 for victims of "assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, or abuse of process" by an officer.
The government denies the exception applies to the Martin case.
"What the Martins are looking for in this case is to be made whole for the mistake that was made by the FBI, but much more broadly than that is to ensure that they might be one of the last families that this happens to in America," Jaicomo said.
The case comes as advocates for victims of police misconduct and mistakes say President Donald Trump is rolling back guardrails on law enforcement.
The Trump Justice Department has put a freeze on federal civil rights investigations into cops and vowed to reconsider consent decrees with police departments found to have engaged in a pattern of misconduct.
That includes agreements with the cities of Louisville and Minneapolis for police reforms agreed to after the 2020 police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in their respective cities.
"The Justice Department had in recent years been really taking a close look, at where things are going wrong, where you see a pattern of constitutional violations. And what the Trump Justice Department appears to be doing is backing away from that process," said ACLU legal director Cecilia Wang.
Anjanette Young says communities don't need to wait for the feds.
In Illinois, she's lobbying state and local officials for strict new rules on search warrants to prevent cops from raiding the wrong house, including new steps to vet intelligence on a suspect's location; requiring a 30 second wait after knocking before breaking down a door; and, mandatory use of tactics least intrusive to someone's home and property.
"It's not okay to harm people and then not fix the harm," Young said.
Retired Chicago police officer Riccio agrees. "Whether that's repairing the damage or providing them with some sort of compensation for what they've experienced, yeah, absolutely," he said.
The Martins say that kind of restitution is the exception rather than the norm. Now, they hope the nation's highest court will change that.
"For seven long years it felt like they were turning their backs on us," Martin said. "I felt unheard, and it was easier to just give up, you know? And I didn't want to give up."
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