Drug Raid Error Blamed on Bad Briefing

The SWAT officers who mistakenly broke into a duplex during a drug raid Sunday were inadequately briefed by narcotics officers that the dwelling was not a center of drug dealing, the SWAT commander said Tuesday.

Lt. Gary Morris denied reports that members of his SWAT team had been thoroughly briefed before the raid or had been told that the occupants of the West Street duplex should be left alone because they were not involved in selling rock cocaine.

“There was a breakdown in communications and the officers who ultimately made the entry into the second house thought that that was the secondary house,” Morris said. “The preliminary inquiry seems to point out that SWAT officers were not informed that this was not a secondary target. The breakdown was that it didn’t come out in the briefing adequately.”

Narcotics units assisted SWAT officers at the end of a weeklong crackdown on rock cocaine dealers in Southeast San Diego on Sunday. They were supposed to execute two search warrants about 2 a.m. at two dwellings on West Street. The east side of the duplex, the home of John Taylor, 46, which was not involved in cocaine sales, was the unit raided by mistake.

Taylor, his brother and his sister-in-law were inside the home at the time of the raid and complained bitterly that officers allegedly used unnecessary force when one of them placed his foot on the neck of George Taylor and shouted obscenities at him. Taylor said he tried to explain to the officers that they had broken into the wrong house.

Morris said that narcotics units raided the west side of the duplex, which apparently had been a center of cocaine trafficking. He added that there was a secondary target, which was a small house in the yard, next to the duplex. Morris said the plan called for raiding the west side of the duplex, then that SWAT officers were to cover the second home while narcotics detectives raided it. The SWAT officers were not told that the second target was in a separate building, Morris said.

When the SWAT officers saw someone peering out through an open screen from the Taylor home, they entered the east side of the duplex to make sure the person was not armed--believing that the home might be the secondary target.

“They observed a person in an open screen and observed that they couldn’t see his hands, and they went in to make sure he didn’t have a weapon,” Morris said, adding that about the same time narcotics team members went to the small house.