Police Drug Raid Off Base, Mistaken Target Says

For months, the constant buzzing of the security intercom at Ken Fortner’s condominium warned that his neighbor was up to no good.

Day and night, an endless stream of people pushed the buzzer at Fortner’s University Heights condominium complex and asked for “Mike”--so many visitors that Fortner, a 33-year-old county employee, said, “We just assumed he was selling drugs.”

On Saturday, however, what had been an annoyance turned into a nightmare, Fortner said, when a squad of “about 30” San Diego police narcotics officers stormed Fortner’s home and threw him and a friend to the floor. Like many before them, the police were looking for Mike, Fortner said. But they’d kicked down the wrong door.

“It was like storm troopers. They just destroyed all the peace,” said Fortner, who is a clerk at the San Diego County auditor and controller’s officer. “I’ve lost all peace of mind.”

What’s worse, Fortner said, after discovering their mistake, the police left the complex on Campus Avenue near Monroe Avenue altogether, allowing the suspicious traffic back and forth to Mike’s house to continue uninterrupted.

“They never even went next door,” said Fortner, who kept a business card given to him by Sgt. Carey Brooks, the officer who led the team. “They said, ‘Now, we’ve tipped him off’ and they left. Yesterday and last night the progression of customers just continued.”

On Sunday, a San Diego police spokesman could neither confirm or deny Fortner’s story. A police spokesman on duty, Sgt. Jim Clear, said he had not heard about the incident.

Reached at home, Bill Robinson, the Police Department’s public information officer, confirmed that Carey is a plainclothes officer with the department’s narcotics unit.

“I don’t know a thing about it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Robinson said. “If it did happen it will be investigated.”

For his part, Fortner on Sunday found himself mulling over Saturday’s upsetting events--and pondering the $100 locksmith charge he incurred making temporary repairs to his front door.

At about 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, Fortner said, as he was talking on the phone to his mother and fixing tuna sandwiches for himself and a friend, he heard a loud pounding on the door.

“It wasn’t a neighborly knock,” Fortner said. “It was a loud knock, a rude knock.”

Fortner hung up the telephone and started in the direction of the door.

“It was shaking and starting to come apart in pieces. I said, ‘Hold it! Hold it! I’ll open it.’ I could see the door falling apart,” he said. “The next thing I know, I was knocked down, laying on my stomach on the stairs, with somebody sitting on top of me.”

The officers, who were dressed in street clothes, had their guns drawn but they did not immediately identify themselves, Fortner said. So his lunch guest, considerably frightened, ran upstairs and to the back of the house. Officers caught up with him on the cement patio and wrestled him to the ground.

“I told them, ‘You have the wrong house.’ But they said ‘Shut up!’ ” Fortner said. “I could hear my friend yelling, ‘It hurts!’ and they said, ‘It’s supposed to hurt. We’re not playing games.’ ”

As Fortner and his friend were handcuffed, he said, police officers snooped through some mail that was out on the kitchen table and opened his closets. Then, Fortner says, he realized who the police were probably after.

“I told the policemen, when they allowed me to talk, ‘You’re looking for Mike and he doesn’t live here.’ I think that was a turning point.”

Sometime after that, Fortner said, the handcuffs were removed.

“They let us up into the living room and said, ‘We have something to tell you. Well, we’ve come to the wrong unit,’ ” Fortner said. “They didn’t say they were sorry. They never apologized.”

Fortner said the officers then took photographs of the damaged door, a lamp they had broken and of Fortner’s friend’s injuries--which included bruised ribs and scrapes on his legs, calves and back. Brooks gave Fortner a business card and a number to call to be reimbursed for the damages, Fortner said.

Brooks also told Fortner that the man he was looking for was on probation, so police did not need a search warrant to enter the house, Fortner said.