Brothers Seek Damages Over Raids : Lawsuits: A mistaken case of child pornography led to seizures by Simi Valley police. The plaintiffs say their reputations were ruined.

It started with two snapshots of a naked child and led to raids on a Simi Valley home and business suspected of engaging in child pornography.

Now, two brothers are suing the Simi Valley Police Department over the April 28 raids of one man’s home and the other’s electronics company.

Police never filed charges against Richard Scribner or Tom Scribner, president of Scribner Electronics, said their attorney, Bradley Arnold.

But Arnold said the men’s reputations were badly damaged by the raids, which police conducted after seizing two photos of Richard Scribner’s 3-year-old daughter that her 7-year-old sister had snapped while the family was vacationing.

A San Diego photo processing company turned the photos over to police, who launched an investigation, Arnold said.

The Police Department never comments on cases that lead to lawsuits, said Sgt. Bob Gardner.

City Atty. John Torrance declined to comment in detail on the lawsuit, except to say, “Preliminarily, I’ve reviewed the file, and we’ve determined that the case should be and will be defended.”

But Tom Scribner said that he has spent months trying to repair damage to the reputations of his family and company in such a tight-knit community as Simi Valley.

Barely an hour after flak-jacketed police stormed into the company’s Industrial Street plant and seized computers, software and photographic equipment used to make circuit boards, people were coming into Richard Scribner’s wife’s workplace asking where they could buy child pornography, he said.

Detectives later called to apologize for the raid, Tom Scribner said, but by then it was too late.

“They thought we were a child pornography ring, over two pictures. I can’t believe it,” Tom Scribner said. “How can they get something like that out of two pictures?”

The lawsuit filed Friday in Ventura County Superior Court demands that the city pay damages of $100,000 for three days of lost business suffered while police held the seized computers. It also seeks unspecified punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and court costs.

“[The police] convinced everybody in that neighborhood that something nefarious was happening in that place of business,” said Arnold, who represents the Scribners and the 25-year-old family business. “I mean, of all the things to accuse somebody of.”