D.C. Police broke down the door to Viola Briggs’s apartment in Southwest D.C. to search for marijuana. It turned out they were in the wrong apartment, but her apartment number was on the search warrant so that was not the executing officers’ fault. The officers charged into her apartment without waiting a reasonable time after knocking and announcing their presence, entered with drawn guns, and continued their destructive search long after realizing they were not in a drug dealer’s apartment. In January 2015, we sued the officers and the District of Columbia on behalf of Viola Briggs and her brother Frank for Fourth Amendment violations.
In April 2016, the District agreed to pay $55,000 to settle the case.
