Patty and Paul Mueller - who faced gun-toting law officers when their house was raided by mistake this week - are owed an apology and a clean rug, but nothing more, authorities said Thursday.
Officers who raided the suburban home in St. Charles County in a search for illegal firearms that didn't exist said they did not use excessive force, did not threaten the couple and did not break anything inside the home. They do admit to tracking mud on the rug.
"I think they did an outstanding job," said Joann Leykam, a lawyer representing St. Charles County.
She said the rug would be cleaned because "the county wants to be a good neighbor to these people."
Meanwhile, the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency said it had dispatched an investigator from Washington to look into every aspect of the raid.
A top ATF official said his agency should not be held accountable for anything that went wrong on the raid. Only one of the 14 law officers on the raid was an ATF agent, said Pat Hynes, ATF assistant director.
O'Fallon, Mo., police were responsible for getting the search warrant, Hynes said.
In explaining what went wrong, O'Fallon Police Chief Steve Talbott said, "A guy lied to us." He was referring to Matthew Hoppe. Hoppe, 22, of St. Peters, is a felon scheduled to be sentenced today for car theft. He could get up to seven years in prison.
"We were assisting," Hynes added. "Do you want to be responsible for what your brother or sister does?"
Daniel Hoggatt, special agent in charge of the agency's St. Louis office, on Wednesday called it a "joint operation."
Authorities say Hoppe made up the story about 100 guns being hidden in the Muellers' home, hoping for leniency in his sentence. Hoppe was a police informer.
After the raid, prosecutors charged him with lying to police, a misdemeanor.
The ATF said it got a sworn statement from Hoppe. An O'Fallon police detective, Doug Tinkham, cited the informer's statement in his own sworn affidavit used to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant for the home.
Police and ATF agents said they had plenty of reason to believe Hoppe's statement. Some other information he provided had been verified, but they wouldn't specify what, the law officers said at a press conference at the St. Charles County Jail.
Ken Warren, a St. Louis University political science professor who has written a law book on searches, said this search never should have taken place.
Warren said a judge should have asked key questions, such as whether police had checked out the informer's story?
"They tried to check out one thing and it didn't check out," Warren said. He was referring to Hoppe's statement to authorities about who lived in the house. Hoppe gave police the name of someone he claimed was a suspect. But when officers checked, they found that the suspect didn't live there - the Muellers did.
"That should have raised the red flag right there," Warren said.
He said there was nothing in the warrant application that justified a judge's issuing a search warrant. "It's all hearsay," Warren said.
When the informer's information turned out to be wrong, law officers should have watched the house to find out who really lived there, Warren said. Law officers and the judge - Associate Circuit Court Judge Jon A. Cunningham - didn't think that was necessary, Talbott said.
The Muellers say they want to sue. If they do, they probably will have a hard time getting any damages, said Ronald Mann, associate professor of law at Washington University.
When law officers get a search warrant, it is hard to prove that they were acting in bad faith, he said.
Talbott, the O'Fallon chief, said his people and eight members of a St. Charles County Sheriff's SWAT team who accompanied them had nothing to apologize for. If the Muellers had been at the movies that night, Talbott said, "there would have been nobody there when they kicked the door in."
Calls For ATF Inquiry
Rep. Harold L. Volkmer, D-Hannibal, called the actions of the ATF "totally outrageous" and said he would testify about it during upcoming but as yet unscheduled hearings by a House committee.
Volkmer said officials who called for the raid "without doing the proper checking to protect innocent people's rights" should be fired.
A longtime foe of the bureau, Volkmer said he wasn't shocked by the incident. "I have been saying since 1978 that BATF is out of control," he said. "Year after year more cases come to my attention about their 'Rambo' style."
Sen. Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., also weighed in on the raid. In a letter Thursday to John W. Magaw, the director of the ATF, Bond decried the mistake.
"I cannot possibly condemn this action more strongly," Bond wrote.
ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) - Police broke down the door, hoping to find a large cache of machine guns and other firearms. Instead, they found a typical suburban family with two kids, a dog and not even so much as a BB gun.
WOW they didn't plant any evidence, strange. Maybe they will come up with some charges when these people try to sue.
"We're your basic dorky family who goes to soccer games and hangs out with their kids," Patty Mueller said.
Mrs. Mueller is angry that more than a dozen heavily armed police and federal agents swarmed into her home Tuesday night and held her family at gunpoint, turning the house upside down in their hourlong search for illegal weapons.
I guess they mean weapons on which the $5 or $200 tax was not paid...
"For the first 30 seconds, I thought they were burglars and I was going to die," Mrs. Mueller said. "If they could do this to us, they could do this to anybody."
Wow, I thought that they were supposed to yell POLICE. But since the KG-BATF are not Police officers ( they are TAX collectors ) they at least should have Yelled FEDERAL AGENTS, SEARCH WARRANT. But in any case they should be glad to be alive. Please note Mrs. Mueller's quote, above.
I wonder what her view point was before the Terror attack? Heck this is the type of terrorist attack that the Terrorism Bill should have covered. In any case, had these people tried to defend them selves from these "burglars" I wager they would be dead and/or in jail.
The officers were searching the house based on information from an informant who made up his story in hopes of getting some leniency on prior convictions.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms admits raiding the wrong house
Hell, there was NEVER A RIGHT HOUSE, to raid
but blames the informer, who gave ATF agents a sworn affidavit describing how he had bought and sold weapons with people living in the house.
Gosh, he lied to us, how could that have happened? Hell its not our fault that we did not check up on the "tip," after all who would guess that a criminal would lie? See, folks all it takes is the word of some criminal to put your life in peril.
"It's amazing to me that he didn't think we'd ever find out," Daniel Hoggatt, special agent in charge of the ATF's St. Louis field office, said Wednesday.
Hell, I guess he knew that you didn't care where the information came from, and that you would not check up on it. After all, who gives a shit if you guys mess-up, god knows nothing will happen to the secret police.
The Muellers say it was an hour before agents showed them a search warrant and explained why they were there. Then, finding no illegal weapons, they left. They offered no apology and did nothing to put the house back in order, the couple said.
I don't believe it: they must be making this up. A government of the people for the people and by the people certainly would not act like that. But then again a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, need not fear the arms of the people.
Hoggatt said he would apologize. He said that in his 24 years as an agent, it was the first time he had seen such a mistake.
That probably should read, "got CAUGHT in such a mistake," and mistake is a light word for it. Based on the record of the ATF I would not give them a search warrant based on any information that they gave as being factual, unless they could heavily back it up with evidence. But I guess the 4th amendment is now void where prohibited by law.
In a similar incident two years ago in Boston, a 75-year-old retired minister died of cardiac arrest after police mistakenly raided his apartment, chased him, wrestled him to the floor and handcuffed him. Just last week, his widow accepted a $1 million settlement with the city.
Is it any wonder that criminals now dress up like federal agents on home raids? Hell, at least the criminals yell POLICE. Just remember, its the police who act like home invaders. Several years ago, if guys dressed in black kicked in your door and yelled police, you could be damn sure that they were not police.
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