Posted: 3/17/2004 5:08:16 PM EDT
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www.mtdemocrat.com/articles/2004/03/11/news_stories/1n_01.txt March 11, 2004 - Parole agent, deputies invade wrong home By COLLEEN FLANNERY Staff writer ARMANDO CUEVAS and his fiancee Heather Burlette tend to the couple's 7-month-old baby. On Feb. 25, Armando was arrested on suspicion of battery on a peace officer after he reportedly punched a plain clothes parole agent who was trying to enter his house. The parole agent had not identified himself, the pair maintain. See story, " Parole agent, deputies invade wrong home." Democrat photo by Jennifer Dronkers DIAMOND SPRINGS - Intending to revoke a parolee's visitation rights, an El Dorado County Sheriff's Department team apparently knocked on the right door - at least 10 months too late. A parole agent received a blow to the face from the Capella Drive homeowner in the Feb. 25 incident. Sheriff's deputies arrested Armando Cuevas, 31, on suspicion of battery on a peace officer after he hit Jon DeRoco, the parole agent. No formal charges have been filed, according to District Attorney Gary Lacy, who said he is still investigating the case. Deputies from the Sheriff's Department's Special Enforcement Detail had teamed up with parole agent DeRoco to find parolee-at-large Randy Whitmore. DeRoco requested a "knock and talk," an informal chat with Whitmore. The knock-and-talk reportedly began on a dark evening, and light shed from the inside of the home provided the only illumination. Cuevas and his fiancée Heather Burlette, 32, told the Mountain Democrat they had been putting together a bookshelf in the back room, where they are setting up their baby's area. At about 7:46 p.m., they heard knocks on the door, and Cuevas went to answer. The Sheriff's Department report states that officers said, "state parole" as they knocked on the door, twice. Officers in the back of the home state they heard "state parole" yelled as well, although Cuevas said he never heard the call. When Cuevas cracked open the door, the report states, DeRoco asked the man who answered the door, "Is your name Randy?" sheriff's reports state. Cuevas has said all he heard was "Randy?" Cuevas started to shut the door. DeRoco inserted his foot into the door, wedging it open with his shoulder, which Cuevas said he found "offensive." Cuevas then threw a roundhouse punch around the door, hitting DeRoco square on the side of his face. He told the Mountain Democrat he thought DeRoco, clad in a Hawaiian-print shirt, was a home invader and Cuevas said he believed he was protecting his fiancee and baby. "(DeRoco was) close to the door, holding the door open," Cuevas said. "He didn't say who he was. I said, 'Heather, run,' and she ran to call 911." Deputy Chris Starr entered immediately after DeRoco, clad in the black tactical vest and other black clothing worn by the SED team, with its "Sheriff" insignia and a sheriff's star, according to Starr's written report. Cuevas said he didn't see Starr or any other uniformed law enforcement until the deputy came through the door. He and the other deputies in the SED team were able to subdue Cuevas within about 45 seconds. Cuevas, who said he still thought the hawaiian shirt-clad man had been a housebreaker, described the feeling of being tackled and subdued as "a violation." "Sheriff's Department," the deputies then said, once they considered Cuevas contained, according to Starr's report. Burlette's 911 call appears to indicate she knew the invaders represented law enforcement. "My husband wouldn't do anything," she says in the call, her voice notably upset and panicked. "Oh my god, my husband - they're arresting him for something." Burlette said the team then spent 50 minutes asking themselves what they were going to do with Cuevas, who was by then 'cuffed, according to Cuevas and Burlette. She said she had watched the clock as the time went by. Deputies booked Cuevas at 9:42, almost two hours after the time recorded for the 911 call. Before she called 911, Burlette said she, too, believed the family was under attack from home invaders. She called 911, she said, because she felt they needed help. As she placed the call and walked back into the front room, she said it became apparent that the men were law enforcement officers - but that did little to allay her fears. "I would not have called the cops (911) if I had known the cops were there," Burlette said. continued... |
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continued... Lacy said his office plans "further investigation" of the case. They need more detail, Lacy said, as to how the officers identified themselves, how visible the uniforms were, if the home's residents knew officers were at the door and what, exactly, officers did during the incident. Case law does not dictate that officers must always announce their presence, Lacy said, but the law remains clear that citizens are supposed to "respond to the legal demands of officers." Of course, he admitted, there are differing degrees of law enforcement presence. An officer pulling a citizen over with the use of standardized red-and-blue lights faces less difficulty explaining himself in court than a plainclothes detective in an unmarked car trying to pull over a drug dealer by flashing his headlights. Sheriff Jeff Neves, who noted yesterday that he was not aware of the specifics of the incident, said he is confident his team did the right thing. "These are good officers and I remain very confident that they're embracing keeping the county of El Dorado safe," Neves said. He also said civilians make the call in how they are dealt with by deputies. "He or she chooses how the contact with law enforcement is going to go," Neves said. He said his officers put "officer safety, the safety of other citizens and the safety of the prisoner" first when interacting with arrestees. A check of parolee Whitmore's address in a state parole computer had reportedly returned the Capella Drive address, an ex-girlfriend's address SED deputy Horn states in his report was an "emergency contact" address for the parolee. The computer also reportedly returned a "Three Aces" notification, meaning Whitmore had been previously located at the address. The addresses are "supposed to be updated every time there's an address change," according to state Department of Corrections Acting Regional Administrator Rick Burrows. Nothing "at all" similar to the Capella Drive incident has ever happened before, Burrows said. "This is the first time in four years (since Burrows became administrator) something like this has happened," Burrows said. Burrows said parole agents do not have a dress code, but generally wear a loose-fitting shirt that blouses over the utility belt these sworn law enforcement officers also wear. The belt usually encloses the agent's badge. On special task-force type duties, some parole agents may wear a specialized vest or jacket, but they usually wear casual or professional clothing designed to hide their belt. The regional chief described an ideal "wrong door" situation. In such a situation, the agent arrives, announcing his presence as state parole or law enforcement. He then presents his badge. The person answering the door identifies him or herself, then tells the parole agent he or she has become the new owner of the home. The agent might verify the information with the landlord, then would have left. As long as there has been a "good faith" effort to find the parolee, Lacy confirmed, case law says it's fine for law enforcement to assume a parolee lives at the home. "All of this would have been different if there had been a conversation," said Sheriff's Department Lt. Kevin House, a sheriff's spokesman. But Cuevas maintains he had "no time" to think, let alone to talk, before the agent began to force the door. In "knock-and-talks," which are usually performed in drug-enforcement situations, an officer knocks on the door of a home in the hopes the homeowner will answer. If the homeowner does, officers can then engage him in conversation. If they happen to smell a whiff of marijuana or see drug paraphernalia, then they may enter freely. That did not occur in this case. Lacy said the courts prefer law enforcement officials enter with a warrant. But a search of such a parolee requires no warrant, he said, since parolees waive their rights to privacy as a condition of parole. In a description provided by those who have seen him, Whitmore is described as Caucasian, with long, light hair and light eyes. Cuevas, a hispanic, has balding, closely cropped short hair, currant-colored eyes and nut-brown skin. This soft-spoken native of Santa Barbara said he has never had a violent incident in his life, not even as a young boy. He maintains he was trying to protect his young baby and his fiancee, for whom he saves his salary to buy a ring. The $2,500 the young family had to spend to get Cuevas out of jail, where he was booked on suspicion of battery on a peace officer, won't go toward that ring. The family had just moved from Santa Barbara to be in a "safer" community, both said. Contact Colleen Flannery at [email protected] or call her at 344-5062. |
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Editorial: [url]http://www.mtdemocrat.com/articles/2004/03/17/editorials/b1103_e.txt[/url] March 11, 2004 - Sheriff's team, parole officer went too far Picture it: You're at home on a quiet evening, fixing up the baby's room, when there's a loud knock on the front door. You open the door a crack, see a guy in a Hawaiian shirt, asking for a man whose name you've never heard before. The guy seems pushy, with his foot jamming the door partly open, so you get worried and try to shut the door. He bursts inside, and at his heels are three other men, all wearing black. You panic, thinking you and your family members are the victims of a home invasion, and you throw a punch at "Hawaiian shirt," at the same time yelling for your fiancee to call 911. Then you find yourself lying on the floor, being handcuffed, being told you have just committed a felony and are going to jail. Sound far-fetched, something that could never happen in El Dorado County? Guess again. The Special Enforcement Detail of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department, along with a state parole officer, apparently believing a parolee at large lived at the Diamond Springs residence of Heather Burlette and Armando Cuevas, last month conducted an operation that resulted in terrifying consequences for the family. A family that is apparently totally innocent and should never have been subjected to the raid. And instead of receiving an apology Cuevas was given a trip to jail, where he was booked on suspicion of battery on a peace officer. Cuevas was released after posting 10 percent of a total bail of $25,000. District Attorney Gary Lacy has said he is undecided at this point whether to proceed with prosecution. The SED team, according to sheriff's Lt. Kevin House, largely bases its information regarding wanted parole violators on a state system that is backed up two years; simply out of date. We find that appalling and obviously will ask state authorities to explain the situation. But regardless of what needs fixing at the state level, we insist that it is possible for local law enforcement to fine-tune its research and procure current information - including valid addresses - of wanted parolees before armed officers with police dogs go storming into people's homes. A simple check of property rolls at the Recorder's Office would have shown the SED team and the parole officer that the house had been purchased by Heather's mother 10 months ago. A check with the purchaser could have ascertained that the parolee no longer had any connection to the property and that it was her daughter, future son-in-law and infant who live there now. And why didn't the SED team and the parole officer notice that Cuevas is clearly Hispanic, with a receding hairline, while the parolee in this case is white, with long blond hair? Don't they give these guys photos of the parolees before they ask them to push through doorways? Sheriff's officials say that when Heather placed the 911 call, the dispatcher explained to her that the people she and Armando thought were invading the home were actually law enforcement officers. Officials say the information from the dispatcher should have indicated to the couple that they should comply with all orders being given by the guy in the Hawaiian shirt and the men in black, and that had they done so, the situation would not have gotten out of hand. We contend that with men shouting and struggling, the baby crying and fear sweeping any rational thoughts from their minds, Heather and Armando acted precisely as any other innocent family likely would have under the same circumstances. We also have heard from family members of actual parolees, and parolees themselves, about what they call uncalled-for tactics of the SED team, including one who says he was forced to stand, handcuffed, outside his home following an SED bust, with his accidentally slipped sweat pants around his ankles. He was wearing no underwear, and he said SED members refused to help him cover himself as neighborhood children and others looked on for several minutes. The parolee in that case contends he had a valid pass from his parole officer in another jurisdiction to be at his wife's home and that the visit by the local parole officer and the SED team was inappropriate to begin with. Although we can't arbitrate all such cases in the Mountain Democrat, we are alarmed at the number of complaints coming to us about the SED team, and are especially disturbed about the raid on the apparently innocent Diamond Springs family's home. While we recognize and endorse the need for a solid, skilled team of professionals to make sure that dangerous criminals among us are accounted for and incarcerated, we do not intend to surrender our civil rights to the process. The Fourth Amendment guarantees "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ...." Sheriff Jeff Neves, rein in your team and come up with tighter constraints dictating when a house should be stormed. Don't terrify normal citizens with tactics that send them screaming for the phone and fearing for their lives and the lives of their children. You're supposed to be the good guys. The sheriff and the DA should drop the felony charge against Armando Cuevas, apologize and ask the court to expunge his arrest record. - Managing Editor Pat Lakey |
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This happened in El Dorado county, where I live. It's largely a very rural area. Most of it is National Forest. It's caused a lot of consternation up here. In today's paper Sheriff Neves responded in a column of his own. It was not yet avaible online. While he did not admit to any error on the part of his deputies, he did point out that they were only supporting a STATE parole officer, and that his deputies were properly attired and clearly marked as SO people. He also went on to say that in the future if his people went as support that one of them, being clearly distinguishable as LEO, would be at the door. Along with some other policy changes. |
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Look, some good things came from this. They all went home safe. No dogs got shot. No cats got stomped. Their house didnt get burnt down. Whats not to like? Oh ya. A free person's privacy and civil rights were violated and it cost him 2500 bucks and felony charge. What was I thinking? |
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Quoted: Someone in civvy clothes, not identifying themselves to my face (shouting "police" through a closed door DOESN'T count) and pushing their way into my front door when I open it is going to be in a world of hurt. .40 S&W or .45ACP kind of hurt. [pissed] Ditto Except from me odds are it will be .308. I have a bad M-14 fetish. |