SWAT Team Destroyed Innocent Family's Home, Refused to Pay for Repairs

Amy Hadley watched in horror as her home was raided by police and destroyed in South Bend, Indiana, in June 2022. Over a year later, her family is still traumatized and their home still bears the scars of the raid. And all of this happened because police were searching for a man who was never in their home and who had no connection to Amy’s family.

https://ij.org/case/south-bend-swat-destruction

Noah Hadley, just 15 at the time, was the only one there when police surrounded his home and started calling for occupants to come out. He followed their instructions and told them he was the only one in the house. Officers cuffed Noah and took him away without letting him call his mom.

Amy arrived on the scene shortly after the officers took her son away. None of the officers believed Amy when she tried to explain that the officers had the wrong house. She watched from down the street as a SWAT team and other officers shattered windows with tear gas grenades, flooded the house with toxic fumes, upended furniture, tore down fixtures, punched holes in the walls, destroyed family photos and drawings, and rifled through the family’s belongings.

When the dust settled, the house was uninhabitable for days. Tear gas saturated everything, glass filled the beds, windows and walls were shattered and mangled. Amy and her family slept in her car. Amy tried to get answers and compensation from the government agencies. But they denied her requests. Her insurance company covered only part of the damage. She was left with thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to shoulder herself.

That’s both unfair and unconstitutional. When the government deliberately destroys an innocent owner’s property to serve a public interest—here, public safety—both the Indiana Constitution and the U.S. Constitution require the government to compensate the owner. The local governments in this case determined that the public benefit of trying to apprehend a fugitive outweighed the costs of damaging Amy’s property in the process. That was their decision to make, but they must pay for it.