any recourse for damage caused by police?

[Jeremy Pace]

So the situation:

The local police executed a search warrant in one of my rentals.  The broke the door frame and damaged the exterior of a steel room with a ram.  They then proceded to look for someone who 1) is not my tenant 2) was not there.

Is there any possibility that they will be paying for the necessary repairs?

Really just don't have any experience in this area, thanks!

[Adam Hershman]

Originally posted by @Account Closed:

Originally posted by @Jeremy Pace:

@Account Closed

To clarify, all described damage was to a single door (and the frame of said door).

What if the tenant is asleep, or not home?

There are innumerable examples of police:

1) going to the wrong house

2) using excessive force and/or poor judgment

either of these alone is enough to make me want to explore my options.  Police are just people, and people make mistakes.

 Well, I guess all that matters is what happened in this case.  Were your tenants asleep?  Were they not home?

I'm just asking what I think is an obvious question.  And what the city attorney will ask, too.  But, I think you should be prepared for the possibility that the reason the door was smashed in, was because the tenants refused to open it.  And if that's the case, just be ready for that argument from the city attorney when you go after the city for damages.

 Come on now, this is just silly. Do you expect your insurance company to tell you they won't pay for your burned down house because you should have put the fire out? First of all the burden is not on the private citizen, the police can knock, break down your door, arrest you, and generally whatever else they want to do, this doesn't make it legal or in any way acceptable, and you should pursue damages in the case that they police are at fault. 

If the police had a warrant for someone at your address, they would have to have some sort of documentation or reasonable probable cause for a judge to issue a search warrant, so even if the warrant is effectually appropriate, the police may have acted inappropriately or even with negligence when preparing the request for a warrant (i.e if they got the wrong address or falsified evidence to obtain the warrant). In which case you would have not only claim to property damages but also several avenues of personal damage (i.e illegal seach, false charges, false arrest, possibly harassment and/or defamation of character.)

It's no more the tenants fault then if the property was vandalized or broken into, they have no control over the police, and they had done nothing to bring the police to the property. It sucks for the owner for sure, but the next time you complain about how unfair tenant/landlord laws are remember that it's because of people charging tenants for these kinds of things that forced laws favoring the tenants on the books.

Just my 2 cents

Adam