Video shows Texas deputy force entry into home, handcuff homeowner without warrant
Dylan Baddour, Houston Chronicle
Published 3:38Â pm, Thursday, August 13, 2015
Video shows Texas sheriff's deputies forcing entry into a woman's house for an unwarranted search.
In the video, the young homeowner in Pflugerville screams at Travis
County deputies, "you don't have a warrant, I need you to get out of my
house" before a deputy is heard saying "put her in handcuffs." The
episode raises concerns over constitutional protections against
unreasonable search and seizure. Tori Thayer, 23, said she thought she was dreaming when her doorbell
rang at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning. But it rang again, and she woke up. By
the time she got downstairs the door was open and one deputy had put
his foot into her house, she said.
"He started right off the bat yelling at me and trying to push his
way into my door," she said. "He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw
me to the side."
Deputies were there conducting a welfare check, requested by a
caller, on Thayer's roommate, Carly Christine (who was not home), said
Travis County Sheriff's Office spokesman Roger Wade. He said he "can't
get into the specifics of what happened or why things happened" because
an investigation is ongoing.
Before the video begins, Thayer said, she spent about 10 minutes
using her body to block deputies from entering the bedrooms of her
house, careful not to use her hands to avoid felony charges.
"They start going towards my door, and I told them no, my dogs were in there," she said. "I didn't want them to shoot my dogs."As Thayer's protests dissolve into sobs, she said two deputies
grabbed each of her arms and a third got behind her and pushed her to
the floor. She was handcuffed while one deputy held his knee on her back
and another held his hands on her shoulders, she said. The video goes
black as the camera apparently falls, but audio recording continues.
Deputies then search the bedrooms of the house and don't find
Christine. They release Thayer about five minutes later when she asks,
"Am I being detained?"
Santinder Singh,
a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said
the deputies didn't appear to have any legal right to enter Thayer's
home.
"The general rule is that law enforcement needs a warrant to enter a
house," he said. "Once [deputies] were told immediately that [Christine]
was not there, that should have ended the situation."In the Pflugerville case, Thayer said deputies later explained to her
that someone had called the sheriff to report Christine had made
suicidal threats.
Singh said, "there are a handful of exemptions" under which law
enforcement doesn't need a warrant to enter a home, "and they all
involve some sort of emergency situation."
"If they can see or hear a fight or struggle—that would be a
situation where they could enter," he said. "But if they come and
nothing is ongoing, no immediate threat, then the officer must go back
to a magistrate judge and get a warrant."
When Wade with the sheriff's office was asked if officers were right
to enter the home, he said the investigation was ongoing and that "as
far as constitutional law, people study for years trying to figure that
all out."
Since the video was posted on Tuesday and reported by local media
Wednesday, Thayer said she's gotten thousands of encouraging messages
through Facebook, Twitter and the phone, urging her to get a lawyer.
"I actually want to do something about this. It's out of hand," she
said. "There needs to be reformation in this police state. They can't
continue to travel down this path."
4951