PREVIOUS PAGE: OLEG ZABIELIN//SHUTTERSTOCK\
O
OVER A THREE-DAY PERIOD in
June 2007, heavily armed SWAT
teams, supported by tanks and helicopters, descended on Detroit’s
Eight Mile Road. The massive operation involved police and agents
from 21 different local, state and
federal branches of law enforcement, and was intended to rid the
notoriously crime-ridden area
of drug houses, prostitutes and
wanted fugitives.
After conducting hundreds of
raids, the authorities made 122
arrests, according to The Detroit
News, and seized about 50 ounces
of marijuana, 6.5 ounces of cocaine and 19 guns.
When Caroline Burley, 51, first
heard the boom around 5:30 on
the evening of June 13, it sounded
like it had come from outside her
bedroom window. She rushed to
investigate, and as she came out of
the room, a man with a gun confronted her, threw her into a wall
and then hurled her to the floor. A
SWAT team had burst through her
front door. Wearing only her nightgown, she asked for mercy. She
recently had back surgery, she explained. Instead, one officer, then
HUFFINGTON
10.06.13
another kept her close to the floor
by putting a boot in her back, according to court filings.
Caroline’s mother, Geraldine
Burley, was sitting at her computer
in the basement when she heard
a loud thud overhead, followed by
a scream from her daughter and a
man’s voice ordering Caroline Burley to the floor. When she ascended
the stairs, she too found a gun
pointed at her head, and a man ordered her to get on the floor as well.
She thought at first that she was
being robbed.
Geraldine, 70, pleaded with the
man to let her move to the floor
slowly, explaining to him that
she’d had both of her knees replaced. Instead, another officer approached, grabbed her by the face,
demanded that she “get the fuck
on the floor,” then threw her into a
table. She tumbled to the ground.
At that point, she said later in a
deposition, everything turned to “a
fire, white and ringing in my ear.”
Another officer came up from the
basement with her grandson, stepping on her knees in the process.
She cried out again in pain.
The officers searched the home
but found no drugs, weapons or
any other contraband. (They arrested Geraldine’s grandson on an