SWAT Raids Wrong Home Looking For Guy They Already Arrested (3 Months Earlier)

15 heavily armed and armored police officers raid an innocent woman's home in the early morning hours looking for a fugitive on the nation's top 15 most wanted list. The only problem is they already arrested that guy like 3 months earlier. Also, they were in the wrong state, the wrong city, and at the wrong home. What possible explanation could they have for getting it this wrong? Innocent people should not have to pay the price for this type of federal error. I deserve answers as to how something like this could have happened. On behalf of the victim, J attorney Marie Miller is here to discuss the insane facts of this case. They didn't even know who she was. They asked her name. How do you not know? You're raiding my home and you don't even know who I am. She didn't do anything wrong. She didn't invite this. She had no heads up that this was coming. There's nothing she could have done differently, which means there's nothing that we can do differently to stop it from happening to us. If no one is held accountable, it will happen again. Are you next? On June 14th, 2023, the US Marshall Service listed Joshua Smiley on the 15 most wanted list. He was a 26-year-old male suspect in an August 2021 shooting death of a man in Mobile, Alabama. He was also wanted by the US Marshalss for a federal bond violation on a federal drug charge at a Fort Wayne, Indiana. According to the wanted poster, Smiley may have been in Mobile, Alabama, Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Indianapolis, Indiana. Not listed on the wanted poster as a possible location for Joshua Smiley was anywhere in the state of Georgia. On June 20th, 2023, about a week after Joshua Smiley was put on the most wanted list, he was peacefully apprehended in Avon, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. US Marshalss have arrested an Indiana man recently listed as one of the most wanted fugitives in the country. Marshalss arrested Joshua Smiley at a home in Avon Tuesday afternoon. They found him in just a couple of days. They called him out and he came out and he was arrested with no issues at all. It was a success. The next day, the US Marshall Service issued a press release about Smiley's capture. One would think that this was the end of the story about the search for the fugitive Joshua Smiley, because it was in fact over. Only it wasn't. At around 500 am in the morning on October 24th, 2023, 15 heavily armed and armored police officers arrived at the Sorrano condominiums in Sandy Springs, Georgia, looking to arrest Joshua Smiley. Meanwhile, Joshua Smiley has already been in custody in another state for about 3 months. So, why in the ever loving world were they looking for a guy that had already been arrested in another state who they had in custody? As Institute for Justice attorney Marie Miller explained, as of now, we actually have no indication of any known connection whatsoever between this residence or the woman who lives there and Joshua Smiley. That's precisely right. We see no connection between the person they were looking for and the person's home that they raided. More on this later. So, how did they end up at this particular location? Sandy Springs, Georgia is a prosperous suburb of Atlanta. The Serrano Condominiums building is private. It's quiet. It has a concierge, gated parking, controlled electronic access, and numerous surveillance cameras around the place. The SWAT team, led by Officer Gerard Hunt, planned the raid well in advance with cooperation from the condo building. They had an electronic key fob that gave them access to the building and all of its secured parking areas. They used the key fob to unlock the exterior doors. The officers then went up an elevator and through a hallway to Kathy George's home, a two-bedroom unit. At the time the officers arrived, it was 500 a. m. So, Miss George was asleep inside alone with her six lb dog. October 24th, 2023 changed my life. During the early morning hours, well before 5:30 a. m., I was startled by what sounded like an explosion outside my apartment door. The officers pounded on Cathy's front door with a battering ram. From her bed, suddenly woken up, Kathy thought that she heard her door just exploding. Her dog started barking and she had no idea what was happening. Startled by the deafening sounds of banging, kicking, pounding, and what sounded like 100 voices yelling profanities, demanding the door be opened, my small dog immediately ran to the door to defend me. The officers yelled at her from outside her door, shouting, "Open the door now, mother. Come out with your hands up now. " As a registered gun owner and a single woman living alone, I would have retreated to my closet to both arm and defend myself against the unknown danger outside my apartment door. Had she not run

to the door? Had I not run after her, I would be dead. Kathy panicked. Her first thought was this was a home invasion. She should barricade herself in the closet and be prepared to defend herself with her legally owned firearm. But because her dog, her little dog, ran to the front door, Kathy felt that she had no choice but to follow her dog to the front door. The deafening sound of what I later discovered to be a batting ramp intensified, fearing the door was one blow from being knocked off of its hinges. I opened it. It was immediately staring down the nozzles of machine style weapons. Dozens Their infrared lasers covered me from head to toe, lighting me up like a Christmas tree. She believed that she was going to be shot. The officers pulled her out of her home by her arm, dragged her down the hall to the elevator area that was outside of her unit. Other officers then rushed into her home and essentially ransacked it, wearing only my t-shirt and underwear was immediately pulled out of my unit into the hallway. The officers who remained with Kathy began asking her questions like, "Where is he? When is the last time that he was here? " Innumerable persons, unknown persons, doning SWAT gear, holding machine style weapons, shovels, and the equipment I'd only ever seen on TV ushered me at gunpoint down the hallway to a nearby elevator where I was surrounded by more officers screaming and yelling, asking me, "Where is he? Where are you hiding him? Where is Joshua Smiley? They asked her, "Where's Josh Smiley? " But she had no idea what they were even talking about. She did not know who he was. She was almost completely naked, standing in the cold hall, being questioned by these officers as her unit was searched for about 15 to 20 minutes. And during that time, the officers refused to allow her to even get a robe. I was threatened to be thrown into jail for lying and harboring a fugitive. After about 10 to 15 minutes of being outside my unit, I was asked what my name was, how long I'd lived there. These officers did not even know my name. I was not shown an arrest warrant, a search warrant, or any identification for the failen of officers that were both inside and outside my home. Eventually, the officers asked Kathy if anyone else visited her home, to which she replied that she had two sons who lived in a different Atlanta suburb with their father. So, the officers wanted to see pictures of her sons. So, believing that she had no other choice, she began to show them photos of her sons on her phone. The officers then compared those photos with a photo they already had of Joshua Smiley. After looking at the photos, the officers shook their heads at each other, signaling that neither of her sons appeared to be Joshua Smiley. Obviously, Officer Hunt then said something along the lines of, "I think there's been a mistake. " After being allowed back into my apartment, which had been ransacked, a plain clothes officer holding a blue folder showed me a photo of Joshua Smiley, someone I did not know, someone I do not know, had never before seen, had never heard of. Demanding to know what was going on, the officer stated that there had been a mistake, he handed me a card and ordered the officers to vacate my unit. A quick Google search later allowed me to discover that Joshua Smiley, someone I did not know, someone that had no ties to me, no ties to Georgia or my apartment, had been apprehended 4 months earlier in his state of residence, and was confirmed to be in federal custody at the time of the raid on my apartment. The officers left, leaving only a business card that said United States Marshall Service Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force J Hunt, Special Deputy US Marshall, along with a PO box and two telephone numbers. They did not leave a copy of any warrant or provide any other information to Kathy. They just ransacked her home and left without saying anything else. As it turns out, apparently they were all actually just local police officers working for the DAB County Sheriff's Office, though they were purportedly there allegedly as deputized US Marshalss, which is the same agency that had already arrested Joshua Smiley 3 months earlier in Indiana. Here, we don't have all the facts yet because the government has thus far refused to explain how and why this happened. Either they did not have a warrant and they violated the constitution or they did have a warrant and they still violated the constitution. Let me explain. Just generally absent valid consent or exigent circumstances, law enforcement may not cross the threshold of a residence without a warrant. So if they didn't have a warrant applicable to this residence, that's pretty clear-cut. even assuming there was a valid arrest warrant for the fugitive who had

already been arrested. Unless they had probable cause to believe that he resided in this condo unit leased by Kathy George, they would still need a search warrant for Miss George's unit because he does not reside there. Even though we don't yet know the reason that they chose this unit to search, as we've discussed before, in wrong address raid cases, officers must undertake a reasonable effort to ascertain and identify the place intended to be searched. Police officers are constitutionally required not to enter a residence when they are put on notice of the risk that they might lack authorization to enter and to search it. They either did not have a warrant or if they did have a warrant, it was invalid because there was obviously no reasonable effort made to identify the actual correct place to be searched in order to find Joshua Smiley because just the smallest effort would have revealed that they had already arrested him 3 months earlier. The Institute for Justice is a national nonprofit law firm that stands to defend constitutional rights and hold the government accountable when it oversteps its bounds. For more than 30 years, we have been representing ordinary people, helping them to defend their rights. The Constitution is not a suggestion. It is a binding promise. What is it about this particular incident that made the J want to get involved here? There's got to be some mode of accountability for this kind of egregious error. It can't be that when officers barge into someone's home before dawn looking for someone who's already in custody and who has no connection to the homeowner that there can just be zero consequences at all. No legal mechanism for redress. that cannot be right. And so we at JJ have gotten involved to present all the possible theories that could get Kathy George some kind of accountability and redress. Prior to filing a lawsuit, prior to you guys getting involved, did the government do anything to try to make this right or you just had to file a lawsuit? No. Kathy filed a an administrative claim with the US Marshall's service and they did not resolve it um within six months and so she was able to deem the inaction a final denial which opens the courthouse doors for her to bring some federal tort claims act claims against the United States government. So, she has no answers to this day and hopefully we'll get some through the court case. I've never been in any trouble before. I've never had any negative interaction with law enforcement. Just could not believe that was what was happening in those seconds. How long had she lived there? Would there have been like had they bothered to actually do any investigation to figure out who lives at this home, would they have been able to figure it out? Oh, yeah. They didn't break into the condominium complex. They had planned this raid in advance so that they could have uh access um with some kind of key to get into the complex. She had lived there for 3 years that it wasn't a secret, you know, that she was there. It was she likes her privacy. It's not like she was broadcasting all over the place where she lives, but there was no secret. They should have known who was there, who she was. There are a lot of should haves in this case. What was their legal alleged justification for entry? Did they have a warrant particular to that residence or was it just a general arrest warrant for Joshua Smiley? We don't know. We haven't seen a warrant. We've asked for it. We've submitted public records requests. We haven't gotten anything. They didn't show Kathy a warrant. So, we don't know if they had a warrant, but if they had one for his arrest that preceded when he was actually captured, then they should have known that warrant was no longer good. It was stale because the person that it authorized to be arrested was already in custody. And then if a an officer got a new warrant after Smiley was in custody, then that there's a warrants clause violation because he should have told the neutral magistrate who issued such a warrant that the person thereafter is not at large. If there was a new warrant, it was based on a misleading probable cause affidavit. But we don't know if there was a warrant at all. My prediction, Hang on a second. I have weird lines. Some of them just like random. I don't even know who would be calling that line. My prediction is that they used AI software. We'll

see. We say AI, but it's probably like their surveillance software that the government uses, but there's been some sort of secret AI match that it's like maybe your client walked into a, you know, government building somewhere and they used facial recognition software and it said, "Hey, this is like this 15 top 15 most wanted fugitive. Just, you know, send in the SWAT team. Let's do no additional investigation. " Yeah. I don't know. I mean, even if there was some like they the AI gave them some connection to some false connection to Joshua Smiley, they still should have known that he was in jail. There's no excuse. I mean, doesn't that perhaps that should undercut their argument, you know, when they try to claim that they were acting as deputy US marshals and not as local law enforcement, you know, if they're acting as US marshalss, then why did they not know that the US Marshalss had already apprehended the guy three months earlier? Exactly. The 15 most wanted list poster even said on it, "Hey, law enforcement officers check to see if you know a warrant is still good on this guy before you take action. " Clearly, the officers here did not. They haven't even disclosed the names or identities of these 15 police officers who entered her home. Right. That's right. The only officer whose name we know is the one who left his business card. The Dalb County gave us a one-page form saying that the one officer had approval for cross deputization. That's it. So, DLB County, it sounds like, is saying that it wasn't us. We don't know anything about it. Asked the US Marshall Service. Right. And what did the US Marshall Service say? Yeah, they haven't given us anything. We also don't know why the officers or why the officers were so heavily armored and the person they were looking for was apprehended with a simple call out peacefully and yet you've got more than a dozen officers here fully decked out with huge weapons, shovels. It's amazing the show of force that they used to come to this uh woman's apartment. Were these all also local law enforcement officers? It looks like these were local officers because most or all of them were wearing gear that said sheriff on it. And so they're likely sheriff's office employees who were just doing this. You know, whether there was some involvement of the US Marshalss, we don't know at this point. I mean, the fact that one officer was cross-d deputized at some point uh doesn't mean that he was acting in a cross-d deputized capacity for this operation. They did this with the assistance and participation of the was it the apartment complex or the condo complex? Is that right? There was some kind of assistance from the complex. What is any did they provide any information as far as I mean I would assume and would hope that they didn't just give the apartment key to these people without like verifying that they had some you know legitimate law enforcement you know purpose to go inside. Yeah. We've looked into it a little bit and haven't gotten precise answers. So, we don't know what the officers provided the complex staff to get access. Somebody showed the staff member something, but we don't know what that was. How should this have been handled differently by the officers involved? Well, they should check to make sure the person they're going after uh is still at large to begin with. That's the biggest thing. If that had been done, this would not have happened. Um, what does the J hope to be able to achieve like policy and freedom-wise through this lawsuit? A means to accountability when something this egregious happens. This was a blatant violation of Kathy's rights, and there's got to be a remedy for that. So, we're trying to establish a path to a remedy for the violation of her rights. Was there any damage to Miss George's home? And did they, if so, did they compensate her at all? There wasn't substantial damage. They messed up her apartment, made a mess, moved her mattress, moved things around, but they didn't destroy a bunch of property. In the lawsuit, it was mentioned that they were asking about her sons. Do you know, did they ever reach out and contact her sons? They knew that the sons weren't the person that they were looking for. Kathy showed them pictures of her sons and they're like, "No

that's not him. " If people want to help, how can people help? One way is to support efforts to hold officers accountable when they blatantly violate the Constitution. One reason, you know, where there's federal officers involved is that there's no statute that authorizes lawsuits against federal officers. So that would be a very clear path to accountability is to have a statute like the civil rights statute um at section 1983 that applies to state and local officers. So supporting efforts to uh have legislation that covers federal officers, state officers, that would be a huge help. So in other words, it's going to be a huge legal fight just to even get answers out of them, much less win the case. Oh, exactly. Yep. That that's what's very frustrating about these immunity doctrines. Unless and until we get through them, we don't get any answers. After the incident, I don't feel like I'll ever be the same. Concentrating has been very difficult. I'm triggered by sounds, banging sounds on the door. I still wake up at 4:45 every morning since the incident, but I'm definitely not the same person. I'm very fearful that they'll find me wherever. and you guys are literally the experts now at getting through those immunities. So, you know, if people want to help get these answers and get some accountability here, I mean, you guys need donations from just people watching. Oh, absolutely. You know, we can't do what we do without financial support. These cases that we bring don't make economic sense. um they take a long time. There are so many legal hurdles to get through um that you know your average attorney can't justify trying any of these cases and so people don't um you know when there's when it doesn't make economic sense it's very hard to convince people to try. That's what we're doing. that that's why we do what we do because somebody has to stand up and say no our constitutional rights need to be enforcable. The government's botch raid has been devastating for Kathy. The Constitution promises security in your own home. But for Kathy, that promise was shattered in minutes. And no one has taken responsibility for having traumatized her. This lawsuit is about accountability for Kathy, but it's about much more than that, too. At stake is a basic principle. In America, the government does not get to barge through your door without reason, only to walk away without consequence. When law enforcement makes a mistake of this magnitude, I think they should take accountability. I think that they should own it. apologize. I'm glad you guys are out there like suing the government like this every day. And um you know, I know other people appreciate it as well. it needs to be done and thank you for doing it and please let me know when something happens because I want to stay on this one. We'll do. Thank you for what you do shining light on this. That's a big piece of all this. People should know that this is happening. Absolutely. Thanks for letting me help. This may be the most outrageous wrong house raid case that I've covered so far and that's really saying something. I can't recall another one where there's not even any reason given that they've raided the wrong house and there's not even any connection that anyone can come up with between a guy they're looking for in the house that they actually raided in a completely different state. And that's just setting aside the fact that they already had the guy. Usually, there's some obvious connection and they just engaged in some sloppy police work. I almost wonder if this is yet another AI facial recognition case because that's the only explanation that I can think of other than maybe somebody swatted Kathy by claiming that there was this random fugitive in her house and they just ran with that without even checking. But even then, if these guys were there on behalf of the US Marshalss, they really ought to know that the US Marshalss themselves already arrested the guy. And if they're there on behalf of the Dalb County Sheriff's Office and they're just using this US Marshalss connection as sort of immunity cover to hide behind, then DOB County needs to take accountability here. There's no accountability. There's no apology. They've essentially moved on with their lives. And I'm still wondering why. George hasn't been able to move on with her life. She's had to have extensive therapy. In the meantime, I did reach out to both the US Marshall Services and the Cap County Sheriff's Office, both entities telling me this evening they cannot comment on pending legal matters. Fortunately, the J took up the case, and I have no doubt that they will get to the truth, and they will take it all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary to get accountability here. But they need your

help. They are a nationwide nonprofit law firm. They do not charge their clients a dime. They work off of donations from you, from the public. There's a custom donation link in the description below of this video so that you can donate if you want to help the fight and then they will keep track of how much this great audience is at helping them constantly sue the government when they have to do it. And let's keep the J litigating by donating if you can because they are fighting the largest law firm in the world, the DOJ. I really look forward to finding out the truth here. They cannot be allowed to get away with this. just busting in this woman's house looking for somebody they already caught 3 months ago and then just walking away, leaving a business card and taking zero responsibility for it. And I know that the J will get the truth out of them. And also, you can help by sharing this video far and wide so that people know what they did. I will also link below all of the information on this case from the IG as well as the complaint, the lawsuit so that you can review it yourself and you can share it as well. When I hear more, and I know we will, I will update and you can follow along by subscribing both here and at the blog at the civil rightsawyer. com. You can follow me on X at johnbryanq. Remember, our rights don't end where your fear begins. Freedom is scary. Deal with it.