RALEIGH, N.C. — Settlement negotiations on a federal lawsuit involving fired Raleigh police Detective Omar Abdullah have stalled after city officials balked at making changes on search warrant raids, according to court documents.
"Plaintiffs are concerned that the RPD is routinely violating citizens' constitutional rights when executing warrants and through this litigation, seek to ensure that no other citizens of Raleigh experience the terror of having their homes illegally raided by SWAT officers," states a filing in the litigation brought by 10 Black women and children who say their homes were raided without warning.
Plaintiffs Yolanda Irving, a mother of five who drives a Wake County bus for children with special needs; her three children, who were home the day police searched the house; another family; and a teen filed the lawsuit in February. They contend Abdullah and other officers plotted to fabricate heroin trafficking offenses that led to an illegal raid, excessive force and false imprisonment of the women and children.
Officers entered two apartments unannounced, wearing tactical gear, pointing assault rifles at and detaining innocent women and children as young as 12, including a partially paralyzed youth, the lawsuit filed in the U.S. Eastern District of North Carolina contends.
Plaintiffs are seeking an undisclosed amount of money, a list of city records — including Abdullah's employment file — and want the city to change its policy on the execution of "no-knock" and "quick-knock" search warrants.
Those warrants include situations in which officers enter a home without announcing themselves or within seconds of announcing themselves, sometimes pushing the door open with a battering ram.
Police officials maintain the department doesn't use no-knock warrants and didn't respond to questions about the city's use of quick-knock search warrants.
The defendants in the 32-page civil complaint are the city; Abdullah, who was fired in October; and other officers.
Irving's address was identified through an investigation led by Abdullah working with confidential informant Dennis Williams.
Abdullah and Williams sent about a dozen Black men to jail on trafficking charges from Nov. 29, 2019, to May 21, 2020, for drugs that repeatedly turned out to be fake, according to another lawsuit that led to the city paying families $2 million in September.
That case was settled months after being filed when the parties engaged in early settlement discussion.
The city wants to similarly settle the second lawsuit, but the plaintiffs refused after Raleigh officials indicated they want to focus on money, not changing department policy.
"Our clients are open to mediation," said Ian Mance, an attorney with Emancipate North Carolina. "They have made it clear to us that this not just about compensation. It is about doing what they can to reduce the chance of this happening to someone else."
On April 29, the city filed a motion for a settlement conference, which "may assist the parties in assessing settlement opportunities before the Court invests judicial resources in addressing the defendants' pending motions to dismiss," the case, the motion states.
The plaintiffs' attorneys, who include Abraham Rubert-Schewel, Michael Littlejohn Jr. and Emancipate North Carolina lawyers, responded May 3. In a memorandum, they said a settlement conference wouldn't work because the city won't consider one of their clients' primary goals: revising warrant execution policies.
Raleigh police executed no-knock search and quick-knock search warrants at least five times in the past three years, the filing states.
"RPD officers either enter these residences without warning or knock while simultaneously entering (often with a battering ram) in violation of Supreme Court precedent," the filing states.
An April 19 email from Deputy City Attorney Dottie Kibler stated city officials are willing to talk about the search warrant encounter and other concerns but they want an early resolution, "thus focusing on your clients' damages."
Kibler also indicated the city would share its planned police raid and search policy "for attorneys' eyes only" as the policy isn't public.
Police spokesperson Laura Hourigan has said that the RPD doesn't use no-knock search warrants.
There is no record of when the city stopped doing no-knock warrants, Hourigan wrote in an email Thursday.
Calls for states and police agencies to ban no-knock search warrants increased after the March 2020 death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot by a Louisville, Kentucky, officer after police served a no-knock warrant on her apartment as part of a drug investigation into her boyfriend.
About six month after Taylor's death, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police discontinued the use of no-knock warrants.
Under state laws, North Carolina officers must give notice of their authority and purpose before executing a search warrant unless that puts someone's life in danger, according to an article in the Campbell Law Observer, a student publication on legal topics at Campbell University's School of Law.
No-knock warrants are issued when police suspect their presence would be dangerous, or would allow for the destruction of evidence, the article said.
The plaintiffs argued in the recent filing that federal precedent has found it is reasonable to enter the home, "15 to 20 seconds," after knocking.
