Two Black women whose homes were illegally raided by Raleigh police officers have agreed to settle a lawsuit against the city’s police department for $350,000, their attorneys announced Thursday.
Lawyers filed the lawsuit in February 2022 on behalf of Yolanda Irving and Kenya Walton after armed officers forcefully entered their homes in May 2020 using no-knock warrants. The women, both employed as bus drivers for Wake County schools, lived next door to one another.
Court documents state that the officers entered the wrong apartments, and no one in either home was involved in criminal activity.
The department later discovered that the raid was connected to an informant scandal that targeted Black men based on false allegations of drug dealing, according to the women’s attorneys and published media reports.
Why it matters: No-knock warrants have become a point of friction for police departments nationwide. In 2020, protests erupted after Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, was shot and killed by police inside her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment after officers forced their way in using a no-knock warrant. The 26-year-old emergency room technician had committed no crime.
In a statement announcing the Raleigh settlement, lawyers representing the woman said the “SWAT-style raid” was carried out by officers “armed with assault rifles and wearing body armor.”
The lasting effect
In an interview with QCity Metro, Irving said she has never committed a crime or had any negative interactions with the police. So, when officers barged into her home on the afternoon of May 21, 2020, she was “confused.”
Her youngest son, Jalen, who was 12 at the time, was playing outside with Walton’s two children and a family friend when he was chased into the apartment by officers in tactical gear, Irving said.
“Please don’t shoot,” Irving recalled hearing Jalen scream as he ran through the hallway and into his bedroom.
When Irving walked out of her bedroom to see what was going on, she saw police pointing their guns at her, yelling “search warrant!” before forcing her to on the floor.
Irving said she feared for her children’s lives, especially her oldest son, Juwan, who is partially paralyzed and was lying in bed when officers stormed into his room. She said she feared the police would get “trigger happy” and shoot her son because he couldn’t comply with their orders.
The police allowed Juwan to stay in bed with his younger brother until they had finished searching upstairs then moved the mother and her sons downstairs when they were done. Irving said the police had Walton’s son, Ziyel, handcuffed on the floor and were guarding her daughter, Cydneea, who was 16.
“They destroyed my downstairs. They went through my bedroom, my closets, under my dressers, everywhere,” she said. “They kept saying they were looking for money and drugs.”
The police officer in charge of the operation, Detective Omar Abdullah, a Black man, was later fired.
Irving said she, her children and Ziyel were forced to sit on the floor, waiting for nearly two hours until Abdullah arrived with a search warrant. Abdullah alleged that he had video footage showing that a man named Marcus had come to her house to get drugs.
Irving said she tried to explain to Abdullah that she didn’t know anyone named Marcus and that she didn’t have drugs or money, and that officers had raided the wrong home. Abdullah ignored her and left, she said.
When the other officers realized they were in the wrong home, they “scattered out” of her apartment, she said.
The aftermath
Irving said she didn’t realize the severity of the situation until she spoke with her attorneys. She was initially hesitant to share her story but believed she had to do it for her family.
“They don’t realize the trauma that they put us through,” she said.
While officers were raiding Irving’s home, they were carrying out a simultaneous raid at Walton’s home, next door.
The women were represented in their lawsuit by the Charlotte law firm of Tin Fulton Walker & Owen and by Emancipate NC, a civil rights group.
Elizabeth Simpson, with Emancipate NC, said the settlement was long overdue.
“The City of Raleigh should have settled with these innocent families months ago, rather than dragging them through painful litigation and falsely accusing them of wrongdoing,” she told QCity Metro.
She added: “Now that this lawsuit is done, Raleigh should look critically at the culture within their police department that allowed this to happen.”
Irving and Walton later went public about their ordeal, pushing for the city of Raleigh and its police department to make policy changes on search warrants.
In response, the department revised multiple policies and procedures, including prohibiting no-knock warrants and implementing stricter use of confidential informants in drug operations, according to the women’s attorneys.
Irving said the incident has had a lasting impact on her family. Her son, Jalen, now 15, was affected the most, she said.
“He’s not that social. He’s not even social with us,” she said. “He just stays in his room. He’s not the same anymore.”
An informant scandal
Simpson, one of Irving’s attorneys, told QCity Metro that Abdullah was working with an informant to target Black men suspected of selling small amounts of marijuana. According to Simpson and published reports, Abdullah would also plant fake heroin on the men during police raids.
Abdullah was targeting a suspected drug dealer in May 2020 when officers when to the wrong address, ending up at the apartments of Irving and Watson, Simpson said.
Irving’s lawsuit would be the second that the city has settled that involved Abdullah and the informant, identified in published reports as Dennis Williams. (The Raleigh City Council, the city’s insurance company and a U.S. District Court all must sign off on the settlement.)
The first lawsuit was settled for $2 million in September 2021 and involved 15 plaintiffs alleging Abdullah and others framed them on false drug charges.
Abdullah was fired from the police department in October 2021. A third lawsuit is pending, according to published reports.
Abdullah was indicted on charges of felony obstruction of justice and is awaiting trial, Simpson said.
As a result of the investigations, the Raleigh Police Department restructured its drugs and vice unit, to which Abdullah belonged.
Abraham Rubert Schewel, an attorney at Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, said his firm has settled claims on behalf of 28 people related to alleged misconduct by the former detective and the Raleigh Police Department’s vice unit.
“We hope that the City of Raleigh continues to examine its policies related to the use of confidential informants and the execution of search warrants to ensure that nothing like this injustice ever happens again,” he said in a statement.
QCity Metro reached out to the City of Raleigh and the Raleigh Police Department for comment, but they did not respond to our calls.
