Around 6:30 p.m. on May 26, Brittany Shamily was at home with her children, including an infant, when police used a battering ram to bust in her front door. “What the hell is going on?” she screamed, terrified for herself and her family. “I got a three-month-old baby!”
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While the family was detained outside, the SWAT team “ransacked” their house, the lawsuit says. One SWAT team member punched a basketball-sized hole in the drywall. Another broke through a drop ceiling. They turned over drawers and left what had been an orderly house in disarray.
After this had gone on for more than half an hour, the AirPods were located — on the street outside the family’s home.
It later came to light that one of Shamily and Briscoe’s daughters saw what was likely the stolen Charger careening through their neighborhood a little before 7 a.m. that day. (The vehicle later crashed on the 1700 block of Foley Drive, about six miles from the family’s home.) It stands to reason that someone in the Charger tossed a pair of stolen AirPods onto the street in the vicinity of the quiet house police later busted into and ransacked.
The family, represented by Schock and Erich Vieth, is suing for damages stemming from embarrassment, unreasonable use of force, loss of liberty, and other factors. The lawsuit notes that neither Shamily or Briscoe had been in any trouble with the law for at least a dozen years prior to the incident. “There was no probable cause for the search warrant and had the affidavit contained complete information, the state court judge would not have approved the warrant,” the suit allege
Slightly misleading headline - the SWAT team used the “find my” network to locate the airpods, which had been in a car that had been stolen in (they imply) an armed carjacking. The carjackers then drove through the street the Shamilys live on and threw the airpods out the window (again it is implied but not stated that the airpods were found in the street outside the Shamily home where they landed).
So… yeah. Even calling this “circumstantial evidence” is stretching this to the absolute limit. Presumably someone in the family has an apple device on the findmy network, which would show the Shamily home as the location of the airpods (since the device was in the home, but the airpods it was detecting in the vicinity were decidedly not).
Somehow, st. louis’ finest didnt stop to think about… well, anything apparently. This is fucking absurd. I hope their lawyers eviscerate the cops over this one.
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The truth is they tried to use the AirPods to find the criminals, who I believe also stole a weapon as to justify the SWAT action, so they thought they were at the right place and surely the stuff is just well hidden! And then, when they find the AirPods on the street, they realize that just because the dot looks like it’s in the house, it’s not that accurate. They thought, “If it’s inside the house, then that means this is the bad guys house.” Then they proceeded to break in without observing to see if the car that was jacked is anywhere in sight, if there are children to be aware of, etc. in other words, this SWAT Team was not very bright.
Edit: or didn’t give a fuck.
This is a new twist on a long history of law enforcement misunderstanding and misusing geolocation services.
Just ask the little old lady in Kansas who has 600 million ip addresses in her front yard https://theweek.com/articles/624040/how-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-kansas-farm-into-digital-hell
They already had the charger, it was crashed/ditched soon after it was stolen. They were looking for the guns used in the carjacking, or the airpods case or other items in the vehicle, so they could arrest Shamily and/or Bristoe as accomplices.