'That's a disgrace' | Data shows CMPD SWAT team rarely serves search warrants in south Charlotte
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department defended its use of SWAT but pledged to do better at tracking search warrant locations and demographics.
Outfitted with guns, tear gas and armored trucks, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's SWAT team is reserved for only the most dangerous search warrants, but a WCNC Charlotte investigation found CMPD rarely uses that militarized approach in predominantly white and wealthy south Charlotte.
When mapped, six years' worth of CMPD data shows police regularly serve search warrants in just about every corner of Charlotte, but the map drastically changes when only the search warrants served by the SWAT team are isolated. Police records show of the 76 SWAT-assisted search warrants served since 2015, only one occurred in south Charlotte.
"That's a disgrace," Melinda London said in disgust.
A strategic misstep by CMPD left London's east Charlotte rental home damaged in July 2020. She said a storage unit now holds all she could salvage after the SWAT team entered her home looking for a dangerous suspect who wasn't there.
"If I lived in Ballantyne or where new money is, they wouldn't have policed us that way," she said. "Treat us like you would treat Ballantyne. South Park. Treat us like those people. I'm over being treated like a second-class citizen."
Response to the data
CMPD records show people are more likely to see the SWAT team serve a search warrant if they don't live in south Charlotte, commonly referred to as "the wedge."
"When you look at those numbers, you really have to go beyond the numbers and you have to ask the why," CMPD Deputy Chief Stella Patterson said. "When we're doing search warrants it's typically for very violent offenses."
Patterson defended CMPD's use of its SWAT Team. She believes the SWAT officers are properly trained, have the right equipment and are able to diffuse situations quickly without serious injuries or death.
"You don't think it's a problem the way it looks, the way it feels for those people?" WCNC Charlotte asked Patterson.
"I think the optics of it could be problematic for some people, certainly, but we have to understand why is it that this is occurring."
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW: WCNC Charlotte Defender Nate Morabito speaks to CMPD Deputy Chief Stella Patterson
Patterson said the department only calls in the SWAT team in extreme cases when police search for someone dangerous. She said south Charlotte mostly experiences property crime.
"Violent crime is just not really the issue there," she said. "I don't think, practically, it makes sense for us necessarily to be in a part of a town or an area of town where there is no crime, where there is not a crime issue, especially violent crime."
Patterson said the lack of violence in south Charlotte explains the lack of SWAT activity, unlike in other parts of town. Of the 76 SWAT incidents over the past five years, Patterson said a minimal number had a violent outcome.
She also considered the number of times CMPD dispatches its SWAT team to be minimal. Data shows it remains lower now than it did in 2015 and 2016.
"It's really just in those extreme situations," she said. "If we don't have to use SWAT, we don't want to use SWAT."
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"I think we should always look at where we're using our SWAT team, but the thing is we don't use them as much as people may think," she added.
The need to track better
Action NC political director Robert Dawkins said the data clearly show a different policing approach in communities of color.
"[In communities of color] you get your roof of your house ripped off, and your door ripped off, and [they] were at the wrong house," Dawkins said. "[In predominantly white and wealthy neighborhoods,' we're not going to tear up your house. We're going to ask you to come out. We're going to find a way to de-escalate, but in our neighborhoods, we're going to rip your front door off, we're going to throw in a flash-bang, and we'll sort out if you're guilty or not or if we have the right person after we get you out of the house."
WCNC Charlotte's investigation identified a need for CMPD to track its search warrants better. WCNC Charlotte requested a copy of CMPD's database that tracks search warrants and their outcomes in September.
In addition, WCNC Charlotte requested "the property seized, whether an arrest was made, who was arrested and any additional publicly releasable information available." In response, CMPD said it could only share the address, date and incident report ID numbers of more than 2,300 search warrants served since January 2015.
CMPD directed us to Mecklenburg County Courts for the remaining information. However, a spokesperson told us a defendant's name, case or citation number or a victim or witness name is required to search for records.
The London family's attorney Dominique Camm has encouraged members of the Charlotte City Council to better monitor search warrants.
"They need to start keeping better track of the data and actually what happens when their searches go bad, when stuff isn't found, when evidence is suppressed," Camm said. "There are some cases that go under the radar that aren't as extreme as this case, but to actually get better, you have to learn and study and see where you made a mistake."
Patterson said CMPD hopes to have better data collection that's easily accessible, including data related to demographics and locations, by the end of the year.
"We recognize that we have to have more data," she said. "We found that we were not tracking every aspect of search warrants, so we are working through that. It's definitely at the forefront of something we want to do."
Changes to search warrant policies
The push comes as CMPD has also made changes to its search warrant policies, including eliminating "no-knock" warrants and requiring all officers to have their body cameras on any time they're serving a warrant.
"We will continue to evaluate, and if we need to make additional changes, we will do that," she said. "I think it's important that we're listening to the community."
Patterson maintained CMPD treats every person equally, no matter where they live.
"It doesn't matter what part of town you are from. It doesn't matter who are. We're going to treat everybody with respect," she said. "We're going to treat everybody with dignity."
'We didn't deserve this'
But London maintains CMPD was disrespectful to her family.
She said family members gave officers the keys to her house and told them no one was inside on the night in question. In addition, she said they previously gave CMPD access to the home. Still, CMPD opted to rely on its SWAT team.
The department secured a search warrant based on intel from neighbors. The police department previously said officers arrested the wanted suspect in that home before, but they didn't find him there on the night in question.
Instead, as officers raided the home, out of view, London's angry family stood behind a police line waiting to see a warrant, which they said CMPD didn't show them until after the fact.
"We didn't deserve this," London said. "This just isn't fair what happened to us."
Patterson said CMPD learned from what went wrong at London's Andora Drive home in hindsight. Describing it as regrettable now, she said the operation was necessary then for safety reasons.
"That was a very volatile time," she said. "I was very concerned with community members because the houses were very close to each other ... Regrettably, there was property damage to that residence. That was not what we set out to do, but we wanted to make sure that the outcome was the safest outcome for all of those involved. Based on all the information we had, we did what was most appropriate."
As London stares in disbelief at the repercussions of that decision in her storage unit, she said not only is her family now scattered, she is homeless.
"I don't even have a place to live, you know what I'm saying?" she said.
Her attorney Camm said, to make matters worse, the City of Charlotte has still not made a "reasonable" offer to cover the cost of their damaged belongings all these months later, which he said included family heirlooms.
"This is a tragedy that CMPD has compounded," Camm said. "It wasn't just like a one-hour, two-hour, three-hour thing on the scene. This was an over 10-hour standoff, and they could have remedied it right there, the day of, but even still, not making an actual offer to try to resolve that, they keep compounding that mistake and showing disrespect for this family."
Public records indicate the family initially demanded a $200,000 settlement, including $45,000 to cover $10,000-worth of furniture, six televisions valued at $3,500, $5,000 worth of electronics and $25,000 to cover clothes and shoes for five people. Camm said the most recent demand stands at $75,000.
City of Charlotte Media Relations Manager Cory Burkarth said, even before the family sent its original demand letter, the City offered $3,600 to cover three months' rent. Burkarth said the City is willing to pay when it's at fault, but he said the City is still waiting to receive itemized documentation to validate the family's listed damages.
"A loose itemization has been provided of the type of property, TVs/furniture sets/clothing," Camm said. "The clothing and shoe collections that were damaged were not itemized specifically. These conversations about the property took place in October, the event took place in July. The family moved a lot of their belongings into storage the same morning and later discarded unsalvageable items before July was finished. It is a fair ask generally, but unreasonable under the circumstances."
The family's rental insurance provider denied their damage claim shortly after the raid. The family's insurance company confirmed this, saying "there is an exclusion for governmental action" that applies to its homeowners/renters policy in North Carolina.
Contact Nate Morabito at nmorabito@wcnc.com and follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.