Carlos Pena watched in horror for 13 hours as a SWAT team raided his North Hollywood print shop in August 2022. They were pursuing a fugitive who had no connection to Carlos but had barricaded himself inside his business. In the coming weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court could decide whether to take Carlos’ case seeking compensation.
A new nationwide study from the Institute for Justice (IJ), titled “Public Benefit, Private Burden,” makes clear that when law enforcement damages innocent people’s property while pursuing a fugitive, this creates genuine hardship for the property owner. At the same time, compensating the owner would have a negligible impact on government budgets. The Supreme Court should make clear that when such damage happens, the innocent property owners must be made whole.
The report studied 2,700 claims for compensation for law enforcement property damage across 222 local jurisdictions with SWAT teams. The most common claims involved residential damage caused by routine law enforcement activities, such as police breaking down a door or fence to conduct a search or respond to an emergency, and the median claim was for $1,260. Seeing as fewer than half of Americans have sufficient funds to cover a $1,000 emergency expense, this type of damage creates genuine hardship for unlucky property owners. And unlucky property owners were the largest group of claimants in the study, with 90% of claimants not being the target of the law enforcement action and 70% of those having no connection to the target whatsoever. Despite that, 41% of claims from completely innocent property owners were denied—just as happened to Carlos.
The tens of thousands of dollars in damage done to Carlos’ shop when tear gas was deployed and holes were blasted in the walls and ceiling is an outlier in terms of cost. Only about 1 in 10 claims in the study was for $10,000 or more. But Carlos’ case still highlights the fact that innocent people with no connection to the criminal suspect are often the ones left holding the bag when law enforcement damages private property in the line of duty.
After Carlos watched the business he built over 31 years get destroyed right in front of his eyes, he sought compensation from his insurance company, the U.S. Marshals and the city of Los Angeles. The insurance company told Carlos it didn’t cover “acts of government”; the Marshals, despite being on the scene during the raid, pointed him to the city, because it was the city’s SWAT team that caused the damage during the raid; and the city denied his claim.
But paying innocent property owners would be a drop in the bucket of a local government’s annual budget. The data show that even if every claim for compensation for police damage merited payment—and undoubtedly some would not—the average annual cost for a local government would be just $6,500. This undermines the argument made by some that local governments would be in financial trouble if they paid up when police damage innocent people’s property.
The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to pay just compensation when it “takes” property for a public good. Getting dangerous criminals off the street is certainly a public good, but when innocent people’s property is damaged in the process, they must be compensated.
The U.S. Supreme Court should take Carlos’ case and ensure that public benefits are no longer private burdens.
Jeffrey Redfern is a Senior Attorney at the Institute for Justice (IJ) and represents Carlos Pena in his case seeking compensation.