Pubdate: Sun, 07 Sep 2003
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2003 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Ray Quintanilla

WIDOW TERRIFIED BY COPS' MISTAKE

Chicago officers raid wrong home

The Chicago Police Department calls it an unfortunate mistake. Earline
Jackson, a widow whose address was mistakenly listed on a narcotics search
warrant, calls it the scariest night of her life.

"I wouldn't want anyone to go through this. It was frightening," Jackson,
73, said Saturday, a day after more than a dozen officers burst into her
home in the middle of the night.

"I asked them, `What did I do?' And they told me to get out of the way
because they were looking for drugs," said Jackson, who lives in a
first-floor apartment in the 4100 block of West 21st Street.

Police now say the warrant should have listed a similar address on 21st
Place--one block south.

"It's unfortunate, but there was an apparent mix-up," said David Bayless, a
Chicago Police Department spokesman. "It looks like the warrant was served
to the wrong house."

The incident unfolded at 3 a.m. Friday while Jackson, who lives alone, was
asleep. She said police knocked open her wrought-iron gate, pried open her
steel door, then rammed an ornate wood door with a heavy object--causing a
glass window to pop out and break on the floor.

Jackson said she ran outside in her nightgown because she thought someone
had broken in. She said this had happened before, though not while she was
at home.

Once on her back porch, she ran upstairs and knocked at the flat of her
daughter-in-law, Katherine Jackson. When both women noticed police cars in
the street, they went downstairs again.

"I saw them going through all my personal belongings," Earline Jackson said.
"One of them had some of my clothes in his hand, and another one was looking
under my mattress."

According to a copy of the search warrant given to Jackson that night,
police believed a man was using the apartment to peddle drugs. A Cook County
Circuit Court judge signed the warrant Thursday.

Bayless said police have not arrested the man they had hoped to find. He
said an officer would visit Jackson's home late Saturday to explain how she
could recover the costs of repairs to her home.

Katherine Jackson said her mother-in-law deserves an apology for a night of
"misery."

"I think that would help a lot," she said.

The final twist on the story came late Friday, when a man knocked on the
door and identified himself with the name listed on the search warrant. The
man said he heard authorities were looking for him.

"He wanted to know what they wanted," Katherine Jackson said, shrugging her
shoulders.
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