Sharon Ramage, a 57-year-old grandmother with no criminal record, was ironing clothes when the police assault on her home began shortly after nightfall on June 21, 2007.
Backed by a helicopter and a $300,000 armored vehicle, 35 members of the Louisville Metro SWAT team stormed her Okolona property, detonated a deafening "flash bang" device, smashed in her rear door, put her on the floor, bound her wrists with flex cuffs and held her at gunpoint while detectives searched the home.
Police were looking for evidence against her 32-year-old son, Michael Ramage, who was under investigation after dropping off film at a Wal-Mart store showing him and his two sons naked. But the search uncovered no evidence, and charges against Ramage for using a minor in a sexual performance eventually were dismissed.
Now Sharon Ramage is suing the department, saying that a risk assessment it claims required deploying the SWAT team violated her right to be free from unreasonable searches.
"I feel like nobody should be done like I was," Ramage, who owns a restaurant, said in an interview.
Louisville police say they had no choice but to deploy the Special Weapons and Tactics Team because a score sheet it uses to assess the risk of executing every search warrant produced a score of "29" - and under the department's policy, SWAT must be called out for any score of 25 or higher.
Although the SWAT unit's commander, Lt. Tony Cobaugh, said he and other commanders can veto use of the SWAT team, he said he doesn't recall them ever doing so.
"It is one of those ?Thou shalts,' '' he said.
Detective Dan Jackman of the Crimes Against Children Unit said in a deposition that no one - not even Chief Robert White -overrules the Risk Assessment Matrix, which is designed to ensure officer safety.
In her civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Ramage says that by slavishly following a policy that removes officer discretion and "commands ... the use of excessive force" in executing some warrants, the department violated her Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable searches of her home.
Her lawyer, Daniel Canon, said the search permanently injured Ramage's surgically repaired knee and that the case is "a prime illustration of why simple arithmetic cannot and should not be used to identify the risk posed by any given situation." The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Canon said the search could have been executed by patrol officers. Instead, he said, "They sent the Marines."
Assistant County Attorney Lisa Schweickart, who is defending the suit, says in court papers that deploying the SWAT team was justified by the sprawling size of Ramage's fenced property, which is 16 acres and includes two out buildings, in addition to the house.
She also cited Michael Ramage's "dangerous criminal history," which includes a 1998 conviction for carrying a concealed deadly weapon and another charge in 2007 for the same offense.
Michael Ramage, who lived with his mother, wasn't home at the time of the search, as police expected. Canon says that if he posed such a risk, police could have arrested him before the search. Canon said he Ramage was on a family outing with his children at the time.
The suit was filed in June 2008, and Judge John G. Heyburn II has given the city until March 22 to respond to a motion Ramage filed last month asking for a judgment in her favor.
The old Louisville police department began using the risk assessment matrix in 1998 to define high-risk warrants that should be carried out by the SWAT team, according to Maj. Don Burbrink, who devised the formula, borrowing definitions from the Los Angeles Police Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Burbrink said that matrix provides more consistent and objective decisions and ensures that the SWAT team, comprised of volunteer officers, is not over burdened. The department last year executed 569 search warrants, using the SWAT team for 31, or about 5 percent, said Dwight Mitchell, a police department spokesman.
Canon acknowledged that Louisville is one of many departments that use the matrix; he said he hadn't found any cases in which such policies have been challenged in court.
Former assistant Louisville chief Cindy Shain, now associate director of the Southern Police Institute at University of Louisville, said using the matrix to define high-risk searches helps protect officers and the public during "a potentially dangerous law enforcement activity."
Such formulas are employed by departments across the country, including in Cincinnati, Minnesota and Evansville. But other forces prefer to let SWAT commanders or other ranking officers make the call, said John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association in Doylestown, Pa.
That includes the Lexington Police Department, where special operations Commander Shawn Coleman said the more flexible policy allows the department to base decisions on "what we observe firsthand."
The Ramage case began to unfold in June 2007, when an employee at a color-film processing company in Atlanta spotted pictures of Michael Ramage with two nude children, as well as another photo of Ramage's genitalia. The man called the Louisville Crimes Against Children Unit.
Detective Jackman confirmed that Ramage lived at his mother's house and persuaded a circuit judge to sign a warrant to search the premises for child pornography.
Jackman also filled out the one-page risk-assessment matrix, which was reviewed by a supervisor
He marked 10 points - the maximum - for "location is fortified requiring specialty breeching," 8 points for "subject has history of assault or resisting arrest," and 4 points each for "subject is known to carry firearms" and "subject has a violent criminal history."
Jackman also added 2 points for "arrest warrant is for crimes against persons," even though there was no arrest warrant yet.
Defending the police department's actions, Schweickart noted that the courts have said officers may detain occupants of a residence during a search. And she also pointed out that by Sharon Ramage's own admission, only two officers touched her.
But Canon says the SWAT unit never asked her for consent to search the house, which he said she surely she would have granted, and that by practice, SWAT never seeks such permission.
The SWAT team also unit used a 45-pound ram to break in her back door, heavily damaging the house, even though the front door was open, he said.
Canon also said there was no "particularized" proof that Michael Ramage would be armed or dangerous, and that the computerized list of his prior charges that Jackman reviewed didn't include all the dispositions. Most of 19 charges against him since 1997 were merged or dismissed, court records show.
Finally, Canon said that police could have overcome the fence by walking through an open front gate.
Michael Ramage was arrested the day after the search and eventually indicted on two counts of portraying a sexual performance by a minor. A judge dismissed the charges in January 2008 on the commonwealth's motion. He declined to comment.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jonathan Heck said the two boys were living with Ramage and he didn't want to force them to have to testify against their father. Heck said the boys also told him their father had never molested them.
Ramage's criminal defense lawyer, Bruce Prizant, said the charges were dismissed because it turned out that the photographs were "totally innocent" and his client had done nothing wrong.
Prizant said a Family Court judge later rejected the state's motion to take the boys away from their father.
"The whole case was an overreaction," Prizant said. "And the real victim was Sharon Ramage."