When time allows, officers can do surveillance, get the target location's floor plans and send someone to check it out before an operation, said Mark Lomax, former executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association and a retired major for the Pennsylvania State Police.
Two of the Shelton family's lawyers, John Holland and Dan Weiss, said some reports by individual officers failed to mention that they even went into the family's apartment as they searched for a suspect who was wanted for serious violent crimes.
It’s rare for SWAT teams to enter the wrong location, said Thor Eells, a former SWAT member and commander for the Colorado Springs Police Department and the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association.
Police then put the family, including another adult who had just gotten out of the shower, into a locked police car for about an hour and took over their apartment as they continued to search for the suspect, according to the lawsuit.
It says police knew the man they were looking for lived in apartment 307, not 306 where the Shelton family lived, and that the numbers were clearly marked.
