Armed cops who broke in on squatters are now facing a federal civil rights lawsuit
During a hunt for a fugitive last year, a team of police armed with assault rifles burst into a North Bay Village apartment with a man, woman and small child inside. Eventually, the cops let them go.
What exactly went down in the apartment that night is the topic of considerable dispute and now a federal civil rights lawsuit in Miami. The couple, Devin Williams and Khadijah Reed Aigoro, is suing North Bay Village police on a litany of accusations — including being handcuffed and interrogated at gunpoint with a child standing by to witness it. In the suit, they likened the experience to a home invasion.
Police deny officers acted improperly and the village also notes that, technically speaking, it wasn’t even the couple’s home. Aigoro had once rented the apartment, police say, but management reported she was $5,000 behind on rent. They were considered squatters.
North Bay Village Police Chief Carlos Noriega, who was among the two dozen officers or so present the day the apartment was breached, dismissed the suit as “frivolous” and “nothing but a money grab.”
“We were investigating a potentially volatile matter with solid leads involving a wanted fugitive, a recovered firearm and possible occupied burglary,” said Noriega. In a rare move for a chief, Noriega himself was part of the apartment raid. He said he is “proactive” and likes to lead by example.
The events that brought police to the apartment actually started three days earlier when a man named Paul Paraison, now 38, fled a traffic stop for a broken tail light.
It turned out that Paraison’s license had been suspended and that he was wanted in Broward County, accused of leaving a crash that killed someone in 2017. Police eventually found his 1968 Chevy parked in a garage in the Moda apartment building at 800 West Drive. A security video surveillance showed Paraison’s girlfriend, Taylor Rice, entering a freight elevator, then getting off on the seventh floor — the same floor as the apartment police would later raid.
The next day, a North Bay Village police officer said he was on routine patrol when he was stopped by a woman cleaning a first-floor bathroom at the complex. She reported finding a gun on a first-floor toilet seat. Police recovered a Rossi .38 revolver with five live rounds that had been reported stolen from Miami Gardens. But, even after later DNA testing, police have never linked the gun to Paraison or anyone involved in the lawsuit.
Two days later, on Jan. 30, police entered apartment 728 at the Moda apartments and confronted Williams and Aigoro.
Public records obtained by the Miami Herald describe a relatively benign, legally approved entry. The village police reported they were given the go-ahead from a Miami-Dade prosecutor. In reports, police claim the lock had already been broken and pried open. before they entered.
Once inside, they reported finding Aigoro lying on the couch under a blanket. When ordered, according to police reports, she “casually” rolled off the couch and onto the ground. Williams, who police claim was standing near her, also got on the ground. Then, after a few questions and with the fugitive nowhere in sight, Williams and Aigoro were released, unharmed.
Also, according to North Bay Village police: “It should be noted, there was a small child in the apartment, who was monitored for his safety and kept calm while he played with his iPad.”
Under questioning, police said Aigoro told them she had returned to gather some of her belongings, then would be on her way. Both Aigoro and Williams denied knowing Paraison or anything about his vehicle. Rice lived in another apartment in the building; detectives interviewed her the following day at police headquarters. Rice said she knew nothing of Paraison’s past, then clammed up, police said.
The lawsuit describes vastly different descriptions of the incident.
Williams and Aigoro claim in the lawsuit that heavily armed officers pried open the apartment’s locked front door, then trained weapons resembling AR-15s at them and a child inside as they were being marched into the living room. There, they say, they were handcuffed and interrogated, before they were let go.
The lawsuit contends the raid amounted to an illegal search and seizure, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, battery, trespass, excessive force, false imprisonment and a violation of equal protections.
The lawsuit, filed in late August, is the second filed by the pair in federal court. The first claim was dismissed in June when the couple failed to oppose motions to dismiss the case filed by two officers and Noriega.
The couple’s attorney did not respond to calls for comments.
Noriega pointed to a line in the lawsuit that says “the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000 excluding interest and costs” to support his view that the couple was trying to cash in. “I’m sure our attorneys will expose the complaint for the fraud that it is,” said Noriega, “and it will be dismissed again.”
That amount cited in the lawsuit is standard. Congress decided years ago that in order for a federal court to hear a civil lawsuit, the matter in controversy must exceed $75,000.
A month later, police did catch the fugitive. With the help of an elite Miami-Dade robbery unit, tracing his phone, detectives found Paraison at Tootsie’s Cabaret’s strip club in North Miami-Dade. He was taken into custody in the parking lot without incident.
This story was originally published October 4, 2019 at 12:15 PM.
