Left: Children in the home of Sharon Shelton-Knight and Kirsty Shelton (Holland, Holland Edwards, & Grossman, LLC). Right: Sharon Shelton-Knight (Holland, Holland Edwards, & Grossman, LLC).
Members of a Denver Police Department SWAT team held terrified children at gunpoint in a raid that ended up taking place at the wrong home, according to a lawsuit filed by the family that lived there.
The incident happened on June 6, 2023, when armed officers went to a multistory apartment building in Denver looking for a violent suspect, banged on the door of unit 306 and ordered the family of Sharon Shelton-Knight outside, the lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges.
The lawsuit said the officers knew their target was in unit 307, and the number was clearly marked on the door across the hall. At one point, Shelton-Knight told the officers that they were at the wrong apartment and that the man they wanted was in 307.
The plaintiffs say they filed an internal affairs complaint over the matter but have not seen a report from the department about the incident. Shelton-Knight’s family claims the officers covered it all up to make it look like the police evacuated the family for their safety before the officers affected the arrest of their intended target hours later.
“Rather than take responsibility for this fiasco, multiple defendants have sought to rewrite the history of this incident by falsifying after-action reports, and/or altogether denying its occurrence and what they did to this family,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit names 10 officers with the agency. A spokesperson said in an email to Law&Crime that the Denver Police Department would not comment due to pending litigation and an ongoing internal investigation.
The alleged actions are detailed in court documents. It started when police officers ordered Sharon Shelton-Knight out of her apartment as they pointed assault rifles at her.
“This caused her to fear for her life, her heart to race and her legs to tremble, as she obeyed their commands to put her arms up, and continued telling them, to no avail, that they were at the wrong apartment and there were little girls inside,” the lawsuit said.
Shelton-Knight was rushed downstairs. In front of her neighbors, she was forced to walk out of her apartment in pajamas, with no shoes, and without her medicine for diabetes or high blood pressure, according to the lawsuit.
Shelton-Knight felt very faint, and her heart continued to palpitate rapidly. She also heard neighbors talking about plaintiffs being the ones the police were after, and — like her daughters — felt severely humiliated. A police dog also nearly bit her right calf, the complaint added.
The officers next aimed their assault rifles at Shelton-Knight’s daughter Kirsty Shelton, ordering her out at gunpoint, according to the lawsuit. The mother and daughter again repeatedly told police that the person they wanted was in unit 307, and there were children still in 306, the lawsuit said.
The cops then went into 306, still brandishing their assault weapons, “which terrorized the minor Plaintiffs who they knew were still inside in a back room,” the complaint said.
“Before entering their apartment, Plaintiffs Shelton and Shelton-Knight asked Defendant Officers to let them back into the unit with them, so that they could calm the children down and ensure that they would not be further scared by the police. The officers refused,” court documents said.
The officers swept the apartment to the room with the children in the back, with assault rifles out and brandished in “low-ready positions.”
“Don’t hurt us,” the children repeatedly said to the officers, according to the complaint.
The officer, “confronted so starkly with what they had done, too late,” changed their tone and tried to calm the children down without success.
“Only after so needlessly further terrifying the children, did the SWAT team bring the girls’ mother back to the apartment, who was forced to keep her arms up despite her known innocence,” the complaint says.
The police next took each family member into custody for up to two hours, locking them in a police car.
The lawsuit alleges the police covered up the incident. The lawsuit alleges that the incident commander wrote in his report that the officers were simply helping the residents in 306 be evacuated for their own protection and safety, given the location of the target suspect in apartment 307.
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