Global Courant 2023-04-18 13:30:56
The SWAT team destroyed Vicki Baker’s brand new gate, fired dozens of tear gas canisters through the walls, windows and roof, and used what Baker describes as a “bomb” to blow off the garage door. The purpose, police later told her, was to confuse and shock their target.
But Baker was not the suspect in any crime and was, in fact, more than 1,000 miles away when police destroyed her home in McKinney, Texas. Now the 78-year-old cancer survivor is at the center of a landmark federal court ruling ordering the city of McKinney to pay nearly $60,000 in damages for destroying her home while pursuing a fugitive.
A SWAT team destroyed Vicki Baker’s home in McKinney, Texas in July 2020. Despite a federal jury verdict that the city owes her nearly $60,000, Baker has not yet received a penny. (Courtesy of the Institute of Justice)
THE FBI HAS ESTIMATED HER LIFE SAVINGS. NOW SHE FIGHTS TO HELP OTHERS GET THEM BACK.
Baker packed up some of her belongings and moved to Montana for her retirement in the summer of 2020. The sale of her McKinney home was almost final.
But on July 25, while Baker was in Montana, a handyman she hired two years earlier took refuge in her home after kidnapping a teenage girl. Baker’s daughter fled the house and called 911 while Wesley Little stayed inside with the teen and a backpack full of guns, Baker said.
The police stormed the house. Little eventually released the 15-year-old girl, but refused to surrender and told police he would not make it out alive.
So a SWAT team came in and unleashed a barrage of tear gas explosions from all directions.
“What I’m told is the reason they did a lot of that was to confuse the culprit within,” Baker told Fox News. “They call it shock and awe.”
“While they were doing all this damage to my house,[Little]apparently killed himself,” she continued.
Every window had to be replaced. Doors had been smashed and tear gas grenades had punched holes in the drywall.
A federal jury awarded Baker $59,656.59 in damages, but the city of McKinney appealed the decision, so she still hasn’t received a penny. (Courtesy of the Institute of Justice)
HANDYMAN TURNS THE TABLES OF SCRATCHES WHO TAKE OVER HIS MOTHER’S HOUSE
“A hazmat team threw everything out,” said Baker. “They had two huge containers in front of my house and they were both full.”
Furniture, clothes, Baker’s high school yearbooks, her mother’s doll collection and antiques all had to be thrown out because they were so doused with tear gas, she said.
The tear gas and explosions left her daughter’s chihuahua blind, deaf and sick. The dog eventually had to be put down.
The buyer withdrew. Damage totaled at least $50,000.
Baker insurance company refused to cover most of the damage because her policy – like most – excludes damage caused by the government.
Baker tried to sue the city, but officials refused to pay, citing qualified immunity, a doctrine often used to protect police and other government agencies from prosecution for violating people’s rights or vandalizing property during their work.
“‘We’ve never paid a claim like this,'” Baker recalled a city employee telling her. “‘You won’t get a dime.’ Those were exactly her words.”
WATCH BAKER’S STORY: ‘I FEEL GOD IS ON OUR SIDE’:
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She said she had been crying on the couch for days.
“I was forced into semi-retirement, mostly retirement, when the cancer came along,” she said. “My house was no longer sold. I could not pay off this property.”
When the Institute for Justice took up Baker’s case, attorney Jeffrey Redfern tried to bypass immunity entirely.
“It is very good that the police have taken this man off the street, and no one disputes that,” said Redfern. “It’s just about who has to bear the costs of that.”
He argued that the police seized Baker’s property under the Takings Clause, as with eminent domain when the government might seize someone’s home to build a road or other infrastructure. Redfern said the city had the right to take the house, but Baker had to be compensated.
a federal judge agreedand a jury awarded Baker $59,656.59 in damages.
But since the City of McKinney appealed that decision, Baker still hasn’t seen a dime. The city argues that destruction of private property by police operations cannot constitute a violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The case will go to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in early June. If the appeals court sides with Baker, it will come to a joint decision with the 10th Circuit in Colorado, which previously ruled that a local police department was not required to pay damages to a man whose home was destroyed in a shootout between officers and police. a shoplifting suspect.
“That raises the likelihood of a Supreme Court review,” Redfern said.
According to Redfern, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear Baker’s case sometime in June. (Courtesy of the Institute of Justice)
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No one knows exactly how many innocent citizens have their property damaged or destroyed by police each year, but Redfern said he hears about large-scale damage “every few months.”
Baker hopes her case will help others.
“I feel like we’re going to win this thing,” she said. “I feel like God is on our side.”
Ramiro Vargas contributed to the accompanying video.
Hannah Ray Lambert is an associate producer/writer at Fox News Digital Originals.
