Videos Reveal Botched Police Raid

“Police with a search warrant!” a cop shouted after pounding five times with his fist on an East Street apartment’s door. 

Seconds later, he and four fellow officers rammed the door in and wound up pointing a gun at a 20-year-old who’d been asleep in bed — only to realize minutes later they’d raided the wrong apartment.

That’s one scene captured by body camera footage of a botched police search which took place last week, causing panic within the apartment of an innocent family and preceding the suicide of the raid’s original target, who was suspected of possessing and sharing child porn.

That video was released Monday as part of a broader set of New Haven Police Department (NHPD) document disclosure designed to provide insight as to how a messy search warrant execution unfurled into tragedy on April 6. 

Police Chief Karl Jacobson shared with reporters a redacted version of that search warrant along with three videos from five police officers who stormed an East Street apartment soon before 6 a.m. on April 6. He did so following a press conference at the Police Department’s Union Avenue headquarters during which the chief defended the forcible entry into the innocent upstairs neighbor’s apartment as following departmental protocol and leading to the successful seizure of key evidence in a potential case of child sex abuse one floor below. 

“A mistake was made,” Jacobson admitted Monday about the wrongful raid of upstairs neighbor Stacey Wezenter’s apartment. ​“But as far as I can see,” he said, other than choosing the wrong door, the cops ​“did everything right.”

While Jacobson has opened an Internal Affairs investigation to examine exactly what took place that morning, he told reporters Monday that other than making an initial error in regards to location, cops were seemingly in line with the law as they busted into the wrong apartment all in attempts to extract electronic devices from a 35-year-old man who has since killed himself in response to allegations of child porn possession and sharing.

Read more about the event Jacobson was referring to here.

On Thursday, April 6, the police surrounded and entered the East Street property at 6 in the morning with the intention of executing a search warrant that Jacobson said Monday pertained to the ​“illegal exchange and production of child pornography material.” The cops ultimately did enter and seize the computer of the 35-year-old resident suspected of involvement in importing and possessing child porn. 

But they did so after first going to the wrong floor, breaking down the wrong door, handcuffing an innocent upstairs neighbor and pointing guns at her 20-year-old daughter. 

The incident took a turn in a different dark direction days later, when the individual suspected of actually possessing child porn took his own life and was found dead in his apartment on April 11. 

Now, Jacobson is launching an investigation into who, if anyone, should be held accountable for going to the wrong apartment as well as the broader circumstances surrounding the suspect’s suicide.

Video from the entry largely shows what Wezenter, the third floor resident of 590 East St., already verbally described in an interview with the Independent in early April as having taken place.

Wezenter also filed a civil federal lawsuit regarding the raid on Monday, according to Jacobson. She could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Read that lawsuit here, which names Officer Justin Marshall, Mayor Justin Elicker, Police Chief Karl Jacobson and the city itself. 

The lawsuit states that ​“on April 6, 2023, during an early morning raid, a group of New Haven police office officers, with weapons drawn, and utilizing blinding flashlights, unlawfully kicked in Stacey Wezenter’s apartment door. The defendants unlawfully entered and searched her apartment and unlawfully detained and handcuffed her. The defendants proceeded to search each room. Her daughter was in one bedroom and was ordered to remain in bed. Stacey Wezenter was terrified while she was handcuffed and held at gunpoint and was interrogated about who was in her apartment.”

That complaint accuses the defendants of unlawfully searching and seizing, violating the state constitution, failing to train and supervise police officers, negligently inflicting emotional distress, assaulting and battering Wezenter and invading her privacy, among other claims. 

Read more about Wezenter’s account of what took place here, in which she recalled waking up to a barrage of guns pointed in her face and being handcuffed while her two children slept in their respective rooms. Limited body camera footage shows cops, who were operating on a no-knock warrant, scaling two flights of stairs to Wezenter’s apartment in the early morning, slamming on her door and announcing their presence before quickly busting in the door using a battering ram. That same video shows a cop rush into the room of Wezenter’s daughter and point a gun in her direction while asking for the whereabouts of the individual they were looking to investigate.

Another video shows the cops handcuffing Wezenter, though no video is available to show the cops’ initial exchange with her upon entering the apartment. She is handcuffed for about a minute and a half, at which point the cops realize they have, indeed, gone to the wrong place. Police did not share any videos on Monday of their interactions with the downstairs neighbor and child pornography suspect, who was found dead by apparent suicide several days after the raid.

Watch the body cam videos here and here and here.

Jacobson said that the incident did not necessarily mark any malice on the parts of the involved police officers, noting that ​“there’s a State Street address, an East Street address, numerous addresses,” that could have confused the cops.

Directions laid out in the search warrant about how to find the apartment also prove misleading.

“His residence, 590 East Street Unit 2, New Haven CT, is two level apartment building with a white door leading to a common hallway. From the common hallway, walk up two flights of stairs leading to a wood door that is unmarked. Prior to entering the common hallway, to the right of the door was the number 590.” 

The apartment, which is immediately adjacent to a pediatric dentist, only features two staircases, one of which leads to a hallway off of which the suspect lived and another of which leads to a sole third floor apartment occupied by Wezenter. 

Search Warrant: 2 Child Porn Videos Received, 4 Sent

The search warrant also provides new details about the child pornography case officers were tasked with investigating.

The search warrant states that the National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received five reports from a ​“cyber tip line” between Nov. 27, 2022 and Jan. 19, 2023 indicating a specific internet user was responsible for receiving at least two and sending four videos containing pornographic depictions of the sexual abuse of children. Those videos were allegedly received from and sent to another Internet user or users in ​“Middle Eastern countries.”

Police connected the New Haven-based internet user in question to the individual who has now killed himself by tracing a relevant Internet Protocol address to his home address.

The search warrant says that evidence acquired by the state and local police suggested the suspect could be guilty of two offenses: Importing child pornography and possession of child pornography in the third degree. 

Jacobson said that before any arrest could be made in the case, the cops needed to seize relevant devices and review their contents. So, the suspect was never taken into custody or faced with charges, but left to live in his apartment pending police follow-up — until he took his own life a few days later on April 11. 

“They went in, collected the evidence and left,” Jacobson said. Asked whether the forced entry to the third floor might have disrupted the cops’ ability to collect the appropriate evidence at the correct apartment, Jacobson said ​“as far as I can see, they did everything right,” but that such questions, including whether custodial arrest could have been appropriate in such a sensitive case, would be addressed in the internal affairs investigation.

“Yes, we went into the wrong residence,” Jacobson said. But, he maintained, other than that mistake, the body camera footage shows police otherwise following proper protocol. First, he said, the cops knocked on the door and waited for a response before busting it open. When they encountered Stacey Wezenter, the single mom who lives on the apartment’s third floor with her two children, they did handcuff her, but only for a short period of time and without escalating the situation.

“The officers treat her with respect and dignity,” Jacobson said, throughout the whole affair.

Mayor Justin Elicker said that he called and spoke with Wezenter on the phone after the wrongful raid. He said she asked him to connect her with a therapist, and that he subsequently contacted Clifford Beers for counseling support. He said Chief Jacobson separately visited her apartment to offer an apology and help, but she was not home at the time.

“Understandably it can be pretty traumatic when police officers are all around your apartment… To reiterate, we’re very, very sorry,” the mayor said.

He also said it was ​“important to underscore” the severity of the offenses to which police were responding. ​“Any criminal activity regarding the safety of our children we take very seriously.”