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Chief admits officer accidentally entered dwelling first but defends other actions
By SANDY DAVIS and KIMBERLY VETTER
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — On a Wednesday afternoon last August, Baton Rouge police narcotics officer Terry Melancon broke down the door of a marijuana dealer’s home with a heavy metal battering ram to serve a search warrant.
Within seconds, the dealer opened fire, killing Melancon - who was the first through the door - and wounding the two other officers who followed him in. The dealer, Gergely Devai, was fatally wounded by return fire.
Eight months later, Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff acknowledges that Melancon, as the one with the ram, shouldn’t have been the first officer to enter. Momentum from breaking down the door, he said, carried Melancon into the duplex.
LeDuff said his department is still investigating to see if any policies were violated during the raid. He also said no changes have been made to the way detectives serve search warrants or to the training they receive.
“We didn’t just run up to a house and go in. There’s work that goes into it,” LeDuff said. “At the time, knowing what we knew, would we do it the same way today? The answer to that question is, ‘Yes.’”
Sgt. Tim Williams, an instructor for the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association, said drug raids must be meticulously planned.
“Serving a search warrant is almost like choreographing a dance,” he said. “Everybody involved has certain steps they must do to keep things safe.”
That includes how to dress, what to say, how to force a door open, who should go in first and knowing as much as possible about the drug dealer’s frame of mind, he said.
Over the past five months, The Advocate has interviewed police, witnesses, judges and experts in serving search warrants, and also reviewed documents, including the criminal investigation file on the shooting. Among the key findings:
An officer who rams open the door shouldn’t be the first person to enter. Instead, he should step aside and let team members go in first.
Police did not use a “flash-bang,” a grenade that temporarily stuns a person. Experts say such grenades can make forced entries safer.
Days before the shootout, Devai feared someone was going to rob him and seemed paranoid, according to a friend of his.
Witnesses and police accounts differ on whether officers announced themselves before breaking down the door.
Met by gunfire
Detectives Melancon, Dennis Smith, 42, and Neal Noel, 36, were part of a seven-member narcotics team that went to Devai’s gray-and-orange-trimmed duplex at 3634 Capital Heights Ave. on Aug. 10 to serve a search warrant.
Police got the warrant after receiving a tip a week earlier that 25-year-old Devai was selling marijuana from his home.
The officers - five at the front door and two at the back door - were going to do a “knock and talk.”
“You just knock on the door to explain to the person who answers the door why you’re there and what information you have,” said Capt. Larry Hayes, head of the Baton Rouge Police Department’s Narcotics Division.
But the situation escalated, Hayes said, when “there was no answer at the door.” The decision was made to force it open.
Melancon, the person designated to use the battering ram, struck the door two to three times before it opened, LeDuff said.
“On the last time when the door gave, his momentum brought him into the room,” LeDuff said. Smith, then Noel, followed Melancon inside.
Melancon had to drop the 60- pound battering ram and pull out his .40-caliber Glock handgun after entering the front room, LeDuff said.
Devai was standing just feet away, hidden behind a second door that separated the tiny front room from the rest of the apartment. By all accounts, gunfire erupted almost immediately.
“The first person to meet resistance was Terry,” LeDuff said.
Police said Devai opened fire first with his .45 caliber Llama handgun. One bullet struck Melancon in the chest, but the officer’s bulletproof vest deflected the shot.
Melancon fired one shot, which struck Devai in the stomach. Devai killed Melancon when he shot him in the head.
In all, Devai fired five shots from his handgun and the three officers fired 10 rounds. One of Noel’s bullets struck Devai in the stomach and another in the arm.
When the shooting stopped, the 31-year-old Melancon lay dead at the second doorway, Noel walked out into the yard shot in the leg; and Smith collapsed in the front doorway unconscious with a gunshot wound to the neck.
After the officers came out, Detective Frankie Caruso looked into the house and saw Devai standing inside with his hands raised in submission.
Devai was ordered outside, where he was handcuffed face down on the ground. He died about an hour later at a hospital from two gunshot wounds to the stomach.
LeDuff and Hayes acknowledge Melancon should not have been the first person to enter the house.
“In a perfect world, the man with the ram goes in last,” Hayes said. “But it’s not a perfect world.”
Experts in three surrounding states agreed - the officer with the battering ram should go in last or not at all.
“He can’t drop the ram, draw his weapon if he’s the first one in. He doesn’t have time,” said Chris Coleman, an instructor at the Arkansas Law Enforcement Academy.
Instead, Coleman said the rammer ends up blocking the doorway - and the team members who are trying to enter - because he’s trying to get rid of the battering ram and draw his weapon.
“The most dangerous place to get killed is in that funnel, the entry point,” Orrin Fuelling said.
Fuelling is director of training for the Regional Counter Drug Training Academy in Meridian, Miss., where Hayes said some Baton Rouge narcotics officers have trained.
Fuelling said he’s never heard of an instance where momentum carried the person with the battering ram through the breached door.
“Could it happen? Yes. Does it, did it, or has it ever happened? Probably. But if a unit is trained together and has trained to make those entries with a mechanical ram, then I would say the chances are very slim,” he said.
Coleman said he promotes using a “flash-bang,” a diversionary device that is thrown into the house and produces an explosive sound and a brilliant light, just before the team goes in.
“A flash-bang draws attention away from us,” he said. “It gives us the time to get in the house and get it under control.”
Williams said he uses flash-bangs, especially when a suspect has used a weapon in the past.
“Diversionary devices confuse people inside the house. It gives us a chance to get in safely,” Williams said.
Fuelling agreed, saying “it would be silly to go in there and not be as protected as much as you could.”
LeDuff said narcotics detectives don’t use flash-bangs. That’s reserved for the department’s Special Response Team.
“If it has to get to that, then it’s SRT that uses that,” LeDuff said. “There is a system in place that flags when SRT is to go in, and that’s with any division. When the system flags SRT based on (intelligence), then SRT does the entry.”
LeDuff wouldn’t say what criteria are used to call in the Special Response Team.
“That’s operational and we can’t talk about that,” he said.
State of mind
Drug dealers fear two things, said Williams, the Texas instructor.
“They’re afraid someone is going to rob them and they’re afraid they’re going to get arrested,” Williams said.
Devai’s family members have declined to be interviewed about the shooting or his mindset around the time of the incident. But one woman who knew Devai said he feared being attacked by other people in the drug trade.
Emily McElveen said she met Devai about a month before the shootout when she moved into the apartment next to his duplex.
“When he saw that I was moving in, he came over and helped me,” she said during a recent interview. “He was a really, really nice guy.”
McElveen knew Devai was involved with drugs but said she does not use them and never saw any of the marijuana - bags for sale or the potted plants - police found on the second floor of the duplex.
“I never went upstairs,” she said. “I wasn’t interested in knowing about that.”
She also said Devai never used any drugs around her. No drugs were found in Devai’s body after the shooting, according to the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office.
Devai was planning to return to LSU for the fall semester to study computers, McElveen said. He had graduated from LSU several years earlier with a degree in business.
Just before the shooting, Devai’s attention turned from school to his fear that he was going to be robbed or attacked, McElveen said.
“Someone stole his drugs during an altercation a few days before he was shot,” she said. “Now people were threatening him and his friends. He was worried, more worried than he would let on, that someone was going to hurt him.”
McElveen didn’t elaborate on the identity of the people threatening Devai.
As the days passed, Devai became more paranoid, McElveen said.
“He wanted to get another gun,” she said. “I think he thought if he was prepared, he could control it.”
Devai was not fearful of the police, McElveen said.
“He never thought they would come after him,” she said. “He wasn’t a big-time dealer. He always said he wasn’t worried about the police.”
On the day of the shooting, McElveen went over to Devai’s duplex during her lunch hour.
“He was really scared that the people who were after him had found out where he lived,” McElveen said.
After lunch, McElveen returned to her job. That was the last time she saw Devai.
When she came home from work a few hours later, police cars jammed her street and yellow crime tape prevented her from going to her apartment.
“At first, I thought the people had come over and done something to him,” she said.
It wasn’t until the police asked her to give them a statement that she found out it was a drug raid, McElveen said.
About a year before the shooting, Devai had been pulled over for waving a sawed-off shotgun at another driver.
The September 2004 incident occurred after Devai cut the man off in traffic. When the victim pulled his vehicle up to Devai’s truck and asked, “What’s your problem,” Devai responded by pointing the gun at him, the victim said in a police report.
Police confiscated the shotgun and cited Devai with a misdemeanor. He didn’t show up for trial, and a contempt hearing and new trial date had been set for November.
Narcotics chief Hayes said officers knew about this incident before the raid.
Clear warning
Experts agree that the violent nature of the drug business makess what police wear and what they say before making a forced entry critical to their safety.
Williams, an instructor who is also a member of the Amarillo Police Department’s SWAT team, teaches law enforcement officers how to serve search warrants.
“We’re always dressed exactly alike,” he said. “The entire search warrant team has on fatigues, heavy vests, helmets and goggles. We also have prominent markings that say ‘police’ on our chests, arms, and front and back of our clothes.”
Dressing the same cuts down on the risk of police shooting each other by mistake, Williams said.
“We also want to intimidate the drug dealer,” he said. “We’ve had people sitting on pistols, but they’re so intimidated and overwhelmed when they see us, they never draw it.”
Coleman, the Arkansas instructor who teaches tactical narcotics classes, said there should never be a misunderstanding about who’s at the door.
“One of the biggest fears for a drug dealer is that a competitor is going to rob them,” Coleman said. “Because of that fear, we often send in a uniformed officer first so they know we’re police.”
LeDuff said his officers made it clear to Devai that they were police.
“Do I believe he knew who was coming through that door? Yes, because I know the policies by which we work,” he said. “They were screaming and yelling ‘Police.’ And they were knocking on the door and they were yelling ‘Police.’ I know they said that because the guys at the back of the house heard them say that.”
But two witnesses say they didn’t hear any such yelled identification by the police.
After the shooting, investigators took taped statements from the officers involved. Summaries of those statements were included in the investigative file. The department refused to provide The Advocate access to the full, taped statements, saying its internal investigation is not finished.
According to the summaries: Noel, Smith and Melancon stood on the front stoop before the forced entry and knocked on the door. Detectives Frank Caruso and Eric Burkett were crouched down near the door, and Detectives Brett Busbin and Jeff Pittman were at the back door.
Police were wearing regular clothes and had body armor with the word “POLICE” on the front and back, Sgt. Don Kelly, a police spokesman, said last week.
Detectives were carrying radios, and Hayes said he was monitoring the conversations from his office.
In his statement, Busbin said that as he stood at the back door, he heard knocks at the front door for several minutes as well as the officers identifying themselves as the police.
Pittman, who also was at the back door, said that as the officers knocked, he could hear “loud commands for whoever may be in the house to come to open the door.”
Burkett, positioned at the front of the house, said detectives knocked before entering and announced themselves when they struck the door with the battering ram. Caruso, also at the front of the house, said the same.
Burkett said that while the door was being struck with the battering ram, “Noel and other detectives were yelling ‘Police, search warrant.’”
As the three officers went inside, Pittman said he could hear them announcing themselves as the “Police, BRPD.”
The police accounts differ from what two witnesses say in taped interviews with investigators and with The Advocate.
Hotel worker Michael Brady and his friend, Timothy Wroten, said they were engrossed in a new video game Aug. 10 in the adjoining apartment. Devai’s front door is just feet away from where they were sitting.
About 3:15 p.m. as the two men played John Madden Football, seven narcotics officers were getting into position to raid the next-door apartment. Brady and Wroten said they never heard anyone talking outside.
“All of a sudden we heard a loud ‘boom! boom!’” Brady said. “At first, I thought Garry was slamming his front door.”
Wroten and Brady said the sound startled them because everything had been so quiet. The volume on the game was turned down, they said, which would have allowed them to hear someone yelling “police.”
“There was just silence and then that booming sound,” Brady said. “No one said a word.”
Brady said he’s lived in the apartment for several years, and can always pick up the conversations going on inside the next-door apartment as well as outside by the front door.
“The walls here are really thin and you can hear everything,” Brady said. “If anyone had said one word, I would have heard it.”
Wroten said that when he heard the booming sound, he thought someone was breaking into his car.
“Then there was silence for just a second or two and then we heard glass breaking,” Brady said. “Then there was gunfire”
Brady and Wroten fell to the floor. Brady said he started crawling toward the back of the apartment as bullets whizzed through the thin wall into his apartment.
“I could see powder coming out of the Sheetrock as bullets came through the wall,” Brady said.
Later, police would determine it was their bullets that went through the apartment.
“I had no idea what was going on,” Wroten said.
Brady said he thought his neighbor was being held up.
“He told me he had been robbed at the last place he lived,” Brady said. “I thought that’s what was happening again.”’
The shooting didn’t last long.
“It might have lasted about 15 or 20 seconds,” Brady said. “Then I heard screaming and cussing and someone was moaning. Then I heard someone say, “Hang on. Hang on.”
The two men waited a few minutes before Brady peered out the front door.
“A group of armed men in regular clothes told us to go back in the house,” Brady said.
Wroten said he could not tell the men outside the duplex were police officers.
“They were dressed in regular clothes. They didn’t look like police, but I thought they were police by the authority in their voice when they told us to go back inside,” Wroten said.
He said he and his friend complied.
LeDuff said Wroten and Brady could have seen three officers who weren’t part of the search team.
“There were three officers from a plainclothes division working a few blocks away when the call went out on our radios, ‘Shots fired,’” LeDuff said. “Those three arrived at the scene almost immediately.”
Brady said he and Wroten waited a few minutes before going back outside.
“I saw my neighbor kneeling on the ground with his hands handcuffed behind his back,” Brady said. “He was bleeding, but he was looking around and not saying anything.”
Wroten said that when he found out police were serving a search warrant, he became angry.
“If they were going to do a raid, they could have knocked on our door and told us. At least they could have showed us their badge and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do’ and then told us to get out,’” he said.
Wroten said he “felt for the police officer, but still Mike and I could have been killed. But it didn’t matter to them who was in the way.”
When asked why police didn’t warn Brady, Kelly said detectives don’t want to “advertise their presence in advance.”
“Notifying everyone in the neighborhood about what you’re about to do without potentially tipping off the target and losing every element of surprise is neither practical nor tactically sound,” said Kelly, the police spokesman.
Investigation continues
Police started an internal investigation the day of the shooting and it is still continuing, LeDuff said.
“They look, they interview, they investigate on behalf of the chief’s office to look for policy violations,” LeDuff said of the internal investigation.
He said he won’t necessarily make the findings public.
In conjunction with the internal investigation, the department’s Weapons Review Board is investigating whether any policies were violated when police discharged their weapons.
“A Weapons Review Board reviews all police shootings, be it on duty or off duty,” LeDuff said. “It’s a safeguard for the safe practice and policy of weapons use in our department.”
Kelly said the chief appoints the seven-member board each year.
“The board meets as needed,” Kelly said.
LeDuff is clear that he believes no policies were violated in the Aug. 10 raid and that no changes have been made in the techniques or steps police use to serve warrants.
“We put the process in place to apprehend the guy,” LeDuff said. “We went in there to talk to this guy. ... He chose to bring it to the next level.”
LeDuff said his officers are well-trained and were well-prepared for serving the search warrant on Devai.
“We’ve told you about the safeguards,” he said. “We’ve told you about the work we put into it. I don’t want anybody second-guessing us. They are the best in the business.”