A SWAT team stormed 77-year-old Ruby Johnsons Montebello home after a serious misunderstanding about how to use the handy Apple app, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday by the ACLU of Colorado.
At least eight officers in full body armor toting automatic weapons raided Johnsons home in search of several stolen items, including six firearms and an iPhone, on Jan. 4.
Johnsons suit named Gary Staab, the lead detective in the botched raid.
The complaint claims Staab used a hastily prepared, bare-bones, misleading affidavit to obtain a warrant and perform an illegal search of Johnsons home.
Ruby Johnson is pictured At least eight officers donning full body armor and toting automatic weapons raided Johnsons home in January. NBC News Shes seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages, according to the filing and is suing Staab in his individual capacity.
Police were searching for a stolen truck that allegedly contained four semi-automatic handguns, a tactical military-style rifle, a revolver, two drones, an old iPhone 11 and $4,000 in cash.
Stills from bodycam footage taken that day show a confused Johnson being ordered outside her home while wearing a bathrobe.
Ruby Johnson is pictured at the time of the raid of her home Officers ordered the Colorado grandmother, wearing a bathrobe, out of her home to complete the raid. NBC News Staab had ordered the raid of Johnsons home after speaking to the owner of the stolen vehicle, who said he had used the Find My iPhone app and saw his phone had pinged at Johnsons address the day it was stolen.
A screenshot from the app, however, later revealed the phone pinged somewhere in the vicinity of Johnsons home and did not give a precise location. Even without the exact location, Staab allegedly insisted the stolen items were inside Johnsons home.
The complaint asserts that Staabs affidavit violated Johnsons right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures and that the affidavit lacked probable cause that evidence of crime could be found at Johnsons home, since the ping on the Find My iPhone app was not a precise location.
Crucially, if a devices location cannot be determined precisely, the user will see a blue circle around the devices marker on the map. The size of the blue circle shows how precisely the devices location can be determined. For example, the larger the circle; the greater the inaccuracy, the complaint states.