Florida police officers twice kicked down an innocent black woman’s door and forced her naked out of her home in front of multiple officers and her children

The same Florida sheriff’s department that got here under fire last month for shooting and killing a black U.S. Air Force senior airman has been sued for twice breaking right into a black woman’s home and dragging her outside naked, where she was handcuffed and left standing in front of his house, in front of his two children.

LaTanya Griffin wasn’t even named on the warrant issued by Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies after they broke into her home twice in the predawn hours in 2019 and 2020, waking her from sleep and ordering him to depart, in response to the federal lawsuit Griffin filed last month.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office can be the identical law enforcement agency whose deputy in November 2023 repeatedly shot at a police automobile containing an unarmed black man in handcuffs after he was startled by an acorn falling from a tree and hitting the police automobile. Deputy Jesse Hernandez resigned.

Griffin’s lawsuit is one other black eye for law enforcement in the Florida Panhandle, which oversees a population of 212,000 people. The family of Airman Roger Fortson, who died last month in a questionable accident, can be prone to file a lawsuit following the arrest of attorney Benjamin Crump. The deputy on the case, Eddie Duran, was fired.

According to the Northwest Florida Daily News, in Griffin’s case, deputies were in search of a person named Tony Streeter, who was wanted on drug trafficking, firearms and arson charges. According to the Department of Justice, Streeter has already been convicted and is serving a 30-year prison sentence US Department of Justice.

It’s not clear from the lawsuit or Justice Department press releases what Streeter’s connection was to Griffin’s residence, however the only charges she ever faced in reference to the 2 raids were two misdemeanors stemming from the second incident: possession of lower than 20 grams of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia drug-related. But those charges were dismissed. Court records available online show Griffin’s only other run-ins with the law in the past were for traffic violations and evictions, but they were mostly civil matters.

In the lawsuit, Griffin names Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden and retired Deputy Grady Carpenter, who oversaw each raids. Spokesman for the sheriff’s office he told McClatchy News that Aden was not sheriff during these two incidents and subsequently cannot comment on the matter.

However, Kevin R. Anderson, an attorney representing Griffin, told McClatchy News that he was being sued “in an official capacity,” not a “personal capacity.”

“Knowing that a person is naked or completely naked, not once, but twice, and then just being taken out of their apartment and into a public place for people to have access to what they look like… it’s just indescribable,” Anderson said . McClatchy News.

According to the lawsuit, the primary incident occurred on Aug. 29, 2019, and the second occurred on May 28, 2020. In each incidents, officers used battering rams to wake her from sleep and ordered her to go outside naked, where she was forced to face in front of multiple officers, including local, state and federal officers, for a “significant amount of time” in front of his 14-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter.

“Okaloosa sheriff’s deputies ultimately placed a sleeveless shirt over plaintiff’s head, providing partial coverage but not coverage of her genitalia,” the lawsuit says.

Griffin is searching for greater than $1 million in damages.