MAN SAYS HE WAS MISTAKENLY TARGETED IN DRUG RAID

Police Broke Through Wrong Door On House, Man Says

PEWAUKEE - Police officers serving a search warrant in a drug raid
last week went to the wrong address, waking a 68-year-old man from
his sleep in a pre-dawn raid that left the man fuming.

H. Victor Buerosse, 68, a retired attorney, said police intended to
target the rental unit above his office at 150 Park Ave., which is
connected to his 148 Park Ave. residence, before dawn last Friday morning.

Instead, they broke into his residence, a single-story addition
connected to but different from the two-story structure described in
the warrant, he said.

"I said, 'You guys are in the wrong place,"' Buerosse said. "All (the
sergeant) would say is, 'We have a valid search warrant.' I said,
'You don't have a valid search warrant, you dumb S.O.B., if you are
in the wrong place.'"

Despite identifying himself, Buerosse said, "they threw me on the
ground, into a closet door, hit me in the head with a shield, not
that it was that hard, but it was hard enough to knock me down."

It took the arrival of a local sergeant who knew Buerosse for
officers on the scene to accept that they had the wrong man, Buerosse
said. The officers left without an apology, he said.

"I thought, 'I'm 68 years old. What if I had a heart condition? What
if I am one of those guys who sleeps with a gun under the pillow?
What if I was one of those guys who keeps a large dog?'" Buerosse said.

Buerosse added he believed the SWAT team was an excessive show of
force because there was no information to indicate the subjects of
the search - a 20-year-old man and a 31-year-old man - were armed and
dangerous. The raid did get the men, as well as a small amount of
marijuana and drug paraphernalia, court records showed.

"My question is, what are they doing using a SWAT team to execute a
search warrant for a simple possession of marijuana?" Buerosse, a
former Delafield city attorney, said.

"When I went to law school, I was taught the sanctity of your home
was one of the greatest freedoms we have. If you don't have the
sanctity of your home in America, what have you got?"

Pewaukee Police Sgt. Jay Iding referred a reporter's questions to
Pewaukee Police Chief Ed Baumann, who was not available for comment
Tuesday night.

But Buerosse called into question what he said was "law enforcement
running amok."

"SWAT teams are not meant for simple pot possession cases. The
purpose of SWAT teams is to give police departments a specially
trained unit to react to a violent situation, not to create one," he
said. "This should not happen in America. To me you can't justify
carrying out simple, routine police work this way."

Eric Severson, commander of the county Metro Drug Enforcement Unit,
said his agency was not involved in the raid.

Severson was named leader of the Metro unit after a similar case on
Feb. 14, 2001, where Metro officers raided the wrong Muskego home,
handcuffing a woman face down in her driveway. The woman, Susan
Wilson, settled a federal civil rights case for $80,000 some 16 months later.