Police Blew Up This Innocent Woman's House and Left Her With the Bill. A Judge Says She's Owed $60,000.
Vicki Baker's legal odyssey is finally coming to an end.
Years after a SWAT team in Texas destroyed an innocent woman's home while trying to apprehend a fugitive, the local government will have to pay her $60,000 in damages plus interest, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
That decision may sound like common sense. But the ending was far from guaranteed in a legal odyssey that saw Vicki Baker of McKinney, Texas, left with a dilapidated house—and the bill for the damages—even though she was never suspected of wrongdoing.
"I've lost everything," she told Reason in 2021. "I've lost my chance to sell my house. I've lost my chance to retire without fear of how I'm going to make my regular bills."
In July 2020, law enforcement detonated about 30 tear gas grenades inside Baker's home, blew off the garage entryway with explosives, and careened a BearCat armored vehicle through her backyard fence. They smashed the windows and drove through her front door. (Baker's daughter, Deanna Cook, had given them a garage door opener and the code to enter the home.)
Police were in search of Wesley Little, who was on the run after kidnapping a teenage girl. Upon arriving at Baker's home, Little—who had formerly worked for Baker as a handyman—encountered Cook, who called law enforcement. Little released the girl unharmed but refused to exit himself, prompting the SWAT team to destroy the home. He was ultimately found dead from suicide.
"The tear gas was everywhere," Baker, who is now in her 80s, said. "It was on the walls. It was on the floors. It was on the furniture. It was everywhere." Her daughter's dog was rendered deaf and blind.
Baker told Reason she has "a very high regard for the police," and she did not challenge that they acted in the best interest of the community that day. But not long after they ravaged her home, things began to fall apart even more, metaphorically speaking. Her home insurance would not cover the damages, citing a clause that protects them from having to reimburse people for damages caused by the government. But the government would not help either, telling Baker she did not meet its definition of a victim.
That general excuse often works—as this is not the first such story. The Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment promises the government cannot take private property without "just compensation." But some governments have managed to evade that pledge by claiming there is an exception to that rule if the property was destroyed via police power.
Judge Amos Mazzant of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in 2021 ruled Baker could sue, ultimately calling that interpretation of the law "untenable." In June 2022, a jury awarded her $59,656.59 in damages.
Yet that victory would be short-lived. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed that judgment in 2023, ruling she was foreclosed from relief under federal law because police acted out of "necessity during an active emergency." The Supreme Court declined to hear the case last year.
So Baker pivoted back to the Texas Constitution. Attorneys for McKinney argued that Baker's state law claim died with her federal one, an argument Mazzant rejected in his opinion published Thursday. "The [5th Circuit] specifically noted in its Summary Judgment Order that 'the Texas Constitution's Takings Clause differs from the Takings Clause set forth in the United States Constitution,'" writes Mazzant. "It is entirely possible for a defendant to violate the Texas Takings Clause—a clause more protective than its federal analog—without violating the Fifth Amendment."
"Regarding future victims, this should help in Texas," says Jeffrey Redfern, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, who represented Baker. "As far as we can tell, municipalities in Texas have just been ignoring this binding decision from the Texas Supreme Court about SWAT damage, but hopefully some publicity around the result will spur change."
At the federal level, however, the issue remains an open question. "Whether any such exception exists (and how the Takings Clause applies when the government destroys property pursuant to its police power)," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a statement after the Supreme Court denied Baker's case, "is an important and complex question that would benefit from further percolation in the lower courts prior to this Court's intervention."
While some municipalities opt to pay innocent property owners in such cases, many treat victims like McKinney treated Baker. It doesn't have to be that way. "Paying these kinds of claims is not going to bankrupt cities," says Redfern. "Raids like this aren't an everyday occurrence in most jurisdictions, and the damage is usually in the five figures. Ruinous for many property owners, but an easy check to cut for municipalities."
