SCHENECTADY Parents protest police raid BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
A sleepover was abruptly ended by a police raid this week, the children placed on the fl oor while federal agents guarded them with guns drawn. As per police procedure, the seven children ranging in age from 3 to 8 were taken downstairs to be watched by a neighbor while DEA agents searched the apartment. Now the parents who hosted the sleepover are protesting, saying that agents raided the wrong apartment. The subject of the raid, Ramone Barnhill, had already been arrested an hour earlier at his residence in Hudson, police confi rmed. But Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett said the DEA still had a valid warrant for the upstairs Schenectady apartment at 245 McClellan St., where agents were looking for drugs and money. “The bottom line is, they still have the authority to search for drugs,” he said. The residents, Tiffany and Alex Barnhill, said Ramone Barnhill had never lived in their apartment. He is their cousin. He had been evicted from the downstairs apartment in March for failure to pay rent, they said. Tiffany Barnhill said agents seemed to believe Barnhill had stored contraband at their apartment. “They said, ‘Where the F is all the money and the bags of drugs? Where the F is Ramone?’ ” she said, censoring herself to avoid swearing. “I kept saying, ‘You have the wrong house!’ ” A DEA spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment as to whether the agents had the wrong apartment. Schenectady police backed up agents during the raid. She had been sleeping naked and was placed on a couch with her hands behind her back. Although agents put a small blanket over her, in that position her chest was still exposed, she said. “They exposed me to a room full of men,” she said. Barnhill said she waited more than an hour on the couch before a female officer arrived and escorted her to a bathroom to put on clothes. Bennett declined to say how long it took for the female officer to arrive, saying it didn’t matter. “So she sits there with a blanket over her; she’s still covered. Where the harm?” he said. The raid began at 7 a.m.; shift change is at 8 a.m. There are few female police officers in the department, and the department does not always have one on duty at night. After a 90-minute search of the apartment, agents found no contraband and made no arrests. .................>>>>.......................>>>>..................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00903&AppName=1
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