A BREONNA
Retired correx officer targeted in no-knock Queens raid ‘terrified’ about what could have happened if she’d pulled her gun
Debra Cottingham says she might have shot someone or been killed herself had she grabbed her gun when her Queens home was broken into recently.
The intruders, it turns out, were NYPD narcotics cops executing a no-knock warrant — apparently unaware Cottingham is a retired city correction officer who keeps two licensed handguns in her Laurelton home.
“I had the right to go get my gun and come out my room with my gun,” said Cottingham, 58. “What would have happened? I asked them that — nobody said anything.
“It could have been another Breonna Taylor situation.”
A year after Taylor was shot dead by cops executing a no-knock warrant at her home in Kentucky, use of such tactics has come under fire from activists and elected officials.
A bill introduced late last year would limit no-knock raids in New York to the most serious cases, such as those involving suspected killers or terrorists. The raids would be banned in drug cases.
Cottingham said had police done their homework they would have realized she worked as an NYPD civilian employee administrative assistant before serving 20 years in the Correction Department.
The man they were looking for, her boyfriend’s 26-year-old son, hasn’t lived with them since 2018.
That’s when she kicked him out because he stole from her. She barred him from her home because he is in a gang and has arrests for drugs, she said.
Police found no drugs in Cottingham’s home but ransacked her daughter’s bedroom and took cash from a safe they found there, thinking the suspect had laundered money through Cottingham’s daughter’s beauty business.
Cops executing warrants are supposed to learn everything they can about the people inside the home — steps meant to protect themselves, especially if the tenant or homeowner has firearms training, as well as innocents, such as young children.
Informants are supposed to have proven their reliability, ideally by buying drugs from the location in question with police watching from nearby and then by appearing before the judge asked to sign the warrant.
The NYPD wouldn’t answer any questions about the warrant, but a spokesman did say the cash will be returned to the daughter, Imani Scott, 29.
“I have nothing to do with him,” Scott, an esthetician, said of the suspect. “I haven’t seen him in years. That’s my hard-earned money.”
Cottingham was asleep upstairs when cops burst into her home about 6 a.m. March 19. Her boyfriend, a welder, had left for work, and her daughter had spent the night at her boyfriend’s home.
Cottingham heard the screen door open followed by two loud bangs from a battering ram. Before she had a chance to rush downstairs, cops were outside her bedroom, bright lights mounted
on their helmets and guns drawn. They took Cottingham downstairs, where she was handcuffed until police were able to confirm her guns are legally owned. Meanwhile, they busted down the locked door to her daughter’s bedroom.
“I said, ‘You’re dealing with me like it’s a crackhouse,’ and the officer said, ‘It is a crackhouse,’ ” Cottingham recalled. “I never shook so much in my life. I was the only woman here. To watch all them men, officers, run through here, I was terrified.”
“I didn’t know if they would plant anything,” she added.
Cops went out of their way to compliment her house — the crest on the fireplace, the wood details — while at the same time suggesting she needs to keep better track of who is coming and going.
She said she’s been jumpy since the raid and has flashbacks.
“This right here is supposed to be my safe haven,” she said. “Your home is your space.”
Two of the detectives involved, Novonil Chowdhury, who got the warrant, and Sekou Bourne, did not return requests for comment.
Bourne has been the subject of 21 complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, with the watchdog agency substantiating nine of the 42 total allegations of wrongdoing in those complaints. He lost 15 days in one excessive force case and 15 more in a case for which he was found guilty of an improper stop-and-frisk and house search, as well as abuse of authority.
Bourne is also named in 10 lawsuits from civilians against the city and NYPD, one pending plus nine that have been settled for a total of $440,000.
Cottingham has filed complaints with the Internal Affairs Bureau and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Her family is tired of having to explain to neighbors what happened.
“Super embarrassing,” her daughter said. “When you walk out, everybody’s looking at you like you’re El Chapo.”
The Daily News reported last week that the NYPD executed a no-knock raid at a 53-yearold woman’s home in Jamaica, Queens, but didn’t find the drugs the informant said were there.
The target, Tijuana Brown’s nephew, was arrested anyway after police found a small amount of marijuana, but the charges were quickly dismissed.