Big no-knock fan

Shea: Doorbusters an important tool for NYPD

Don’t knock warrant.

New York’s top cop defended his officers’ use of no-knock warrants Wednesday, and said ending the tactic scrutinized by City Hall following a Daily News probe would be a “large mistake.”

“This is the latest in a series of discussions about taking tools away from the police,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said on NY1. “Do you want to right now take away another tool of the police with everything that is going on and the gun violence that we are facing?”

Shea’s words come a day after Mayor de Blasio announced that a series of botched or questionable no-knock raids reported by The News were under review.

A clerical error appears to have led to the warrant at Isaac Okoli’s Far Rockaway, Queens, home in December 2017. Detectives were looking for a 30-yearold drug dealer who lived in a neighboring apartment house.

The target of the raid actually lived in the building next-door, as the application for the search the no-knock warrant indicated. Somehow, Okoli’s address wound up on the warrant.

“This is something we’ve gotta reevaluate now,” de Blasio said. “That could have gone in a very bad direction. We’ve gotta really do everything we can to avoid something like that happening.”

Shea said everything done in the Far Rockaway raid, as well as two other cases recently reported by The News, was aboveboard.

“Not only were the warrants appropriate, they were targeted at appropriate locations on violent gang members,” Shea said. “They were not the wrong door. They were the right door.”

No-knock warrants have come under scrutiny since the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot by police in her Kentucky home last year.

In New York, such raids would be limited to cases involving searches for killers or terrorists, if proposed legislation passes.

Shea said that there is a “high threshold” that must be reached before a no-knock warrant is authorized.

“We have a process in place where we have multiple levels of supervision, internally, up to the chief level before a warrant is applied for, and then, obviously, it goes out to the district attorney and ultimately to the judge,” Shea explained. “Many police departments from across the country come here and copy what we do.”

The police commissioner said the three families The News reported on just want to sue the city, although only one has filed litigation so far.

“We formed a unit a couple of years ago to fight frivolous lawsuits and these stories fall squarely into that category,” Shea said. “Not a penny in my eye should be paid out for any of these warrants that were highlighted in these stories.”

Another News story, on Monday, detailed a no-knock raid at the Laurelton, Queens, home of a 58-year-old retired correction officer, Debra Cottingham. The police were looking for her boyfriend’s son, who Cottingham said hasn’t lived there since 2018 when she threw him out because he’s in a gang and had drug arrests.

Cottingham said she had no idea who was busting down her door when cops showed up. If she had grabbed either of her licensed guns, she could have been killed in gotten into a shootout, she said.

Then there’s the case of Tijuana Brown, 53, whose Jamaica, Queens, home was raided because police thought her nephew was dealing drugs there. Cops found only a small amount of pot for personal use, and charges against her nephew were quickly dropped. Brown says she’s traumatized.

The families living in the homes cops raided should have turned in the lawbreaking friends and relatives staying with them, Shea said.

“[They] also have the responsibility,” Shea said. “Whether it’s a son, a daughter, the boyfriend of a daughter, or any of those circumstances, coming into your house and the community is complaining to the NYPD about drugs and guns and gang members at locations.

“If there’s a problem, let’s talk about the problem and fix it, but to rush into a situation and take another tool away would be a large mistake in my opinion,” Shea said.