Amber Neely
A pair of AirPods thrown out of a carjacked vehicle led the Saint Louis County SWAT team to bust down the front door of a Ferguson family's home with a battering ram.
In May 2023, a raid by the St. Louis County SWAT team shattered the door of an innocent Ferguson family. The chaotic incident at Brittany Shamily's home stemmed from a flawed search warrant based on inaccurate tracking of stolen AirPods.
The SWAT team, expecting firearms related to a carjacking that took place 12 hours prior and 16 miles away, found nothing. A friend of the carjacking victims said that his AirPods were in the stolen car, and that police could track them using Find My.
Once on scene, the SWAT team ransacked the house. According to The Riverfront Times one SWAT team member punched a basketball-sized hole in the drywall, while another broke through a drop ceiling.
The AirPods were later found outside, an hour and a half into the raid. It is likely that the carjackers had discovered and pitched the AirPods when making their escape.
The family, represented by attorneys Bevis Schock and Erich Vieth, is suing for damages and questionable police tactics. Schock highlights concerns about excessive SWAT deployments, emphasizing the need to balance officer safety with citizens' rights.
The lawsuit aims to uncover how police decide to use SWAT teams, challenging their tactics in non-threatening situations like this one.
This isn't the first time Find My has led to a SWAT raid on an innocent party. In January 2022, Denver SWAT teams raided an elderly woman's home after Find My falsely pinged her home as the location of a stolen iPhone. The woman won $3.76 million in compensation and damages.
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Malcolm Owen
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9 Comments
This seems less like a failure on the part of Find My, since the AirPods were found in the yard of the house where Find My said they were, and more a failure on the part of police procedure.
"The chaotic incident at Brittany Shamily's home stemmed from a flawed search warrant based on inaccurate tracking of stolen AirPods."
More like flawed interpretation of very accurate tracking of AirPods.
I've seen posts where the police tell the airtag and airpod tracker owners that Find My was not enough evidence or proof of anything and now they're busting down doors without due process.
That's our police forces in the USA, folks. Incompetent, careless, and unaccountable.
A law enforcement misfire — NOT a Find My misfire. Do you even understand the words you supposedly wrote in the article? It sounds like Find My operated as it was supposed to, but law enforcement didn’t.
The core of this — a SWAT team dispatched for AirPods? Good grief. Is that the threshold for lethal force? But I shouldn’t pass judgement just yet — maybe they had reason to believe the perps were holding the AirPods at gunpoint. Frightening thought.