SWAT Teams, Fever Dreams and the Perils of Sloppy Reporting

The blow that burst open Kenneth Wright's front door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, June 8 could now be called the Shot Heard 'Round the Internet as Liberal, Conservative and Libertarian bloggers suddenly screamed in unison about the coming Police State and the Department of Education making sweeping arrests and...

... all kinds of things that turn out not to be true when you draw a breath, step back and look at the facts.

On Tuesday, June 8, 2011, local ABC affiliate News10  allegedly reported that a SWAT team had surrounded Wright's home and broken down the door in response to an unpaid student loan.

I say "allegedly" because shortly after that first story appeared- and all the screaming started- the story was taken down by News10, never to be seen again.  In it's place a revised story appeared, saying that federal agents- not a local SWAT team- had raided the home in connection with an ongoing investigation which was not connected to unpaid student loans.

By June 10th, Findlaw.com had posted a clarified summary of what actually had happened:

While his house was searched, it was not by a SWAT team, and it wasn't because his wife failed to make loan payments.

It turns out that the raid was the handiwork of the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General, which is conducting an investigation into student loan fraud.

The perception that an innocent man was arrested by a violent SWAT team was helped along by a number of irresponsible bloggers, including Huffington Post, which topped their post on the story with stock photo of a generic SWAT team that was not even present at Wright's house.

No SWAT team was used.  And for all the furor about the raid, no photos of it have been released, to my knowledge.  We have only the word of Mr. Wright and some unidentified neighbors as to how many officers were there and whether or not they looked like a SWAT team.

Armed officers are not a SWAT team.  According to the revised News10 story:

The Stockton Police Department said it was asked by federal agents to provide one officer and one patrol car just for a police presence when carrying out the search warrant.

Police officers did not participate in breaking Wright's door, handcuffing him, or searching his home.

So if it wasn't a local SWAT team conducting the raid, who might it have been? Let's go back to Findlaw:

It turns out that the raid was the handiwork of the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General, which is conducting an investigation into student loan fraud.

Who or What is the Office of Inspector General?  Well, the Office of Inspectors General was first created in 1978 and specified 12 OIGs.  The Inspector General Reform Act of 2008 expanded this number to 73 and increased their powers. Nearly every agency now has an OIG. From the OIG official website:  

The IGs are authorized to:

• have direct access to all records and information of the agency,
• have ready access to the agency head,
• conduct such investigations and issue such reports as the IG thinks appropriate (with limited national security and law enforcement exceptions),
• issue subpoenas for information and documents outside the agency (with same limited exceptions),
• administer oaths for taking testimony, and
• hire and control their own staff and contract resources.

 

So, this means that the Department of Education now has it's own police force and can issue arrest warrents, right?

Wrong.

The Department of Education did not issue an arrest warrant for Mr. Wright or his wife.  The Department collected information leading them to believe that either Mr. Wright or his wife were connected to illegal activity involving student loans.  They then took this information to a federal judge and requested a search warrant.  In order to get the search warrant, the judge had to be convinced by the evidence they presented and then sign the warrant.

Any agency desiring a search warrant has to follow this same procedure, and the judge may or may not agree to the warrant.  No signature, no search.

In this case, the judge was U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory G. Hollows.  He signed the warrant on June 3, 2011. (Big hat tip to Pasadena Sub Rosa for tracking this down.) Here's a link to at least part of the actual search warrant.

And please note: this document is a search warrant, not an arrest warrant.  To date, neither Mr. Wright nor his wife have been arrested.

Among other charges, the search warrant enables agents to look for evidence of wire fraud and conspiracy.

The OIG is used to investigate fraud, not loan defaults.  In the course of that work, the OIG serves between 30 and 35 search warrants per year.  From a PDF on the OIG site concerning the Stockton incident:

The OIG does not engage in collection of late student loan payments.  The OIG conducts criminal investigations of fraud, bribery, embezzlement and other criminal activity involving the Department of Education.

Before we execute a search warrant, OIG always assesses the risk involved so that we can assure the safety of the officers involved, the occupants of the property, and the general public.  We look at a number of factors, such as the persons known to occupy or frequent the location and whether they have any criminal or violent histories.

The partial search warrant also appears to indicate that the Department has been trying to track the participants in this conspiracy down since at least 2009.

Speaking for myself only (and I'm not a lawyer), that sounds like a pretty longstanding investigation.

So, what have we established so far?

1. There was no SWAT team present at the Wright residence. (Local police confirm this in the News10 story.)

2. The Department of Education did not raid the Wright home due to a defaulted loan.

3. The Department of Education does not have the power to issue arrest warrants or even search warrants.

4. The charges involved are criminal, not civil.  They sound quite serious and include conspiracy and wire fraud.

Anyone looking into this incident in the days just after the raid would have come across some additional interesting information:

According to the News10 team, the partial search warrant contained a list of over 100 names.  The News10 reporters tracked at least one of those names to a couple that lived in the same neighborhood as the Wrights.  They interviewed Myesha Burnside, who said that she only knew the couple in passing and couldn't imagine why her name was on the list.  Her boyfriend, also interviewed, said that Kenneth Wright was appeared frequently at local comedy shows.  The couple recognized at least 8 other names on the list.  And although not currently attending college, Ms. Burnside had applied for financial aid in the recent past.

Then News10 received a phone call from Wright's wife, Michelle.  Michelle right declined to appear on tape since she had not yet retained a lawyer, but this is an excerpt from her telephone interview:

Michelle would not discuss her personal finances or why she thinks federal agents might be interested in her until after she speaks with a lawyer.

However, Michelle Wright said "looking back, a lot of things now look shady to me."

Michelle Wright also defended her estranged husband.

"Kenny is not involved in anything," Michelle said. "Kenny knows what Kenny knows."

And what does Kenny know? 

The ABC affiliate  posted 3 videos of Mr. Wright describing the raid on his home.  The reporters seemed committed to Mr. Wright's version of events to the exclusion of any other source; in the videos nothing he says is questioned and no reporter steps in with any follow-up inquiries.  As a result, Mr. Wright gives a bravura performance.  (I was not surprised when it later emerged that Mr. Wright regularly performs at local comedy gatherings.)  He described being dragged from his home by the neck, clad only in boxer shorts; being flung to the ground by police and held down by one officer's knee on his neck; then being detained in a police car for 6 hours with his three frightened, weeping young children.

Mr. Wright is entitled to the presumption of innocence.  But speaking for myself only, I must say there were aspects of these videos that bother me:

• Mr. Wright was rousted out of bed on a Tuesday at 6 a.m. and detained until at least noon, by his own account.  Yet in his description of events he never asks for permission to call his employer or expresses any concern about how the incident could affect his job security.  In fact, in all the reporting done on this matter, no one has ever mentioned where- or if- Mr. Wright works.  Yet he is renting a 2300sq.ft. house in a nice-looking neighborhood.
• He never openly refers to himself as divorced in the video.  He says only that his wife was "out" or "gone" or "not here," at the time of the raid. 
• He also takes it for granted that his wife will not come to the scene of the raid to clear her name. (She did eventually appear.) He actually seems to find it ridiculous that anyone would expect her to do so, even as he maintains their innocence.

Student loan fraud is not a small matter of a few thousand dollars here and there.  Consider this recent case:

Michelle N. Owens, 35, was an inmate at Leath Correctional Institute in Greenwood, SC, from December 2007 to September 2008. She worked in the prison's Education Department while there and had access to inmates' personal information, according to a news release.

She then used that information to submit 23 different applications to Webster University's distance learning program. She also applied for $467,500 in federal student loans.

On Monday, she pleaded guilty to one count of federal student financial aid fraud and one felony count of mail fraud.

Couldn't a list of 100 different names serve the same purpose?

I was also intrigued that Mr. Wright's first response to the raid was not "I'm innocent!" but "I don't have a criminal record!"

Not under the name of Kenneth Wright, anyway.

But that is just speculation on my part.  Mr. Wright might well be as blameless as he claims.  Unfortunately, given the way the Internet works, by the time guilt and blame have been clearly established in a court of law, few bloggers will be paying any attention anymore.

 

 

 

Comments

[Elise]

I'm really glad you tracked down the story on this. I read the original account and then everything went dead quiet. I wondered every so often what had happened but never took the time to really investigate. Thanks for doing so.

[Church Lending]

I can't believe News 10 could actually believe an unpaid student loan could get your door broken down.