Late at night on February 21st, 2017, over 17 officers with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department broke down the door of Don Clark Sr.’s house, shot and killed him in a no-knock raid on a drug warrant. Clark was 63, in failing health, and an army veteran.
His family say the charges were falsified, as they explained in a press conference on June 30th. And alongside the law firm ArchCity Defenders and attorney Jerryl Christmas, they are suing for recompense for their father’s death. The lawsuit, filed in federal court on behalf of Clark’s daughter Sherrie Clark-Torrence and her four siblings, alleges that SLMPD detective Thomas Strode failed to conduct a sufficient investigation and used false and misleading information to obtain the “no knock” search warrant for Mr. Clark’s residence.
“He was old. He couldn’t run…he couldn’t get away,” Sherrie Clark-Torrance said. “Those no-knock warrants are dangerous and need to be gone.”
In St. Louis “no-knock SWAT raids” are legal, and must be signed off on by superior officers as well as a judge: according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Office of Public Information, “All search warrants are reviewed by an officers’ chain of command and submitted to a judge through the Circuit Attorney’s Office. However, under exigent circumstances, a “no-knock warrant” can be applied for, but it still follows the same process as above.”
After a judge approves a no-knock warrant, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department enters the home of a person suspected of a crime without warning, guns drawn. This is what occurred in Don Clark Sr.’s case. The suit names officer Nicholas Manasco as being the man who specifically shot Don Ray Clark Sr., and detective Thomas Strode as the man who applied for the warrant—and, the suit alleges, falsified the information that got him the warrant in the first place.
Judge Barbara Peebles signed the warrant for this no-knock SWAT raid. Along with the raid on Clark’s house, she authorized two simultaneous raids on other houses on his block.
Over the past several years, multiple people have been killed by SWAT teams executing no-knock raids in St. Louis: two of these killings occurred in St. Louis in 2017 alone, that of Clark and that of Isaiah Hammett (21). In 2020 the police killing of Breonna Taylor brought the issue of no-knock raids into the national consciousness. In June 2020, Louisville passed “Breonna’s Law,” banning the issuance of “no knock” warrants, and similar legislation has become law in Lexington, KY, Aurora, CO, and Virginia. In the country as a whole, over 20,000 of these raids are conducted each year, per data from Vox.
Don Ray Clark Jr. described entering his father’s home hours after the killing in graphic terms: “I don’t know if you all have ever been in a butcher shop…so much blood you could smell it,” he recalled. “The wall and the dresser and the floor was so covered with blood. At that time I knew. They didn’t have to tell me [he was dead]. There was so much blood on the floor.”
The defendants in the lawsuit are the specific officers involved, as well as the city of St. Louis, under whose policies this raid was conducted. “This tragic case highlights the serious institutional failures of the City of St. Louis in addressing SLMPD’s excessive and indiscriminate use of SWAT and ‘no knock’ warrants,” said Emanuel Powell, Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney with ArchCity Defenders.
Clark’s family hopes this suit will lead to changes in the St. Louis area, and limitation on the use of no-knock warrants such as this one. They are seeking injunctive relief as well as monetary damages.
“He was old. He couldn’t run…he couldn’t get away,” Sherrie Clark-Torrance said. “Those no-knock warrants are dangerous and need to be gone.”
