SWAT officers found Strong’s brother and a friend, both visiting from Tennessee, in the living room area and ordered them to get down on the floor.
Yet, Strong’s family members and visitors said they never heard the intruders identify themselves as police. After SWAT officers used a battering ram to force open the front door, a sergeant said he loudly announced: “Police, Search Warrant! Police, Search Warrant!” Officers said they used a public-address system on the armored vehicle to announce they were police. Then they got into an armored vehicle and drove down the street to Strong’s house. On the morning of the raid, members of the Northglenn-Thornton SWAT Team gathered at a nearby school for a briefing and to rehearse on the operation. This meant the children would not have left home early for school. Stewart said police missed a key point – the school year had ended a day before the raid. after mother and children were out of the home, according to the district attorney’s report. So, police planned to execute the search warrant at 10 a.m. Investigators had been conducting surveillance of Strong’s home and noted that the suspect’s wife and children tended to leave the home about 8:30 each morning for school.
But, since moving to Colorado in 2008, Strong had stayed out of trouble, settling down as a family man who worked for a moving company, the family’s attorney said. Stewart acknowledged that Strong had trouble with the law as a young man in Tennessee, where Denver7 found he had convictions for assault and identity theft. Police said Strong also had criminal history for possession of a controlled substance, aggravated assault, forgery and identity theft.Īrmed with this information that Strong might be dangerous, the drug task force obtained a “no-knock” warrant that allowed SWAT officers to burst into Strong’s home without knocking on the door. Investigators found evidence that Strong was a convicted felon who had a “violent gang affiliation and access to multiple firearms,” the district attorney’s report said. Yet, the lawsuit says that, during the ill-fated raid, no drugs were found in Strong’s home. The district attorney’s report said the informant received several grams of cocaine from Strong during the two undercover deals. This is a standard police practice to ensure the informant could only have received the drugs from Strong. In May, the informant conducted two cocaine purchases from Strong that were monitored by narcotics investigators.īut Stewart, the family’s attorney, said investigators did not frisk the informant to make sure he didn’t have drugs on him before he did the alleged drug transaction with Strong. 109th Place in Northglenn.Īccording to the district attorney’s shooting review report, the informant arranged to have an unnamed individual buy cocaine from Strong and deliver it to the informant. The North Metro Drug Task Force, which is comprised of officers from local police departments, had begun an undercover investigation of Strong about a month before the shooting.Ī confidential informant had told task force investigators that Strong was selling cocaine from his home at 10909 E. However, Adams County District Attorney Dave Young’s review of the deadly shooting concluded that the evidence did not support filing criminal charges against the two officers who shot Strong, because they acted in self-defense, fearing for their life and the life of fellow officers. The lawsuit claims police used excessive force, shooting Strong in the head at close range after he’d collapsed in a “fetal position” on the floor and jeopardizing and traumatizing his wife and children and two visitors in the home. Neither the children, nor their mother were injured. The lawsuit also named as defendants Northglenn police Officer Nicholas Wilson, Thornton police Detective Jason Schlenker and Detective Adam Nielson of the North Metro Drug Task Force.īen Stewart, the Strong family’s attorney, said that during the drug raid, SWAT officers were “shooting blindly through bedroom walls” and floors, sending bullets into bedrooms where Strong’s wife and the couple’s 14-year-old son were. Northglenn Officer Nicholas Wilson was shot in the arm and the thigh and his armored vest stopped a third bullet. 22 times – according to a family attorney - while his wife and two young children were in the Northglenn home. The lawsuit and law enforcement documents highlight the conflicting accounts of what happened on the morning of when officers shot James Edward Strong Jr.
A federal lawsuit has been filed against the Northglenn, Thornton and Westminster police departments in a 2015 drug raid shootout that left a 32-year-old suspect dead and a Northglenn officer wounded.
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