When they were finished, it looked as though the Greenwood Village, Colo., police had blasted rockets through the house. Projectiles were still lodged in the walls. Glass and wooden paneling crumbled on the ground below the gaping holes, and inside, the familys belongings and furniture appeared thrashed in a heap of insulation and drywall. Leo Lech, who rented the home to his son, thought it looked like al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladens compound after the raid that killed him. But now it was just a neighborhood crime scene, the suburban home where an armed Walmart shoplifting suspect randomly barricaded himself after fleeing the store on a June afternoon in 2015. For 19 hours, the suspect holed up in a bathroom as a SWAT team fired gas munition and 40-millimeter rounds through the windows, drove an armored vehicle through the doors, tossed flash-bang grenades inside and used explosives to blow out the walls.
The suspect was captured alive, but the home was utterly destroyed, eventually condemned by the City of Greenwood Village. That left Leo Lechs son, John Lech who lived there with his girlfriend and her 9-year-old son without a home. The city refused to compensate the Lech family for their losses but offered $5,000 in temporary rental assistance and for the insurance deductible. Now, after the Leches sued, a federal appeals court has decided what else the city owes the Lech family for destroying their house more than four years ago: nothing. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit unanimously ruled that the city is not required to compensate the Lech family for their lost home because it was destroyed by police while they were trying to enforce the law, rather than taken by eminent domain.
The Lechs had sued under the Fifth Amendments Takings Clause, which guarantees citizens compensation if their property is seized by the government for public use. But the court said that Greenwood Village was acting within its police power when it damaged the house, which the court said doesnt qualify as a taking under the Fifth Amendment. The court acknowledged that this may seem unfair, but when police have to protect the public, they cant be burdened with the condition that they compensate whomever is damaged by their actions along the way. It just goes to show that they can blow up your house, throw you out on the streets and say, See you later. Deal with it, Leo Lech said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday. What happened to us should never happen in this country, ever. Leo Lech said he is considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Police must be forced to draw the line at some point, he said preferably before a house is gutted and be held accountable if innocent bystanders lose everything as a result of the actions of law enforcement.
