Help Evie Repair Police Damage to Home of 30 Years

I'm Analea. On May 6th, my childhood home was raided by the Sheriff's Department while they were trying to arrest my brother for failure to appear. Thankfully, no-one was injured, as my brother was the only one home at the time. My mother, Evie, who owns the house has been in long term care due to complications with blood clots that formed after a surgery in January and lead to pulmonary embolism and a whole host of resulting medical issues and she is unable to work at this time.

I found out about the raid the next morning, when multiple people shared a local news story on Facebook. It very clearly showed my brother being loaded into a vehicle, and law enforcement in riot gear climbing into a window on the front of the house. I called out of work that day, and my boyfriend and I made the hour and a half drive back to the house that I grew up in. My mother also got the news stories sent to her in the long term care facility she is staying at and needless to say, it didn't help her recovery.

A family friend had stayed at the house all night making sure no-one tried to take the opportunity of a windowless, door-less and vacant house. She reassured me that she would be there until I could make it.

When I saw the state of house that I lived in for 30 years, I couldn't stop crying.

All but one of the windows were broken. The front door was sawed off the hinges and the glass window was shattered. The side door was practically peeled apart before it was removed from the hinges. Law enforcement had "secured" the house my shoving a patio chair through one window, draping a decorative throw blanket over the remaining frame of second window, and standing a couch on one end and leaning it out another window. Glass was everywhere. Two internal walls were torn apart, and the ceiling in one room was also torn into. If that wasn't enough, they used multiple canisters or CS gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets, causing my mother's bedroom to turn into a gas chamber, even weeks later. Internal walls and a ceiling was destroyed during the raid.

My mother was scheduled to return home the Saturday after the event because her health insurance refused further care. We were able to get her an extension by forfeiting her income from social security for the time she stays there, but that limits her funds significantly.

Despite documentation, credible witness accounts, and a field adjuster stating they had never seen this extent of damage from police before, home owner's insurance is refusing to cover the damages because her plan only covers accidental damage to the home. We are looking into the appeal process as well as seeking legal advice, but we are not hopeful.

During the limited communications we've had with my brother, he has stated how devastated he is about what happened. We know it doesn't fix what happened, and he knows nothing he can say or do will fix or undo what happened. I've only seem/heard my big brother cry three times in my life, once at our grandpa's funeral, on the phone after the event when he said he saw the damage to the house when he was being arrested, and when I had to break the news that the house insurance had denied the claim.

This has been our family home since before I was born. Every family has drama, some more than others, and mine is far from perfect, but we've always had this home to return to and my mom has always been there to welcome us back for however long we needed. My mom had been slowly renovating and replacing parts of the house as she could on her limited budget and my brother was doing those repairs and renovations for her, in exchange for living there. My mother doesn't want to move since she owns the house. When she is able to return home, I would love to have the repairs done so that she can run the swamp cooler during the 100+ degree summer heat. We plan on replacing the doors, and sealing up the windows so that the house is secure first. I know my mom would at least like the windows on the front replaced so that people driving by won't know what happened, but we know times are hard for everyone, and don't expect much.

We plan on just getting the essentials taken care of and trying to squeeze pennies until she can afford to replace the windows one by one, but if you have anything you can spare to help us, we would feel incredibly blessed and forever grateful.