A wall of tear gas hit Carlos Pena the second he stepped inside his North Hollywood print shop. The noxious fumes choked him and blurred his vision. But what little he could make out was worse than the physical pain.
Expensive copy machines and printers ruined. Holes blown through doors, walls, windows and the roof. All the inventory — posters, framed photos, custom T-shirts — ruined as a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team tried to reach a fugitive they believed was barricaded inside.
Pena doesn’t fault police for the damage, but he is now suing the city of Los Angeles alleging the government ignored his requests to pay for the repairs.
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“When I saw the shop, that destruction, the work of my life just being run down for one guy,” Pena told Fox News. “It was really depressing. To the point that at that time I said, ‘Why didn’t this guy just shoot me?’ Your whole lifespan, work span is just sent down the drain. It’s terrible.”
On Aug. 3, 2022, Pena heard a commotion outside his store. He poked his head out the door of NoHo Printing & Graphics and saw U.S. Marshals running toward him, guns drawn. The man they were chasing slammed into Pena’s shoulder and threw him out of the shop, barricading himself inside.
After an hours-long standoff, an LAPD SWAT team launched more than 30 cannisters of tear gas into the building, according to Pena’s lawsuit. When police finally entered the shop, they realized the fugitive had escaped.
They left Pena with more than $60,000 in destroyed machinery and merchandise and an uninhabitable shop.
His insurance company, like most, doesn’t cover destruction caused by the government. So he reached out to city officials asking that they compensate him for the damages but said he has yet to receive a formal response. One employee told him over the phone that he was unlikely to get any money, according to the lawsuit.
“It’s a terrible feeling because you tend to trust your authorities,” he said. “I can see [the government] helping others, that they’re not even doing anything for society. I mean, not even paying their taxes … and I’ve been in business for 31 years and they destroy my place and they try to make me feel like it was really my fault.”
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Pena is now represented by the nonprofit Institute for Justice, which argues police seized his shop under the Takings Clause, similar to eminent domain when the government seizes someone’s property to build a road or other infrastructure.
“The U.S. Constitution provides that when government takes private property for public uses and public purposes, it has to compensate the affected individuals,” said Jeffrey Redfern, Pena’s lawyer. “It doesn’t matter if it’s taking your house to build a jail or a road or a school or if it’s destroying your house to catch a fugitive.”
A year after the SWAT raid, Pena is operating his business out of his garage using a machine sold to him at a steep discount by a sympathetic printer. He estimates he’s lost about 82% of his business and his wife, who retired a couple years ago, is now back to cleaning houses part-time to make ends meet.
Pena hopes he can one day build his business back.
“This is all I’ve done in my life. This is my passion,” he said. “I’m not young anymore, so I don’t see myself doing something else.”
Both the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and Mayor Karen Bass‘ office declined to comment on pending litigation.
Redfern is currently awaiting a decision in a similar case from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. IJ represented Vicki Baker, whose Texas home was destroyed by police after a fugitive barricaded himself inside.
A landmark federal court ruling ordered the city of McKinney to pay Baker nearly $60,000 in damages, but the city appealed, sending the case to a higher court. Arguments were heard in June.