Police decision to enter home sparks outrage in Lakeville

A Lakeville man who awoke to find police officers in his bedroom after he left his garage door open wants the city to make sure it won't happen again.

Troy Molde woke up at 3 a.m. on June 19 to find two Lakeville officers shining flashlights in his face and pounding on his bedroom wall. The officers, who also stumbled upon four boys under age 7 at a sleepover in the living room, justified the intrusion by saying they found Molde's garage door open, a truck with keys in the ignition and an unlocked door.

Lakeville police have run a campaign since last year to prevent crime by notifying residents about open doors, but Molde believes they crossed a line. In a letter delivered by hand on Monday, Molde gave the city 10 days to schedule a public hearing on what he considers a police violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.

"They could have been shot. I could have been shot. A lot of bad things could have happened," said Molde, 34, who added that he doesn't keep a gun at home. "That's not fair to the police, and it's not fair to homeowners."

Lakeville police began paying special attention to open garage doors and unsecured property after an increase in burglaries in 2006. Officers started leaving door hangers to notify homeowners when they noticed a risk, and burglaries dropped by more than a third in one year, said Lakeville police Chief Tom Vonhof.

Police have left about 1,000 door hangers since the campaign began and had never entered a house without permission before they came upon Molde's garage door, he said.

"This is a very unusual situation," said Vonhof, who said his officers acted appropriately, going into the house to make sure everyone was OK after they noticed "suspicious" signs.

The officer went to the front door, rang the doorbell and knocked several times, then called for backup. When the second officer arrived, they went to the garage service door, announced themselves and looked into the house, where they saw an unresponsive person lying on the floor, Vonhof said.

That, he said, was reason enough for the officers to enter, where they quickly discovered the person on the floor was a sleeping child. Molde's sons, ages 5 and 7, were having a slumber party with their 5-year-old twin cousins, near a television that Molde said he left on so the kids could find their way to the bathroom at night. The children were afraid to wake up Molde, Vonhof said, so the officers headed to his bedroom themselves.

Molde felt "totally confused" by the incident, and he said some things still don't add up: The unlocked door the officers went through is on a spring, so it's unlikely to have been standing open. The truck would have been blocking their view of the door from the street. And the area where the kids were sleeping was on the other side of the house, he said.

The Fourth Amendment does have exceptions, but police need to have a good reason to enter a home without a warrant, said Teresa Nelson, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.

In 2007, the Minnesota Supreme Court said police investigating a Duluth murder were within their rights when they didn't wait to get a warrant before entering the temporary home of a man who was subsequently convicted of the crime, on the grounds that police saw a torn window screen, unlatched door and other signs of a possible burglary and entered to find out if anyone was injured.

Lakeville City Administrator Steve Mielke declined to comment Tuesday on how the city would respond to Molde's letter until he and the city attorney review it, but he said he supports the officers' judgment call. "I would rather they be cautious and diligent," he said.