ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605200067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL CROAN STAFF WRITER
Daniel Buonocore was in his basement workshop "tinkering with stuff" when he first heard a knocking on his front door around 8 p.m. on Nov. 24, 1992.
Upon opening his basement doors, Buonocore heard, "Stop! Police! Put your hands up! Search warrant!" The order was repeated before a dazed and confused Buonocore complied.
Rushing from the front door to the basement, armed agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, accompanied by officers from the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, presented Buonocore with a warrant to search his home for illegal weapons.
Later, Buonocore discovered that Jim Thompson, a security officer for C&P Telephone Co., now known as Bell Atlantic, had come along on the search, reportedly only to identify stolen property belonging to C&P, Buonocore's employer.
In a subsequent lawsuit, Buonocore said Thompson's presence violated his 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, because Thompson was not a law enforcement official.
"How are you going to be 'secure,''' Buonocore said in reference to the wording of the constitution, "when anybody with a warrant can bring their brother and 27 other people into your house?"
On Friday, after a two-day trial in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, a seven-member jury agreed. It found that David Cundiff, a sheriff's department sergeant, had violated Buonocore's constitutional rights by inviting Thompson along.
It awarded Buonocore $8,500 in general damages. He had asked for $10 million.
"I was very satisfied and pleased that the jury determined Mr. Buonocore's rights were, in fact, violated," said Buonocore's chief legal counsel John Boitnott.
However, Buonocore was not so pleased. "The monetary amount, I thought, was a joke. I lost more than $8,500 just in legal fees," he said.
Thompson did not enter Buonocore's residence until after ATF agents filed into the basement and secured the house, checking to make sure there was nothing, and no one, in the house that would threaten their safety.
Buonocore, a gun collector, immediately told the officers where all of his guns were kept: two in a case near the basement door, scores in an ornate gun cabinet in his basement, and one loaded pistol in his bedroom. Law enforcement officials counted 48 guns in Buonocore's home, all of which were legal.
The officers continued to search Buonocore's home for illegal weapons during the next half hour.
Meanwhile, Thompson had begun to look around Buonocore's home.
He found several items, including spray paint, electrical tape, glass cleaner, a telephone headset, a large heavy-duty umbrella and a root-cutter made out of scrap metal stamped "C&P."
About a week later, C&P fired Buonocore for allegedly taking company property home without proper authorization. The company took no legal action.
"C&P cannot prove without a doubt that any of that stuff was theirs," Buonocore said.
He soon filed a lawsuit against C&P; Donald Harris, the ATF agent in charge of the raid; Cundiff; and Linda Taylor, Buonocore's former live-in girlfriend, who originally told Cundiff and Thompson about his firearms and the allegedly stolen property.
Taylor has since disappeared, reportedly moving to Texas soon after the raid, and was dropped from the lawsuit.
C&P, represented by Jim Thompson during the raid, was also dropped from the lawsuit because a private citizen cannot violate another individual's rights against "unreasonable searches and seizures."
Consequently, Buonocore contended that Harris and Cundiff were responsible for the violation of his constitutional rights because they had allowed Thompson to enter his home and look for and identify allegedly stolen property. The jury, however, found Harris had not violated Buonocore's rights.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB