Around 6 a.m. on May 8, the 12-member SWAT team swarmed Bowe's house, shot his dog, then shot Bowe twice in the stomach.
Bowe was rushed to the intensive-care unit at Hollywood's Memorial Regional Hospital — the same hospital he was born in 34 years earlier. His family hurried to his side, but for two days, they weren't allowed to see him. Bowe was officially under arrest for possession of cocaine and resisting arrest without violence; technically, he had to be bailed out before they could visit him. It took relatives two days to make the $10,000 bail. By then, Bowe was in a medically induced coma.
In the meantime, police released basic details of the shooting and the charges against Bowe. They said they'd followed proper procedure in the raid by announcing their presence, knocking on the door, and then bursting through the front of the house. In the police narrative of the shooting, McKenzie claims to have seen Bowe holding an "unknown reflective item" before he fired. Bowe was unarmed, though, and it's unclear what he was holding. The only objects taken from the kitchen for evidence were a can of Raid, a watch, a lighter, a cell phone, and a spatula.
Police Chief Dwayne Flournoy says Hallandale Beach PD followed the procedures laid out by Florida's State Statute 933.09, which he quoted word for word to
New Times.
"An officer may break open any outer door, inner door, or window of a house or any part of a house or anything therein to execute the warrant, if after due notice of the officer's authority and purpose, he or she is refused admittance to said house or access to anything therein," he says.
But some neighbors take issue with the police version of events, claiming cops actually went through the back door first and never announced themselves.
Arvis Samuel, a 41-year-old longtime friend of Bowe's, lives in the house across the street. He says police ran through the backyard. Then he heard the gunshots that killed Tank, the pit bull, and then Bowe.
"They didn't serve the warrant at the front door. They went straight through the back door," Samuel says. "I heard the first gunshots, and the first shot was to kill the dog at the back door. About 30 seconds after the first shot came the second and third shot."
"When they militarize themselves to that point, it's total overkill for basic drug sellers," Rocco says.
Corneesa Bowe, Howard's sister who was next door during the raid, believes Howard was asleep when the first shot killed Tank. She believes he got up to see what was happening, walking into the kitchen that faces the back door. When police broke in, Howard was facing McKenzie, who then shot him.
"I heard some screaming and then the gunshots," she recalls. "And after that, my brother was crying out, 'Why did y'all shoot me?'"
Samuel could also hear Bowe shouting after he had been shot. "I heard him screaming for about three or four minutes," says Samuel. "He was telling them to stop, don't shoot."
At Hollywood's Memorial Hospital, Bowe's family sat at his bedside for the next ten days. "The doctors told us his organs were destroyed," says Corneesa. "He had to be on pain meds the entire time. They took him off the medication once, and his blood pressure shot up through the roof."
Police say they went through the front of Bowe's home, but some neighbors say cops went through the back door first.
Photo by Brian M. Stewart
Although he never regained consciousness, the family thought Howard was fighting. He once ripped out some of the tubes in his throat. Another time he tried to roll out of bed. Doctors said these were just reflexes. But to the family, it was something more.
"He was trying to communicate something," says Bruce.
But on May 19, Bowe's organs failed, and he died. His son sat by his bed, watching him slip away, while Bowe's father tried to comfort the rest of the clan.
"I didn't get him out of here fast enough," Howard Bowe Sr. says. "This city doesn't want us here anymore. They're pushing us out. They want to get rid of us. And now they killed Poochie."
Bowe is far from the first small-time drug suspect targeted by the Hallandale Beach Police Department. Critics in the community say the number of raids in the blocks surrounding Bowe's house paint the picture of an affluent community deploying a heavy police presence on its small black neighborhood — and getting scant results to back up the tactics.
"The police have been using excessive force almost exclusively on the west side of Hallandale and disproportionately targeting the black community," says Brian Stewart, an attorney who lives on the same street where Bowe was shot.
Activists say the trend is the latest problem for a force with a history of racially biased policing. By the 1980s, the cocaine wave sweeping Miami had an impact on Hallandale Beach. "There was a lot more drug activity back then," says Anthony Sanders, the only black member of the Hallandale Beach City Commission.
But violent crime did not grow with the drug trade. Except for a spike in murders in 1980, which saw ten, the murder rate never exceeded two per year through the '90s, according to FBI statistics. By 2000, only one person was killed in Hallandale Beach. Since then, violent crime in the small city has been minimal.
Yet Hallandale Beach Police have stepped up their aggressive policies in recent years, resulting in eight police shootings in the past five years — three of them fatal, including Bowe's.
In 2012, Gregory Ehlers was shot three times after allegedly shoplifting at a Best Buy. He was unarmed. The Ehlers family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the City of Hallandale Beach, which settled for $150,000. That same year, Eduardo Prieto, also suspected of shoplifting, was shot and killed by police. HBPD has not disclosed the reason for the shooting. Prieto's family has a pending lawsuit against the city. Prosecutors are still investigating both fatal shootings.
Tony Rocco, 59, Bowe's godfather and an ex-cop who worked in Hallandale Beach and Hollywood until 1992, says the problem is an overfunded force without much serious crime to tackle. "Some of these small-time departments want to make like they're not small-time. There's no action, so they make their own action," says Rocco, who says he retired just as the SWAT teams were growing in use. "When they militarize themselves to that point, it's total overkill for basic drug sellers... These aren't big-time cartels."
Yet SWAT raids have become a regular tactic for the force, which averages about five per year in an approximately one-square-mile radius near Bowe's home. (The department's annual budget is about $20 million, according to city figures; exact breakdowns were not available for the SWAT team's budget.) A review of the warrants in those cases paint a picture of overwhelming force routinely deployed against suspected small-time pushers.
On October 21, 2008, for instance, the Hallandale Beach SWAT team raided a home on NW First Avenue, busting down a door and swarming inside — only to find nothing but a baggie with a "trace amount" of suspected cocaine residue. Police ended up taking a filled-out job application with the resident's personal information as evidence.
"To the community, the value [of SWAT raids] is immeasurable," a city spokesman says.
Two years later, in May 2010, police raided a home on NW Seventh Terrace and didn't find any drugs. But the cops did confiscate a box of Ziploc bags because they are "commonly used to carry narcotics," according to police documents.
In November of that same year, police raided a home on NW Fourth Avenue and found nothing but "loose cannabis" on the living room floor and a baggie of marijuana stashed inside a box of Newport cigarettes.
In the raids where police did find cocaine, the amounts were usually negligible, including in two raids in the six weeks before Howard Bowe was shot. One raid turned up only three rocks of crack cocaine, and the other found just one small baggie of cocaine.
If the militaryesque operations were meant to combat heavy weaponry from suspected drug dealers, there isn't much evidence to support that precaution. In the force's 38 raids since 2006, police found only two weapons: one handgun and one AK-47. (It's not clear if the owners had permits for those guns.)
City officials say the raids are all based on solid intelligence about drug dealing. "In that area, we have four schools, four parks, and a number of churches, so they're all impacted by the drug trade," says Dobens, the Hallandale Beach spokesman. "That's where the activity is, and that's why they hit it."
However, neither Dobens nor the police department could provide drug-arrest data that might show whether Hallandale Beach's mostly black community in fact has more drug activity than its tourist-friendly beach zones. The city's overall arrest numbers suggest there isn't much criminal activity in general. In 2013, the last year for which data is available, HBPD made just 114 total arrests, including 41 felonies and 73 misdemeanors.
Hallandale Beach PD has conducted 38 SWAT raids since 2006, the vast majority in the town's small black neighborhood.
Photo by Brian M. Stewart
Black leaders say they're troubled that the raids all target Bowe's neighborhood.
"Drugs are a problem in every community, but others mask them more than us," says Sanders, the city commissioner. "In the lower-income communities, you can see where they're selling marijuana because the community is small and everybody knows everybody. But in the more affluent communities, they have drug problems too, but they're not as visible as in the lower-income communities."
Sanders says he saw that bias firsthand in 2010 when, on his way back from a football game with his teenaged sons, cops pulled him over and drew their guns on him before verbally abusing his family. "The real drug dealers are the ones shipping this stuff on yachts and flying them in here on planes, but that's not where we are," he says.
While Bowe was the first suspect to die in a Hallandale Beach raid, a look at other SWAT casualties in South Florida suggests fatalities aren't unheard of in cases that turn up small amounts of or no drugs. At least four other suspects have died since 2005 in similar cases:
• On August 25, 2005, the Sunrise Police Department raided the home of 23-year-old Anthony Diotaiuto, who was suspected of selling marijuana. According to police, Diotaiuto was in the living room when he ran from police and hid in his bedroom closet, where he armed himself with a semiautomatic handgun. Detective Sean Visners and Officer Daniel Kobayashi chased Diotaiuto into the room and allegedly saw him point the gun at Visners. That's when they shot and killed Diotaiuto.
Police later searched the home and found less than one ounce of marijuana. Both of the officers were cleared by prosecutors of any wrongdoing.
• On June 13, 2008, Vincent Hodgkiss, a 47-year-old cancer patient, was naked in his bedroom when the Pembroke Pines SWAT team busted through the front door of his home. Officer Javier Diaz later testified that as he kicked open Hodgkiss' bedroom door, Hodgkiss ran into the bathroom with a shotgun and pumped the barrel. Diaz, "in fear for his life," shot two rounds, killing the suspect. But Hodgkiss' naked body was found halfway out of the bathroom, while the shotgun was in the shower. Hodgkiss had been shot twice in the back.
Diaz was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, and the shooting was ruled justified. Police found about one ounce of weed and some prescription pills. It's not clear if those pills were for one of Hodgkiss' ailments.
• In March 2010, 52-year-old grandmother Brenda Van Zwieten testified to police that she was in fear of a man who had allegedly broken into her Pompano Beach home two weeks prior. The next day, police smashed through a sliding glass door of Van Zwieten's home in search of evidence that the mother of four was selling drugs.
According to reports, Van Zwieten ran from the living room, where police were entering, and hid in her bedroom. When deputies Geraldo Lopez and Jason Rotella kicked down her door, they claim they saw the slim blond clutching a pistol — and then they shot her five times. The cops were cleared without charges. Police later found ten ounces of marijuana and six plants in the house.
• On March 7, 2012, Miami-Dade Police smashed through the front door of a Miami Lakes home belonging to 26-year-old Michael Santana, who was sitting down to a chicken dinner with his girlfriend. Santana pulled out a gun (which he had registered), and officer German Alech shot Santana three times, killing him on the spot.
Santana had been suspected of selling marijuana. After shooting him, police found less than two ounces of pot in the home. Alech was later cleared, but Santana's family has a lawsuit pending against the police department.
On a Sunday afternoon in April, Bowe's family gathers at the Johnnie Lee James plant nursery, which his grandfather started more than 30 years ago and is now run by his mother, Belinda. Lush plants surround the small green building, which has doubled as an intimate church where Bowe's uncle James sometimes preached.
Belinda quietly holds court at her desk while she watches her ex-husband, Howard Sr., a barrel-chested 60-year-old with a booming voice used to lead construction crews, describe what a wreck he's been since his son's death.
"It hasn't been getting easier," he says. "Every first week of the month, it reminds me of when they shot Poochie. It hasn't gotten easier; it's just gotten worse."
As Bowe's family grapples with his death, community activists are asking police to reconsider how they conduct SWAT raids.
The Hallandale Beach Police Department concluded its own investigation in June 2014, just weeks after the shooting. It passed its findings to the State Attorney's Office, which will ultimately decide whether to charge Officer McKenzie with any wrongdoing.
A year later, the Bowe family isn't any closer to getting answers about why police killed Howard.
Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg
But McKenzie hasn't had to give a statement about what led him to shoot Bowe. According to Ron Ishoy, a spokesman for the Broward Attorney's Office, the officer isn't required to testify.