Trainer Municipal Building
MEDIA, Pa. – Cops busted into a Delaware County house and took a minor in his underwear to their station without allowing him to get dressed, a new lawsuit says.
The mother of a child known as C.M. sued Trainer Borough, two officers and its chief of police this month in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas. The lawsuit alleges unreasonable seizure, unlawful interrogation and false imprisonment in the execution of a search warrant and the aftermath that left C.M. afraid to use the bathroom.
The suit says C.M. was sleeping while his mother was at work on Aug. 9, 2024, when officers in SWAT uniforms entered his house brandishing their weapons.
“At the time of the entry, C.M. was sleeping in his bedroom clothed in nothing but his underwear,” the suit says.
C.M. and his older brother were removed from the house and separated, as officers conducted a fruitless search and failed to call the mother at work, the suit says. Officers Mark Monaghan and Mitchell Holobowicz apparently decided to take the brother to their station for further questioning.
But C.M. was still in his underwear in the back of a police car. He was driven to Trainer’s police headquarters and placed in a room wearing nothing but underwear and a blanket.
“When C.M. asked to use the bathroom, one or more of the defendants told him that he would have to remove the blanket if he wished to do so,” the suit says. “Out of embarrassment, C.M. decided not to use the bathroom.”
C.M. was eventually released to his mother after she was contacted, but the suit says that came after an unlawful seizure in which he was never read his Miranda rights and never provided with the option to obtain a lawyer during questioning.
Police chief Francis Priscopo is named as a defendant as the policymaker of the borough and for having given orders to take C.M. into custody.
“Defendant Priscopo’s decisions in this regard were the driving force behind the violation of C.M.’s Fourth Amendment rights,” the suit says.
Jason Javie represents the plaintiff.
