Canary: The Washington Post Investigates · The Washington Post

Broken Doors, Episode 1: "That's what you get"

May 25, 2022·43 min·4 clips

Benji Edwards was asleep when police smashed through his front door and put a gun to his head.

Reporter Jen Abelson introduces the Broken Doors podcast by taking listeners to Smithville, Mississippi, a small rural town about two hours from Birmingham in Monroe County. She meets Benji Edwards, a Black man in his mid-50s who worked at a furniture factory, at his deteriorating childhood home. Benji freezes at the doorway of his old bedroom, unable to enter, because it is where he was pinned to the floor at gunpoint during a no-knock police raid on November 15th, 2014. Deputies from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office burst in with a battering ram around 9:30 p.m. while Benji was sleeping and two teenagers were watching a movie in the living room. They put Benji on the floor, put a gun to his head, announced the search warrant only after handcuffing him, and tore through the house looking for drugs and cash. They repeatedly demanded to know where money was. Benji found a small amount of cocaine on a dresser that he says belonged to a friend. The reporters explain that no-knock warrants began during Nixon's War on Drugs, have been used disproportionately against people of color, and came to national attention after Louisville police killed Breonna Taylor during a botched raid. Abelson says that tracking no-knock deaths is structurally difficult because most police departments do not keep records, many warrants are sealed, and no federal database exists. She found Benji's warrant while reviewing drug raid records from Monroe County. The warrant was flawed: the affidavit was not signed by the requesting officer and contained only two sentences — that a confidential source told the sheriff that Benji was selling cocaine. There was no surveillance, no controlled drug buy, no background check. Sitting with Benji at his kitchen table, Abelson shows him the warrant he had never seen. His reaction is disbelief. Through public records requests, Abelson obtained recordings of police interviewing Joe Wade, Eva York's boyfriend, who called Cantrell to report Benji as retaliation for Eva staying at his house after a domestic dispute. Joe admits on tape that he called the sheriff the same night as the raid and confirmed the following morning that Cantrell had carried it out. He later texted Benji with a racial slur, saying that is what he gets for being with a white woman. The evidence log from the raid was incomplete and did not list the cocaine found; instead it listed an old revolver and two cars that did not belong to Benji. Deputies took all $96 of his savings. Benji was denied bond for eight months without being indicted on the drug charges. He lost his job and went into debt. He eventually pleaded guilty to an assault charge stemming from a subsequent fight with Joe Wade and received probation. When Abelson requested his court file, a clerk told her it disappeared from her desk during a lunch break. The same day, Benji was pulled over for a broken tag light — a stop he believes was related to Abelson's inquiry. Sheriff Cecil Cantrell, a former county court judge with no law enforcement experience, won his third attempt at the sheriff's race in 2012 and ran on an aggressive anti-drug platform. A former PR staffer described how Cantrell would stage money seized in drug raids to look larger for television cameras. The episode ends with a preview of the next installment, which will cover a separate no-knock raid involving a man named Ricky Keaton.

As heard by us

A measured look at a no-knock warrant case, built from records and family memory.

Broken Doors begins by circling back to Benji Edwards's Mississippi childhood home and the effect of a no-knock warrant that has lingered with the family for more than seven years.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A careful look at how a no-knock warrant can change your sense of home.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Canary: The Washington Post Investigates