SARASOTA, Fla. -- When Sarasota Police and U.S. Marshals invaded Louise Goldsberry's home 3 years ago, they really didn't have an explanation for why they thought suspect Kyle Riley might have been there.
"I'm having a hard time processing it, I just want to understand," said Goldsberry after police told her they received an anonymous tip. "I want the truth, I want to know why they came here."
The American Civil Liberties Union defended Goldsberry in her lawsuit against Sarasota police. After years of fighting to unseal documents, ACLU vice president Michael Barfield thinks they finally have an answer.
"(Police) never admitted it, then they denied it when the goldsberry incident happened, so we think this vindicates our client's concerns about the use of stingray devices," says Barfield.
a stingray mimics a cell phone tower and allows law enforcement to secretly locate a criminal using his cell phone.
The most recent unsealed document is a court order filed by active Sarasota Police detective Michael Jackson the day Goldsberry's home was seized. In it, he asks for a judges permission to install a "pen register" and "trap and trace device. It's a common request, but he also indicates his intention to exclusively track the suspect's cell phone signal.
"Pen registers don't determine precise geographical locations of cell phones, they're only used for landlines," says Barfield.
Local defense attorney Derek Byrd, an outspoken critic of stingray devices, says law enforcement's intentions seem clear in the document.
"What they're really wanting to say is 'we want to have the permission to use all of these devices, because the stingray does all of that.'"
Sarasota Police would not comment on the document, saying Detective Jackson was working on behalf of a U.S. Marshal-led arrest.
Barfield says that's no excuse:
"The application says U.S. Marshal's and Sarasota police department, so it wasn't solely a Marshal's case."
According to Barfield, there are many more documents from this case and others the ACLU is working to unseal.
He says, "We're going to stick to this until we get a final answer from the government about what happened to Ms. Goldsberry."
