Judge orders City of McKinney to pay for damage caused by SWAT standoff

A five-year battle between a former McKinney resident and the city has come to an end.

Late last week, a federal judge ruled McKinney must pay nearly $60,000 to cover damage caused to a woman’s home during a SWAT standoff that had nothing to do with her.

“I'm feeling very blessed. I'm feeling very happy. It's been almost five years,” said Vicki Baker.

In July of 2020, a SWAT team descended on Baker’s McKinney home after her former handyman, turned fugitive, barricaded himself inside.

“I told them, 'OK, just get him out,' but I did say, 'Please don't destroy my house,'” she said.

Baker said she was left with more than $60,000 in damage that the city told her they wouldn’t pay.

With the help of friends, she dug into her savings to get the home back on the market.

She’d recently listed it to relocate to Montana, where she was undergoing cancer treatment.

“It was months of me wondering what in the world I was going to do until the day that Jeff Redfern called me,” she said.

With the help of the nonprofit Institute of Justice, Baker took her dispute to court.

“We're trying to establish as a matter of U.S. constitutional law that when the government intentionally destroys private property, even if they're doing it for a real good reason, that they have to compensate the people whose property they sacrifice for the common good,” said Jeffrey Redfern.

There were years of back and forth with Baker's case, which bounced all the way up to the Supreme Court and back.

At one point, McKinney did come to the table with a settlement offer, but Baker said it wasn’t enough to cover the full extent of the damage. She also wanted real change, so she continued to fight.

Last week, a federal judge ruled in her favor, ordering the city to pay $59,656.69.

In a statement to NBC 5, a city spokesperson wrote, “The city is evaluating its options for appealing this ruling.”

Baker’s celebrating the win and feeling hopeful that her battle can set a new precedent.

“I'm retired now. I live on Social Security and no longer have a paycheck. You know, so for me, it was disastrous. But what if it's somebody else that, like a single mom with little kids, and she doesn't have anything, you know, of substance to take care of these issues. So I fought, not just for me, but I was fighting for everybody else that this could happen to,” she said.

Editor's note: The City of McKinney sent NBC5 documentation showing that in January of 2022, it offered Baker a sum of $51,215.04 in exchange for her dismissal with prejudice of the lawsuit in its entirety.