Search and Destroy?

Roofing Contractor John Conforti had just finished dinner when the bell rang at his $65,000 split-level home in Massapequa, L.I. There on the porch stood two agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs with a warrant to search for $4,000,000 in profits from the sale of heroin. Would he surrender the money? Conforti said he didn't know anything about it. The two then summoned some 20 more agents waiting near by, armed with sledgehammers, crowbars and other wrecking equipment.

They pried the paneling off Conforti's walls, tore up his living room furniture, ripped away aluminum siding, prodded patio tiles loose and dug gaping trenches across the yard. The agents even smashed a toilet bowl to see if the money might be between the inner and outer casings. As the demolition continued, neighbors gathered by the dozens; a Good Humor man pulled up; children peeked in the windows. The agents went on ripping, tearing and pounding things for nearly 24 hours.

Conforti's problem was that he is married to the sister of Louis Cirillo, a Bronx narcotics dealer who was recently sentenced to 25 years in jail. Last April the police dug up $1,000,000 in Cirillo's backyard. Some informants then told federal authorities that another $4,000,000 was hidden in Brother-in-Law Conforti's home. So the agents diligently did $50,000 worth of damage, by Conforti's estimate, before they gave up and left, without finding anything.

Conforti, 48, has no criminal record and says he will sue to recover his losses. His lawyer argues that "the search warrant just says they can search --not search and destroy. This isn't Viet

Nam, after all." U.S. law is not all that clear on the point, however. The Constitution forbids "unreasonable searches," but there is virtually no precedent for recovery of monetary damages, according to Columbia Law Professor Abraham D. Sofaer. For Conforti to win, "new law may have to be made."

Who should pay Conforti is also unclear. The Federal Government can plead "sovereign immunity." The individual narcotics agents would be able to claim that they are protected as agents of the Government if they can prove that they acted in "good faith" on the instructions of the search warrant. The bureau's associate regional director, Frank Monastero, who supervised the search, regrets only the failure to find any loot. "We didn't send in a lot of guys with instructions of 'you pound here' and 'you pound there,' " he says. "We went through a series of progressive steps. Whether or not this was reasonable is up to the courts to decide. I personally felt that it was."

As for John Conforti, he and his wife and three children are now pondering their future in a motel.

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