The front door of the fourth-floor apartment at 320 Dixon Rd. splintered and buckled, while the terrified family inside awakened by police crashing through their door and an ear-piercing bang.

A “flashbang” device had been tossed inside, scorching the white tiles where it exploded, they said, filling rooms with smoke and jolting a young man, two young women and two small children from their sleep early in the morning.

The family insists the police did not provide them with a search warrant, or any paperwork that explained or justified the forced entry into their home.

Within seconds, 24-year-old Patrick Kwiek was handcuffed and placed face down on the ground. “They had a gun in their hand. They punched him in the face with it,” said Kwiek’s wife, Klaudia Polska.

While the frightened children cried and with Kwiek in restraints, as many as 10 heavily armed Toronto police officers marched through the small apartment, rifling through possessions and destroying property, Kwiek said.

“They didn’t give me any paper, nothing,” said Kwiek who insisted in an interview Thursday afternoon that police did not address him by name or produce a warrant, the document granting officers the power to search his home.

Kwiek’s handcuffs were removed after police finished searching the apartment. He was not arrested.

When asked about the raid or if the family was provided with any documents or explanation, Toronto police Const. Tony Vella said they “were not in a position to comment on an ongoing investigation.”

“If any member of the public wishes to make a complaint, they should contact the (Office of the Independent Police Review Director),” an arms-length agency dedicated to investigating public complaints against the police, said Vella in an email.

Criminal lawyer Reid Rusonik said, “There is absolutely no exception in law; (police) must provide a copy of the search warrant,” to enter a person’s residence.

If something found inside that residence resulted in charges, “that alone can lead to a finding that the search was conducted unreasonably and that the evidence could be excluded,” he said.

Kwiek was part of Thursday’s sweeping pre-dawn raids that in Toronto centred on Dixon Rd. apartments.

Polska said she doesn’t understand why the police broke through her door. On Wednesday, she said two men in street clothing came to the apartment and asked if a man, whose name she didn’t recognize, lived in the unit.

Polska has lived in the building for less than six months. She said she told the men she couldn’t help them.

“I told them that he don’t live here, that I don’t know this person and he don’t live here,” said Polska. When asked if the men were police officers she said she wasn’t sure, noting again they were in regular clothing.

She showed the Star the damage to her door and the singed floor of what was her front hall closet and several pairs of scorched shoes. “Who is going to pay for this?” she asked.

Polska also showed a broken laptop. “They stepped on it,” she said of police.

Kwiek’s cousin, Jaswina Kwiek, lives in a neighbouring building and came to the unit after she heard what happened.

Jaswina Kwiek said her family told her that police were inside the apartment for about 25 minutes. At one point, the 3-year-old boy was shaking so hard that a police officer offered to call an ambulance, she said.

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“They cannot do something like that to innocent people. It was 5 o’clock in the morning. The two kids were sleeping,” she said.

“Innocent people just get so beat up and so scared and they didn’t give (any explanation about) why what happened. They just said sorry and left. This is not right.”