From FoxNews (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,231364,00.html):

ATLANTA — A police official said narcotics officers were justified in returning fire on a 92-year-old woman they shot to death after she shot them as they tried to serve a warrant at her house.

Neighbors and relatives said it was a case of mistaken identity. But police said the woman, identified as Kathryn Johnston, was the only resident in the house at the time and had lived there for about 17 years.

Assistant Chief Alan Dreher said the officers had a legal warrant and "knocked and announced" before they forced open the door. He said they were justified in shooting once they were fired upon.

As the plainclothes Atlanta police officers approached the house about 7 p.m., a woman inside started shooting, striking each of them, said Officer Joe Cobb, a police spokesman.

One was hit in the arm, another in a thigh and the third in a shoulder. The officers were taken to a hospital for treatment, and all three were conscious and alert, police said.

Sarah Dozier, identified as a niece of the woman, told WAGA-TV that there were never any drugs at the house.

"My aunt was in good health. I'm sure she panicked when they kicked that door down," Dozier said. "There was no reason they had to go in there and shoot her down like a dog."

Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights leader, said Johnston's family deserves an apology.

"Of the police brutality cases we've had, this is the most egregious because of the woman's age," Hutchins said.

Hutchins said he would try to meet with Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington and would also meet with lawyers.

Another redition of the story can be found on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/22/woman.shot.ap/index.html).

http://www.foxnews.com/images/241309/2_21_112206_granny.jpg
Were the officers justified in shooting this woman?

She looks like she was about done anyways.

To what extent do you want your police to go after known small fry versus potentially bigger fish? The cops here had a choice of:

1) busting the drug dealer earlier that day, when the deal happened, catch them red-handed
-or-
2) coming back at some later time, hoping to score more evidence, land that bigger sentence, and maybe stumble onto something big

They chose "2", and got sharpshooting old grandma instead. I don't know all the details to know if it made sense or not. The cops claim they found drugs at her place afterwards and bought there beforehand. It's not clear if they should've reasonably known the tenant(s) of the place, etc. But my point is -- going for that big score tends to be more of a risk. There will inevitably be some screwups along the way, including some that cannot be redressed like this one. Is it worth it in a general "war on crime" sense? Is it worth it in the context of the "war on drugs"?

And no, I sure as hell don't know the answers.

In the "war on drugs" case, part of me wants to end the war on drugs so we can permit the self-destructive muthafuckers to off themselves in Darwinian style, kill off the prohibition that pumps $ to the druglords and "war on drugs" profiteers. Another part of me wants to help my fellow man, keep any truly "bad elements" that may go along with drugs away from my neighborhood. So, color me conflicted.

killing old ladies doesnt stop the war on drugs. But I understand you gotta do something as a cop. But why do cops have a gun range is none of them know how to disarm an assailant with a wounding shot? :lb2:

Does anyone else want to give the old lady mad props for being a pretty damn good shot. Don't know how many shots she fired, but a 92 year old GRANDMOTHER who can score 3 hits on 3 different cops has either lived in the hood for a very long time or is a former deadly assasin.

lol daviticus, she must be a good shot. Still though, I hope this doesn't turn into a race issue as well

There are a few answers that would make things better.

First, stop passing out no-knock warrants like they were candy. It should be an extreme measure used for only in the most dangerous cases.

Second, put the Special back in Special Weapons and Tactics. In bad neighborhoods hardly a warrant goes out without a paramilitary unit blazing the way in. This isn't Iraq and Atlanta (or Detroit or Los Angeles) isn't Baghdad, stop sending the marines against american citizens for petty shit.

Third, when they do execute that kind of warrant, video tape it to clear up all the confusion about whether they knocked, identified or shot grandma while she was reaching for her robe. Getting the facts on film is better for everyone.

Lastly, in those cases where the cops have completely fucked up beyond any shadow of a doubt and killed, wounded or destroyed the home of an innocent person, they should be held legally responsible for it. Right now if you are the unlucky winner of that sweepstakes you're just fucked. The cops have pretty much full immunity in these situations and they know it so there's no pressure on them to make sure they get it right.

Note that the latest Supreme Court ruling upholding "no-knock search" was quite recent, the result of a Detroit case (Hudson vs. Michigan), where Bush appointee Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote:

http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2006/06/analysis_exclus.html


First, stop passing out no-knock warrants like they were candy. It should be an extreme measure used for only in the most dangerous cases.
Do "no-knock" search warrants make sense to execute in the context of the "war on drugs", in particular? There's always the increased danger to the neighborhood and life and limb, so someone has to decide if it's worthwhile to society, so the benefits of issuing the warrant have to be couched in societal terms. What happens if we "win", here? Don't the self-destructives simply turn to abusing their bodies in legal ways -- drinking, smoking, morbid obesity, etc.? This "war on drugs" hasnt' done much other than shuffle wealth and damage around, much like past wars on drugs (e.g. Prohibition in the 1920s).


Second, put the Special back in Special Weapons and Tactics. In bad neighborhoods hardly a warrant goes out without a paramilitary unit blazing the way in. This isn't Iraq and Atlanta (or Detroit or Los Angeles) isn't Baghdad, stop sending the marines against american citizens for petty shit.
How do you cost-justify the SWAT teams? A number of SWAT teams also do "search and rescue" and other things that aren't really "law enforcement" as it is. I'm not saying that we issue bullshit warrants so we can justify SWAT. But, you want to think hard about what "put the Special back" means when expensive special programs are big budget expenses and money is tight.


Third, when they do execute that kind of warrant, video tape it to clear up all the confusion about whether they knocked, identified or shot grandma while she was reaching for her robe. Getting the facts on film is better for everyone.
We have a culture who's far too eager to take 30-second clips shown out of context and make lousy decisions. If I bust into a pedophile in the act of a crime and call them, say, a "sick motherfucker", someone will sue for being verbally hostile, causing permanent psychological damage, using language inappropriate for a city/county employee of the department, etc.


Lastly, in those cases where the cops have completely fucked up beyond any shadow of a doubt and killed, wounded or destroyed the home of an innocent person, they should be held legally responsible for it. Right now if you are the unlucky winner of that sweepstakes you're just fucked. The cops have pretty much full immunity in these situations and they know it so there's no pressure on them to make sure they get it right.
It's a nice way to recruit cops, who obviously don't have enough stress in their lives, who don't have enough problems dealing with generally the worst of society every day. I guess the cop-inclined will join the military where they'll get better protections, and we can start replacing those police with military troops on the streets. The U.S. defunded cops for the military.

If a cop-inclined person can't stand the "stress" of having to make sure they kick down the right door and shoot the right person then we're better off without them. The overriding interest here is the right of a person not to have their home wrongfully invaded, not to make things as convenient as possible for the police or to cost justify swat teams or nebulous ideas about the "war on drugs."

Background: A good friend of mine died owing to a cowboy cop egregiously not following procedure, and his family collected a large settlement. Beyond that, I've have many direct interactions with cops. If you wanted someone to set all the fucking cops on fire, there are days when I'd light the match, splash plenty of gasoline, and piss on their remains. I'm not defending them because I have a woody for them.

The simplest way to preserve the overriding interest of not having one's home invaded by cops is to eliminate the cops. Your suggestion -- to add personal criminal liability (which I assume is what you mean, as department liability for acts done as part of duty exists) does that. Would-be cops, especially the smarter ones, will eliminate themselves. Your other thought -- make SWAT more "special" -- potentially gets rids of more cops. Alternatively, one could direct our cops to never execute a search warrant. Have them work only the public independently-verifiable immediate crime in safe situations. Put all cops on safe expressways looking for folks speeding, and other low-hanging fruit.

Of course, we want more than that from our legal and law enforcement. We want them to actually do more than be reactive. Unfortunately, it's harder to deal with "bigger picture" crime, involving search warrants, investigation, etc. There's inevitably going to be screwups despite all reasonable best efforts on behalf of the legal systems involved (which may or may not have been taken in the above case -- I dunno). Make it societally acceptable to throw legal folks to the woodshed for every bloody mistake, and we end up with a police function that's comprised entirely of dead wood.

Oh, cameras are great, right until you have a bunch of people trying to calmly dissect heat-of-the-moment situational actions after the fact, thinking that everything should works like the Cops TV show and the latest movies they saw. It doesn't help when the camera-eye view might not correspond to the cop-eye view, and may get selectively edited to mislead. No one seems too eager to record, say, the police talking with their and the judge to obtain the warrant, which in this case may have been where the breakdown started.

yes, i'm glad she's dead and i hope she burns in hell.

also: no knock warrants are imperrative against the war on drugs. what is the reasonable amount of time you give after a knock without answer before you bust in? in a drug situation where it takes 1 second to flush the evidence, the reasonable amount of time is 0 (unless high volume).

and as far as i know, if you dream of a world of no cops, move to detroit. my sis told me it has gotten exponentially worse in the last year, and you can pretty much committ any crime you please without fear of reprisal.

also: no knock warrants are imperrative against the war on drugs. what is the reasonable amount of time you give after a knock without answer before you bust in? in a drug situation where it takes 1 second to flush the evidence, the reasonable amount of time is 0 (unless high volume).

and as far as i know, if you dream of a world of no cops, move to detroit. my sis told me it has gotten exponentially worse in the last year, and you can pretty much committ any crime you please without fear of reprisal.

I don't advocate anything extreme, just moving the line back a bit. If an occasional bag of pot gets flushed down the toilet because the cops didn't blast the door down without announcing themselves, so be it.

I'm not saying get rid of cops--just that the level of force should match the situation. In a lot of cities that's not the case and no-knock and paramility tactics are used as a matter of routine which is overusing them. I'm fine with swat being called out for arricaded gunmen, hostage situations and things like that where the need for escalation is clear.

Seriously, what should the standard of "reasonable" if armed people bust through your door? Right now none of the options are too good. You can try to defend your home and pray they aren't cops because if they are you are going to prison in most jurisdictions. Or you can sit there and do nothing and hope you don't get blown away regardless of whether they're cops or crooks.

Sounds like a "Dubbya" answer to the social security problem to me.

also: no knock warrants are imperrative against the war on drugs.

The "War on..." rhetoric has been invoked twice already in this thread as justification for a militaristic approach and that really shows the drawbacks of that kind of sloganeering. A war is something that can be won by killing people and blowing stuff up. The drug problem isn't war, it's policing, politics and social policy.

LOL@the war on drugs...that doesn't exist. And on top of that the fiends out here have no trouble getting their crack. what exactly is the war on? the dealers? In the whole process of drugs making it to the dealers hand is he/she at fault, and is he/she not the easiest piece to replace? Almost interchangeable from one low income/low education teen/adult to the next? If chasing them down is a war of drugs while the product getting to their hands isn't addressed, then I highly doubt there will be progress anytime soon. Atleast not on the government's end.

The Old Lady plugged some cops, so not much you can say to defend her. Unfortunately people get laid down for less(i.e. the old man with the rake who got wasted like it was an assault rifle a couple years ago), so not smart on her end. But please dont invoke the fictional war on drugs like thats even a legit thing to uphold. Its much simpler to say she shot them, and usually you get wasted when you do that.

I agree that this "war on drugs" as currently constituted is a crock of shit -- that's why I keep putting it in quotes. I do think there ought to be some sort of drug law / enforcement that makes sense and actually helps people, but that's not what we have today.

But, quite aside from the "war on drugs", we have cops executing all kinds of search warrants and such, not doing the quick little bust in exchange for the potential big bust. Sometimes we pay off "the small fry" to get "the big boss", make all sorts of ugly and bad tradeoffs. By and large, this stuff doesn't see the light of day until inevitable public screwups happens. Then they spend all their time fixating on the screwups, rather than the overall policies that make such screwups possible. When I see stuff talking about "should cops knock", "videotape", "should SWAT be involved", we're already down the wrong rabbit hole and some amount of bad shit happening will be inevitable. Start at the beginning. Here's the fishy part... it appears the drugs were sold to either:

1) Undercover officers
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/11/23/atlanta.shooting/

Police spokesman Joe Cobb said the three officers on that team had made an undercover drug buy earlier in day from a man inside Johnston's home west of downtown Atlanta.
-or-
2) A police informant
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=88163

Chief Pennington said the case was built on a drug buy by a confidential informant, who claimed he purchased drugs inside Johnston's home.

Already, the Atlanta police have flip-flopped on a key point. My hunch is that long before we get to the judge issuing a no-knock warrant and cops swarm in with bad consequences, there's rotten shit going on.

in a drug situation where it takes 1 second to flush the evidence, the reasonable amount of time is 0 (unless high volume).
What if they shut down the sewers first?

Or they could just erect a level 10 force field around the entire premises.

Quote:
Originally Posted by b-diddy
in a drug situation where it takes 1 second to flush the evidence, the reasonable amount of time is 0 (unless high volume).
What if they shut down the sewers first?

Or they could just erect a level 10 force field around the entire premises.

For them to justify a no-knock, there'd probably need to be kilos lying a round, not just a little baggie or something. This would take some effort to flush, not 1 second.

its the opposite. theres no way you can flush kilos in a few seconds, so on that amount alone, no knock is only justified by low amounts, not more (counterintuitive, but logical). then there is the other topic of officer safety. no knocks also become possible if its possible allerting the suspects would put the officers in danger.

and call it whatever you want, we are still trying to prevent the flow of illigal drugs into this country. maybe there are better ways, maybe there arent, but we are trying. and what is almost always overlooked is that more important than anything is the protection of the police officers. you may not like cops, but theyre out there trying to make your life better, and its important that we dont put an undue burden and make their jobs even more dangerous than they already are.

its the opposite. theres no way you can flush kilos in a few seconds, so on that amount alone, no knock is only justified by low amounts, not more (counterintuitive, but logical).


Ahhhh...good point.

illegal drugs still flow fairly well. so if we are trying we suck. The reality is that we aren't trying. If anything we're regulating it and have been for some time via bribes and a conveniently shitty border patrol from the south. War on drugs has been a joke for as long as its been around.


There's No Justice in the War on Drugs

By MILTON FRIEDMAN
January 11, 1998

STANFORD -- Twenty-five years ago, President Richard M. Nixon announced a "War on Drugs." I criticized the action on both moral and expediential grounds in my Newsweek column of May 1, 1972, "Prohibition and Drugs":

"On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs."

That basic ethical flaw has inevitably generated specific evils during the past quarter century, just as it did during our earlier attempt at alcohol prohibition.

1. The use of informers. Informers are not needed in crimes like robbery and murder because the victims of those crimes have a strong incentive to report the crime. In the drug trade, the crime consists of a transaction between a willing buyer and willing seller. Neither has any incentive to report a violation of law. On the contrary, it is in the self-interest of both that the crime not be reported. That is why informers are needed. The use of informers and the immense sums of money at stake inevitably generate corruption -- as they did during Prohibition. They also lead to violations of the civil rights of innocent people, to the shameful practices of forcible entry and forfeiture of property without due process.

As I wrote in 1972: ". . . addicts and pushers are not the only ones corrupted. Immense sums are at stake. It is inevitable that some relatively low-paid police and other government officials -- and some high-paid ones as well -- will succumb to the temptation to pick up easy money."

2. Filling the prisons. In 1970, 200,000 people were in prison. Today, 1.6 million people are. Eight times as many in absolute number, six times as many relative to the increased population. In addition, 2.3 million are on probation and parole. The attempt to prohibit drugs is by far the major source of the horrendous growth in the prison population.

There is no light at the end of that tunnel. How many of our citizens do we want to turn into criminals before we yell "enough"?

3. Disproportionate imprisonment of blacks. Sher Hosonko, at the time Connecticut's director of addiction services, stressed this effect of drug prohibition in a talk given in June 1995:

"Today in this country, we incarcerate 3,109 black men for every 100,000 of them in the population. Just to give you an idea of the drama in this number, our closest competitor for incarcerating black men is South Africa. South Africa -- and this is pre-Nelson Mandela and under an overt public policy of apartheid -- incarcerated 729 black men for every 100,000. Figure this out: In the land of the Bill of Rights, we jail over four times as many black men as the only country in the world that advertised a political policy of apartheid."

4. Destruction of inner cities. Drug prohibition is one of the most important factors that have combined to reduce our inner cities to their present state. The crowded inner cities have a comparative advantage for selling drugs. Though most customers do not live in the inner cities, most sellers do. Young boys and girls view the swaggering, affluent drug dealers as role models. Compared with the returns from a traditional career of study and hard work, returns from dealing drugs are tempting to young and old alike. And many, especially the young, are not dissuaded by the bullets that fly so freely in disputes between competing drug dealers -- bullets that fly only because dealing drugs is illegal. Al Capone epitomizes our earlier attempt at Prohibition; the Crips and Bloods epitomize this one.

5. Compounding the harm to users. Prohibition makes drugs exorbitantly expensive and highly uncertain in quality. A user must associate with criminals to get the drugs, and many are driven to become criminals themselves to finance the habit. Needles, which are hard to get, are often shared, with the predictable effect of spreading disease. Finally, an addict who seeks treatment must confess to being a criminal in order to qualify for a treatment program. Alternatively, professionals who treat addicts must become informers or criminals themselves.

6. Undertreatment of chronic pain. The Federal Department of Health and Human Services has issued reports showing that two-thirds of all terminal cancer patients do not receive adequate pain medication, and the numbers are surely higher in nonterminally ill patients. Such serious undertreatment of chronic pain is a direct result of the Drug Enforcement Agency's pressures on physicians who prescribe narcotics.

7. Harming foreign countries. Our drug policy has led to thousands of deaths and enormous loss of wealth in countries like Colombia, Peru and Mexico, and has undermined the stability of their governments. All because we cannot enforce our laws at home. If we did, there would be no market for imported drugs. There would be no Cali cartel. The foreign countries would not have to suffer the loss of sovereignty involved in letting our "advisers" and troops operate on their soil, search their vessels and encourage local militaries to shoot down their planes. They could run their own affairs, and we, in turn, could avoid the diversion of military forces from their proper function.

Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?

Milton Friedman, the Nobelist in economics, is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
http://www.zpub.com/un/drug-mf.html

Alot of these south american countries have wars, economies, and governments themselves funded on drugs. Yet we're arresting the same drug dealers time and time again who are replaced with another drug dealer as soon as they lock up until prisons get packed to the max in a repetitive cycle while the drugs themselves still move throughout urban communities. .


I agree that this "war on drugs" as currently constituted is a crock of shit -- that's why I keep putting it in quotes. I do think there ought to be some sort of drug law / enforcement that makes sense and actually helps people, but that's not what we have today.

But, quite aside from the "war on drugs", we have cops executing all kinds of search warrants and such, not doing the quick little bust in exchange for the potential big bust. Sometimes we pay off "the small fry" to get "the big boss", make all sorts of ugly and bad tradeoffs. By and large, this stuff doesn't see the light of day until inevitable public screwups happens. Then they spend all their time fixating on the screwups, rather than the overall policies that make such screwups possible. When I see stuff talking about "should cops knock", "videotape", "should SWAT be involved", we're already down the wrong rabbit hole and some amount of bad shit happening will be inevitable. Start at the beginning. Here's the fishy part... it appears the drugs were sold to either:

1) Undercover officers
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/11/23/atlanta.shooting/
Quote:
Police spokesman Joe Cobb said the three officers on that team had made an undercover drug buy earlier in day from a man inside Johnston's home west of downtown Atlanta.
-or-
2) A police informant
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_art...?storyid=88163
Quote:
Chief Pennington said the case was built on a drug buy by a confidential informant, who claimed he purchased drugs inside Johnston's home.

Already, the Atlanta police have flip-flopped on a key point. My hunch is that long before we get to the judge issuing a no-knock warrant and cops swarm in with bad consequences, there's rotten shit going on.
yep its a mess no matter what way you cut it. I understand you gotta put grandma down if she busts at you. but the tragedy is in the effort to force this arrest that does little to improve the community there.

well, i dont disagree. drugs will never be legalized though, because it would be political suicide to even consider it. and im not sure legalization is the answer either.

It probably isn't the answer. But its not as bad as aressting the street dealers rather than taking the war to the south american countries. It just reflects how the money that drugs brings in makes it impossible for a government as corrupt as ours to ever be serious about stopping it. The war on drugs is a war on urban communities IMO.

what is almost always overlooked is that more important than anything is the protection of the police officers. you may not like cops, but theyre out there trying to make your life better, and its important that we dont put an undue burden and make their jobs even more dangerous than they already are.

The way warrants like the one hat is completely backwards. Protect and serve. The law and by extension, law enforcement exists to protect the rights and safety of the citizens, that is the most important thing. You keep trying to make this about "liking cops" or "hating cops" ... the same kind of red herring logic people use to equate "support the troops" with blind endorsement of the war.

The way these kinds of warrants are being handled, people shooting cops and cops shooting the wrong people is an outcome that is predictable, preventable and should be unacceptable. Doing the job right isn't an undue burden.


I understand you gotta put grandma down if she busts at you. but the tragedy is in the effort to force this arrest that does little to improve the community there.


The Old Lady plugged some cops, so not much you can say to defend her.

That brings me back to the question... what's the reasonable standard for a person defending their home?

If those had been crooks instead of cops crashing through the door she would've been celebrated as the feel-good story of the week ... but since it happened to be cops there's not much you can say to defend her and grandma gotta get put down?

That's why those tactics should only be used in only the most extreme situations because they are inherently dangerous for the police and people on the other side of the door.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2006/11/27/1127metshoot_html.html?COXnetJSessionIDbuild173=Fs Sz0bO05gddOBugqZDXKN6dLipR90SUoTAKYvXZ2lJqgkvTXVl3 !-919515442&UrAuth=aN%60NUOaN\UbTTUWUXUWUZTZU\UWU_UcUZU\UZUcTY WVVZV&urcm=y


Informant in shooting says he never bought drugs at house
He says police asked him to lie

By RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/27/06

An informant who narcotics officers say led them to the house where an elderly woman was killed in a drug raid is accusing the officers of asking him to lie about his role, Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington said Monday.

The informant, who has not been identified, complained to department officials that the drug investigators involved in the bust had asked him to go along with a story they concocted after the shooting, said Pennington. He said the informant had been placed in protective custody.

The informant told an Atlanta television station that the officers asked him to lie to provide them cover in the shooting.

Pennington confirmed the television station's account of what the informant had claimed and said it mirrored what the informant had told his Internal Affairs Unit over the weekend.

"The informant said he had no knowledge of going into that house and purchasing drugs," Pennington said. "We don't know if he's telling the truth."

All seven narcotics investigators involved in the raid have been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the investigation, Pennington said. Their names were not made public.

"The complete truth will be known," Pennington said.

After nearly a week of unanswered questions prompted by the northwest Atlanta shooting of Kathryn Johnston, the chief on Monday called for an unusual multi-agency review of the incident.

Pennington announced the investigation at a news conference that featured officials from the U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Fulton County district attorney.

David Nahmias, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, said federal agents "come to this investigation with an open mind" but he cautioned that anyone who lies could face federal charges.

"No one should get in the way of the truth," Nahmias said.

Johnston was shot to death last Tuesday night as the drug investigators burst into her house at 933 Neal Street. Johnston was shot twice in the chest by the officers, who have said that they were returning her fire. The 88-year-old woman - whose age was originally thought to be 92 - wounded three of the officers with a rusty revolver her niece had bought for her aunt's protection. One officer was hit three times, including once in the center of his bullet-proof vest, while the other two where shot once each. None of their wounds were life threatening.

Police officials have said the officers went to Johnston's small brick house after the informant purchased drugs there from a man identified only as "Sam." Police have obtained an arrest warrant for Sam.

In a court affidavit released Monday, Jason R. Smith, an Atlanta narcotics officer, said that the informant had used $50 of city money to buy crack cocaine from Sam at the house at 933 Neal Street. Smith, who could not be reached for comment Monday night, described the informant as a reliable source of information who has helped police make drug arrests in the past.

In the affidavit, Smith said Sam greeted the informant at the front door and spoke briefly to him on the porch. Sam disappeared into the house and reappeared with two bags of crack cocaine, which the informant later turned over to the officers, according to the affidavit. Smith's statement also said that the informant had alleged that Sam had installed surveillance cameras at the house and monitored them constantly.

Smith's affidavit was sufficient to persuade Fulton County Magistrate Kimberly Warden to sign a warrant allowing the officers to enter the house without knocking on the door. Smith asked for the special "no knock" authorization because of the possibility that officers would be injured or evidence would be destroyed. Warden signed the warrant shortly before 6 p.m., about an hour before the shooting.

However, the informant has since denied to police and a local television station that he purchased the drugs. He also said there was no person named Sam.

The informant, who said he worked with Atlanta police for four years, also told WAGA-TV that he hadn't been to 933 Neal Street. His identity hidden, he told the TV station that one of the drug officers called him soon after the shooting with instructions.

Quoting the police officers, the informant told Fox 5 News: " 'This is what you need to do. You need to cover our (rear). ... It's all on you man. ... You need to tell them about this Sam dude.' "

Pennington said investigators were trying to determine the truth. "I don't know if he went in or not," he said.

Many questions and conflicting accounts have surfaced since police shot the woman, described by neighbors as feeble and afraid to open her door after dark. At first police said that the drug buy was made by undercover police, but later they said the purchase was made by an informant. Early on, police said narcotics were found at the house after the shooting, but on Sunday investigators said they had found only a small amount of marijuana, which police don't consider narcotics.

Also, even though the affidavit said that the house was outfitted with surveillance cameras, Pennington said the informant had told internal affairs investigators that police officers had asked him to lie about the cameras. Pennington could not confirm whether the cameras existed.

From the beginning, it has been unclear why police targeted the house on Neal Street, and the affidavit and warrant documents shed little light. The documents do not suggest that police had been keeping the house under surveillance and provide no rationale for entering it other than the informant's alleged buy earlier in the afternoon. The raid did not produce the cocaine, money, computers and other equipment related to the drug business alleged in the affidavit. The documents listed the only resident as Sam, who was described as at least 6 feet tall and 250 to 260 pounds. Johnston's family said she lived alone.

Court officials initially refused to release the affidavits and search warrant even though state law makes such records available immediately. The documents were made public Monday, nearly a week after the incident.

"There are many unanswered questions," said Pennington, who returned Sunday after being out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday when the shooting occurred.

Mayor Shirley Franklin, who has said little about the shooting, said she had discussed the allegations with Pennington. Franklin said the chief has "my confidence that they will be transparent and honest and very thorough in their review. ...

"I certainly share the concern that all of us have on the loss of life," Franklin said. "We were not expecting something like that could happen in the city of Atlanta."

Maybe that's why I was fixated on looking at the police procedures before the no-knock warrant was issued and executed. I dunno.

Oh, thats rich.

The chick was going to die soon anyways... I don't even see why the media is covering this.

The chick was going to die soon anyways... I don't even see why the media is covering this.
police fuck ups is whats giving this story steam. Scandal will draw attention all day, and it looks like this might be a cluster fuck(if the informant is crossing up stories with the cops), which the media loves to juice to the max.

More on the police militarization angle--yes, it's my horse and it's not dead yet--from the wall street journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB116476867027935258-lMyQjAxMDE2NjI0OTcyNjk4Wj.html


Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on "officer safety" and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.

Yes, police work is dangerous, and the police see a lot of violence. On the other hand, 51 officers were slain in the line of duty last year, out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York's highest crime precincts, when the total number of cops in the country was half that of today. Each of these police deaths and numerous other police injuries is a tragedy and we owe support to those who protect us. On the other hand, this isn't Iraq. The need to give our officers what they require to protect themselves and us has to be balanced against the fact that the fundamental duty of the police is to protect human life and that law officers are only justified in taking a life as a last resort.

Do I think the police have carried it a little too far? Yes. There ought to be a mirror of the posse comitatus principle for the police. But, I wouldn't want it to keep the police and military totally exclusive.

I think some of the "militant police" problem gets solved by having the state police level be the ones exclusively handling some of the military aspects. Perhaps a National Guard sort of a model would work?

But my point is -- going for that big score tends to be more of a risk. There will inevitably be some screwups along the way, including some that cannot be redressed like this one. Is it worth it in a general "war on crime" sense? Is it worth it in the context of the "war on drugs"?
Gotta love the mainstream media. Only the British press seem to have caught onto this story, about DEA agents in El Paso using a homicidal rogue informant in an attempt to get "the big score". But, of course, there's been enough drug stories for the time being, what with the old woman getting killed and all:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1962643,00.html

But, if you're still interested in the old woman getting killed, there's even more dope. Here's audio where the claim was that someone was arrested during the raid in which the 88-year old (her age is shrinking with light) was killed:

http://www.11alive.com/video/player.aspx?aid=62838&bw=

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Please tell us something interesting about your life and why it has come to this.