More on the Atlanta Drug Raid
Friday, December 21st, 2007http://www.qando.net/ - More on the Atlanta Drug Raid
You know, the one in which an 88 year old woman was killed?
It was Fabian Sheats’ third felony drug arrest in four months. But on the afternoon of Nov. 21, according to a police report, he was looking to curry favor, so he told officers they could find a kilogram of cocaine in a house at 933 Neal Street N.W.
That encounter led police to the home of Kathryn Johnston, an elderly woman who lived alone behind burglar bars and kept a rusty revolver. When officers burst into the house just three hours after talking to Sheats, a shootout ensued that left the woman dead and three officers wounded. No cocaine was found.
A known felon, busted 3 times in 4 months and attempting to find favor with arresting officers throws out an address.
3 hours later, armed with a no-knock warrant, police invade the home of Kathryn Johnson. 3 hours. How does one do the appropriate police work necessary to verify the story Sheats has given and obtain a warrant?
Lie about it:
Police say they used Sheats’ tip to direct a confidential informant to the Neal Street house, where he made a drug buy, leading them to conduct the raid. A man named Alexis White later came forward to say he is a longtime informant and police asked him to lie after the shootings and say he bought drugs at the address. Police will not say who the informant was.
Also released today is a 911 tape in which an anxious White is heard complaining that, “I have two cops chasing me. They’re on the dirty side, two undercover officers.”
On the 911 tape police released Thursday, White said he was waiting for agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to pick him up on Nov. 22 when he was approached by Atlanta police. He got into the car with them, he told the operator, but jumped out when he talked to federal agents by cellphone and they told him not to get into the squad car.
“They came and picked me up they asked me about that killing yesterday,” White told the operator. “But, ah, they tryin’ to play it off. So ATF told me ’Don’t get in the car with them.’ By that time then, I was already in the car with ’em.”
The operator sounded incredulous. “OK, so you’re calling the police to say the police are chasing you?” she asked.
“Listen to me,” the frustrated White responded. “I don’t know who’s on whose side; they’re playing dirty,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on.”
Indeed. And the officers in question are still trying to claim it was a good bust because a small amount of marijuana was found in the Johnson home. My guess. Directly from the pocket of one of the officers to the floor of the home … a little “back up” in case there really were no drugs on the premises.
This just gets dirtier and dirtier. However the point here remains the complete lack of checks on a process that cost a woman her life.
No-knock warrants should take much, much more than 3 hours and the allegation of a single felon to justify. Yes, I certainly understand that in some cases such a warrant is not only necessary but called for. My guess, however, is those cases are, in reality, few and far between. And they should be granted as a result of good police work which verifies the justification for the warrant.
The bad smell from this particular case is becoming overwhelming.
I know this is over a year old, but this just still gets to me. I starred this in google reader when I originally read it, meaning to comment on it back then. Unfortunately our situation still has not changed, and this is a major area that needs addressing. I don’t know that any of the candidates currently running, even Ron Paul, have made addressing the costly “War On Drugs®” part of their campaign. Unfortunately I think that issue has become another “third rail” (fourth rail?) in the manner of Social Security. The social conservatives out there treat this issue the same way the liberals treat social security, anyone who would abandon the program is automatically off their list. They can’t see what this war is costing us, in money, lives, and our social freedoms. I understand that they don’t want drug addicts running around all over the place, but do they really think it would be any worse than it is now? Now you have drug addicts and drug pushers running around, and most of them with guns (do you really want firearms in the possession of these people, and no the answer is not to outlaw guns, they’re already breaking the law, do you think they’ll care?) in order to protect their illegal stashes. If you let these people get their drugs legally, it will elimnate most of the problem, and we will be far better off than we are with the War On Drugs®.
