November 27, 2006

The Times - Are They a-Changin'? Not Really.

Hatched by Dafydd

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a new story up: the informant who was said to have bought drugs at the Atlanta house that was later raided by cops, resulting in the death of 88 year old (not 92) Kathryn Johnston, now claims that he never did any such thing, and that some unnamed Atlanta narcotics officer called him up out of the blue -- after the shooting -- and told him to lie about the buy.

This sounds like gibberish on several levels:

  • If the officers had no reason to suspect narcotics at that residence, why would they have raided in the first place?

I asked this earlier in the comments of a previous post on this subject, but nobody has essayed an answer. Are we to suppose the officers just wanted to kill some random old lady?

  • If they were going to lie and claim that the informant (who is evidently known to the AJC) bought drugs there... wouldn't they have arranged this story with him beforehand, rather than call him for the first time after the shooting?

Assuming the raid was successful, netting a bunch of drugs and computers and such, wouldn't any defense attorney try to call the informant as a witness to see if the warrant were valid? And even if the judge wouldn't allow that (to protect the informant from retaliation), I assume he would want to see the informant himself in camera. If the guy expressed total bewilderment, that would be the end of the case right there.

If you're going to fake probable cause for a warrant, this is the most foolish possible way to do it, almost certain to come to light no matter what the outcome of the raid. It would be much easier for a cop to claim in the affidavit that he, personally, bought crack undercover. That way, there is nobody to contradict him.

The affidavit, by Officer Jason R. Smith, says that the informant told him he used $50 provided by the department to buy crack cocaine. It says that the informant had a conversation with a man named "Sam" (described), and that "Sam" talked about security cameras that were installed. Lots of details.

  • Why would a cop make that all up, knowing it would be discovered as fake the moment anyone investigated?

The security camera claim is especially odd: wouldn't officers who arrived later that night (the shooting was at 7:00 pm) notice the lack of such security cameras? And if there was one, wouldn't they grab the videotapes -- making it very easy for defense counsel to subsequently review the tape of the alleged buy that led to the warrant?

This is exactly the kind of detail that a cop would never invent, because he would know that it would be the first thing everyone would check. Thus again, I think it more likely the informant invented this whole story and tricked the Atlanta narcotics unit into believing it.

This opens up one possible new avenue for debate: ultra-libertarians could argue that the ease with which the informant duped the cops shows that they cannot rely on informants. But very often, that is the only way they hear about a crime being committed; and police resources are not infinite: they cannot send officers to every site where a drug buy is reported by a previously reliable informant, just to see if the undercover cop can make a buy himself.

If that's the level of checking and cross-checking you demand, then are you willing to double the police force to achieve it? That's an awful lot of new taxes.

So long as we have such a small ratio of cops to citizens, they're going to have to rely upon informants. Most are pretty good; in this case, it looks to me like one was a creep. So it goes.

This reminds me of something a libertarian friend of mine (a fellow science-fiction author) said once. This was during the OJ Simpson criminal trial, and my friend was 100% convinced that the Juice was innocent. (I won't go into his reasons for believing that; suffice to say they were not exactly logical. And if you guess who I'm talking about, please don't out my friend in a comment -- if you don't want your comment deleted, that is.)

During one of our frequent "discussions" of the case, my friend opined that no one should ever be tried for murder unless there is an eyewitness to the actual killing itself.

I pointed out that this would essentially make murder unprosecutable: any time someone committed a homicide, then all he had to do was kill any witnesses. Even if he were caught moments later standing over the body with a smoking gun in his hand, he could just laugh at the cops. It didn't matter; my friend quoted the aphorism that it's better a hundred guilty men be set free than one innocent man (he meant OJ) be sent to prison.

This is a ludicrous logical fallacy, of course; if it must have a name, call it the fallacy of unbalanced consequences. It has the same structure as arguing that, if it saves the life of just one child, we should ban all swimming pools. By the same token, arguing that because one group of cops were idiots, therefore no cop should be able to use a dynamic entry, commits the same logical fallacy: the consequences are risibly unbalanced.

Here is what I think actually happened in the Atlanta case:

  1. The informant tells Officer Smith that the house is selling crack;
  2. Smith gives the informant $50 to make a buy;
  3. The informant uses the $50 to pay off his bookie, who has threatened to break the informant's hands;
  4. The informant, belatedly afraid of what Smith might do if he finds out, spins the story about buying crack there;
  5. The cops believe him -- he's been reliable before -- and in good faith get a warrant based upon his perjury;
  6. Later, the informant concocts a new story: that he had nothing to do with it, the cops just raided the house for no reason at all, then contacted him after the shooting.

The one common element here is that, at every step of the way, the informant's word is taken by everyone: by Smith on the affidavit, and now by the Atlanta Journal Constitution about his claim that the cops told him to lie.

But does this change anything I wrote about this raid the last time, in our post Doom Is Nigh - for "Movement Libertarianism"? No, it does not.

The only thing that would change my original position would be if an investigation showed that all the cops were in on it, and that they deliberately faked the affidavit just to get someone. If that is the case, then that is good proof that they are thugs and should be behind bars. But the evidence presented so far falls very short of that mark.

Assuming it's not some wild conspiracy, then all of the major points I made remain intact... even if it turns out that the informant never really made a buy. In fact, my earlier post remains viable even if it turns out that Officer Smith himself concocted the whole thing, rather than the the informant (though I still think the latter is more likely, as the informant has much less to lose and less knowledge of how easily such a subterfuge would be discovered).

How so? Well, take a look at what I actually said...

First, here is what I said Patterico had brought out from earlier reporting:

The points about the shooting that Weintraub's brief brief missed, which Patterico brought out, are these:

  1. The police were attempting to search the premises on the basis of a legitimate search warrant -- not the "wrong house" (as early reports claimed);
  2. It was the old woman, not the cops, who began shooting;
  3. She shot three officers before they returned fire;
  4. Bullets fired by a 92 year old are just as deadly as bullets fired by a 22 year old;
  5. The police have every legal right, and 95% of Americans would say moral right, to return fire when fired upon.

Points 2-5 are obviously unaffected by this new claim. Point 1 is impacted, but only slightly: although it's likely the warrant was not fully legitimate (whether the liar was the informant or Officer Smith), it was in fact issued by a court; and it's highly unlikely that anyone but the actual miscreant would know it was illegitimate.

In particular, I doubt the cops who executed it would know there was any problem -- possibly excepting Smith himself, if he were the liar and also one of the people serving the warrant. But even in that case, I doubt he would inform the other officers that the warrant was bogus; that's the kind of thing you keep to yourself.

And of course, if the liar was the informant, not Officer Smith, then none of the officers would have any reason to doubt its legitimacy.

I think it clear that Ms. Johnston shot first; if the officers shot first, striking her two times in the chest, she certainly wouldn't be able to return fire -- unlike the cops, she had no bullet-resistant vest.

Nobody denies that three cops were shot. And the other two points are general truths.

The rest of the post is generalized discussion, mostly of ace reporter and Bee-blogger Daniel Weintraub's complaint that police spied on "peace protestors." When I discuss the Atlanta case, I talk mainly about the reasonableness of cops returning fire when fired upon -- which remains true, unless someone thinks that after deliberately murdering the doddering, old woman, they picked up her gun and shot each other, just to provide themselves an alibi; that's got more than a soupçon of "black helicopter" in it, and I don't buy it.

So we still have the situation that the cops (or at least all but one of them) were attempting to execute a warrant they believed, in good faith, was legitimately issued by Fulton County Magistrate Kimberly Warden; the warrant was a "no-knock" warrant; and the officers simply did their duty in serving it.

They were shot at; they returned fire; and an aged woman was killed. It's a tragedy, as I have said all along; but it's certainly not an example of jackbooted police thugs "murdering" an 88 year old woman.

And that is the point. What are the legit officers supposed to do -- refuse to execute what they believe is a legal warrant on what they fully believe is a crack house? Are they supposed to run away whenever they're shot at? Or are they supposed to knock politely, when they have been told the suspects are possibly armed and dangerous?

Nothing that has come out so far indicates a labyrinthian conspiracy to murder some old biddy they didn't even know, nor any recklessness on the officers' part, nor anything other than the weak possibility that one cop was dirty -- and a much higher probability that all the cops were duped by a good liar.

That proves nothing except that cops, like the rest of us, are human and can make mistakes. You go to the streets with the cops you have, not the cops you wish you could have.

So it goes, so it goes.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 27, 2006, at the time of 11:57 PM

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» The 92 Year Old Criminal, Update from Flopping Aces
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution has a article out today in which they allege that they have found the confidential informant (CI) who supposedly made the buy. Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington confirmed Monday that the informant now claims polic... [Read More]

Tracked on November 28, 2006 9:20 AM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

I can remember many years ago at Indiana University during a peace march against the Viet Nam war seeing men in suits watching the students. Everyone knew who they were. Since when is this kind of thing unusual? The students were not bothered or arrested or hindered in anyway.

As far as this sad case is concerned..why would the cops lie? Why would they even approach the house if they did not have reason to believe there was illegal activity going on? It is not as if they don't have anything else to do.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 3:57 AM

The following hissed in response by: Reid

There's one problem with the theory that the "informant uses the $50 to pay off his bookie."

The warrant says the cops witnessed the CI make the buy at the house's front door. As it's APD policy that CI drug buys be made under observation.

The above hissed in response by: Reid [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 5:58 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Reid:

That's an interesting point. Suppose Smith is telling the truth: he watches from the shadows across the street as the informant -- let's call him Jones -- knocks and enters the house, after having a conversation with a male.

(Let's assume the 88 year old granny didn't buy the dope that was found there; that implies at least one other person in the house, even in the revised edition, someone connected with drugs.)

Jones exits after a while and says he bought $50 worth of crack. Where is it? We smoked it together. Here's what's left. Shows Smith a small rock... maybe he bought that little piece, or maybe he brought it with him. Maybe he tells Smith it's $20 worth, but it's really nowhere near that.

(According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, $50 of crack cocaine is anywhere from a gram to half a gram. That is very, very small... easy to have an even smaller rock and call it $50 worth.)

What would Smith think? He would think he witnessed Jones entering the house and buying crack cocaine. But maybe all Jones did was talk for a few minutes with someone he knew who was staying at that house -- which may have been why he picked it in the first place.

Smith and Jones part, the former to fill out the affidavit -- the latter to pay off his bookie or buy some crack for himself or whatever.

Does this expose some "cracks" in the system? Sure, but nothing we didn't already know was there. Does this mean the cops were murderers?

I sure don't think so.

Nobody has yet answered the question: if the cops did not think there was a potentially violent drug dealer in that house -- then why the no-knock, dynamic entry? What could they possibly gain?

For God's sake, three of them were shot: a cop could easily have been killed, had one of those shots hit his head or slithered through an armhole into his chest. Against this risk, what imaginable gain could there be -- unless they honestly thought that the affidavit correctly described the situation.

All conspiracy theories founder on this point: cui bono? When the answer is "no one," it's hard to sustain belief in the conspiracy.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 6:51 AM

The following hissed in response by: nk

My personal experience with snitches is that the scenario is usually: The police arrest the snitch for something relatively minor. They tell him, "We want drugs or guns. Help us get some and we'll let you go." The recitations of the informant's reliability in the past is the most likely fictional part of the affidavit.

A public defender I know told me that one doofus took the police to the drugs and guns in his own house. (The evidence was suppressed on Fifth and Sixth Amendment grounds.)

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 7:57 AM

The following hissed in response by: nk

For whatever it may be worth, a commenter named Kelly Hill left this comment at my post about Kathryn Johnston:

Kelly Hill said...
Thank you for that beautiful poem. Kathryn Johnston was like a mother to me and I couldn't have written a more poignant poem myself. And for the coward who didn't have the courage to identify himself. Kathryn Johnston didn't smoke marijuana. She didn't even take perscription drugs, and she was proud of it. She hated the drug selling in her community and would have never condoned drug selling in her house. This whole thing is a farce, and I belive the truth will eventually come out.
Mon Nov 27, 10:01:01 AM

She did not leave an e-mail or website.

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 8:00 AM

The following hissed in response by: htom

I have to suggest that it is possible that the first shots from the officers, firing because they saw her pointing a gun at them in her doorway, did not hit Ms. Johnston. The days when cops waited for criminals to begin the gunfire died long ago.

The above hissed in response by: htom [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 10:03 AM

The following hissed in response by: Reid

You say "Suppose Smith is telling the truth."

Why should I?

The police's story has been changing all along. First they said Johnson shot before they even got to the door. Then they said she fired from inside as they knocked it down.

For five days they insisted an undercover cop made a buy inside the house. For five days they withheld the warrant (which by state law is a public document) which made it clear that an informant made the buy, not a cop. Unless somebody altered that warrant in the past five days, the cops have known all along an informant made the buy. Yet they lied to the public about it until Monday.

For five days they told us they'd found narcotics in the home. Until they revealed all they'd allegedly found was a small amount of marijuana, when the warrant said it was a crack house.

Why should I believe anything one of the cops involved says about this case today?

Furthermore, on his first day back from vacation, why did Chief Pennington suspend the entire narcotics unit, not just the officers in the raid?

I'm going to assume he knows more than we do. And his action is telling.

The above hissed in response by: Reid [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 10:15 AM

The following hissed in response by: Nothus

Dafydd,

One thing you might want to add to your little list:

6. A Georgia citizen has can expect to be secure in their home, and according to the Castle Doctrine (which is the law in the state of Georgia) enjoys protection from both prying and violent attack, is under no obligation to retreat, and may use deadly force to defend themselves.

Here's the thing, it's a no-knock warrant, but the officers say they identified themselves before entering, no - while entering, wait - make that while breaking down the door. Let's move past the ever evolving story, and go with the latest version: assuming the 88 year old woman had pitch perfect hearing (big assumption there) how well could she have heard someone shout "POLICE" while their front door is being bashed in?

The sole inhabitant of the house was supposed to be a 35 y.o. black male about 6' tall and weighing 250lbs, anyone stop to wonder why he had a wheelchair ramp?

The CRI was supposedly given $50 of city money and returned with two baggies of crack cocaine. Receipts? Evidence? Given the shit storm that has just erupted you'd think the Police would be showing these to the AJC to try and bolster their case. Lack of evidence isn't proof, but it also doesn't support their case.

What I'm saying is, in your rush to defend the police let's not lose sight of the facts: right now the warrant is suspect at best, the CRI is denying any involvement in the case, no narcotics were found, no cocaine, no other drugs or controlled substances, just a small amount of pot. The police involved have changed their story four times at last count, and one thing is clear, a harmless and innocent old woman is still dead.

The police say she fired first, I'm inclined to believe them. I put myself in my father's shoes and think, "what would I do if I was a 75 year old man who's front door was being broken down by men shouting something at me?" I know exactly what I'd do, start shooting and hope to God I could scare them off or kill them before they get to me. That's what she did, and I find no fault at all in her actions.

People have a right to be secure in their own homes. They also have a reasonable expectation that the local police will perform reasonable due diligence before securing a no-knock warrant and rushing into someone's home. The assertion that they did so in this case doesn't begin to pass the laugh test. This was a cocked-up move from start to finish, and the chief of the Atlanta PD recognizes that even if you don't.

The above hissed in response by: Nothus [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 11:12 AM

The following hissed in response by: Nothus

Dafydd,

Just another thought:

You point out that there has been no response from to the question, why? Why would the police target this house if they had no reason to suspect that there was a drug dealer living there? Why would they get a no-knock warrant if they didn't believe that the drug dealer there was potentially violent? I think it's a good point, but it's only one of many that need to be considered - the other thing we're missing here is, did this situation as described meet the criteria for a a no-knock warrant? I'm not so sure.

No-knock warrants aren't a given in drug cases. In fact the SCOTUS holds that there is no blanket exception to knock and announce for drug cases, period. They're use is supposed to be restricted to specific cases where it is reasonable to assume that the standard knock and announce method of entry would be "dangerous and futile" (Richards v. Wisconsin, 1997).

Let's review, one suspect, no weapons in evidence, no indication in the warrant or the affidavit that the suspect was armed or would offer resistance. Granted the warrant does specify weapons in addition to drugs and a laundry list of other items, and common sense and experience tell us that a drug dealer is probably going to have access to weapons and will likely attempt to flee the police or even resist arrest, but that is not in and of itself sufficient to constitute "dangerous and futile" circumstances. Nor is the risk that the drug dealer might have time to "flush" the evidence sufficient to justify a no-knock warrant, the standard is DANGEROUS AND FUTILE. That standard is not met in the affidavit, and the judge should not have approved a no-knock warrant.

Also, you point out that three police officers were shot in the entry, but you ignore WHY. They were shot because they were breaking down the door of a house and the occupant, not a 250 pound drug dealer, but a frail elderly octogenarian woman in a nightgown, was terrified that someone was trying to break in and rob, rape, or kill her. Three police officers were wounded but she's DEAD because of their attempt at dynamic entry. Now imagine, just imagine, if the those three officers had handled the situation differently. One cop goes around to the back, two go to the front, they knock on the door and shout "Police Officers, OPEN UP!" Say she comes to the door, gun in hand, now she can ask to see their badges, they can show here a search warrant, no one dies, no one is shot, and everyone walks away alive.

I don't buy into the conspiracy theories about this case, but I'm not out there sugar coating the what a cluster **** of unprofessionalism this is either. The fact is that major metropolitan police forces are becoming more and more reliant on paramilitary tactics which are adopted ostensibly to protect both the officers and the citizens, but more and more end up hurting one or both. The Police have to have the wherewithal to do their job, but that should not include private citizens abdicating their right to remain secure in their homes and persons, nor their right to claim compensation when mistakes are made. Being a police officer is a difficult and often thankless job, but it should never make one legally untouchable, or immune from the consequences of poor judgement.

The above hissed in response by: Nothus [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 12:57 PM

The following hissed in response by: De Doc

Daffyd:

This isn't about Harry Brown, or the big-L-Libertarians you like to kick in the shins. (So do I, come to think of it...)

This is about an egregious abuse of no-knock warrants and "dynamic entry" procedures, which led to the wrongful death of an elderly woman who was defending herself from what any reasonable individual would perceive as a home invasion.

As far as conspiracies? I haven't heard anyone say there was a conspiracy to go whack this poor woman. I rather suspect, given the rapidly changing and shifting stories, that to the extent there's a conspiracy of any sort, it's among the people who screwed up -- trying to hide the corners they cut, the things they ignored, the attention they should have paid. FAR more credible, that.

The above hissed in response by: De Doc [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 1:56 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Reid:

You say "Suppose Smith is telling the truth."

Why should I?

"Suppose" in this context means "assume for purposes of the following argument and see if it leads to a contradiction." As it does not, that means it's a viable option that Smith did not lie on the affidavit.

I know it's tempting, when some members of a group say something that turns out to be wrong to label them "liars" (instead of simply being mistaken about some point), and then to extend that label to all members of the group on every occasion.

But this is "lightswitch reasoning," the idea that either somebody is a truthteller, in which case everything he says is gospel; or he's a liar, in which case everything he says is a lie.

We don't, however, life on that famous island where there are two tribes, a tribe of truthtellers and a tribe of liars, and you have to ask how to get to the capital city. We live in a real world where cops sometimes lie, sometimes say what they think is the truth but is incorrect, and sometimes tell the absolute truth... and the same is true for informants and journalists.

In fact, we don't know what "the police" -- meaning those actually on the raid -- said; we only know what various other policemen have been quoted by various newspapers and news agencies as saying.

  • They may have been misquoted;
  • They may have been properly quoted, but they were honestly mistaken;
  • They may really have said what they meant but are peripheral characters who don't really know what happened;
  • The informant may be the one who is lying;
  • The journalists may have an agenda and be subtlely (or overtly) pushing articles to flesh out "the story" they already had in mind from the moment they heard about the death.

In fact, we have seen each of these in previous media circuses just this last year; we see all of them every year. We often rattle on about how untrustworthy the elite media are -- until they say something that we want to hear, in which case they suddenly are filled with near godlike accuracy.

It's entirely possible that, e.g., the APD spokesman was asked who made the buy, hadn't read the affidavit (or misremembered that point), and mistakenly answered that it was an undercover cop. That doesn't make him a liar; it means he is either lying or mistaken about that point. Lying makes little sense, because (again) he knows it will come out within days; the plausible answer is that he was mistaken.

Likewise, when a document is withheld for a few days following a very controversial shooting, the logical conclusion is that the APD is examining the case to see what their potential liability may be... not that they're trying to suppress all evidence of some vast police conspiracy to kill octogenarians. That is much too strong a conclusion for the available evidence.

Furthermore, on his first day back from vacation, why did Chief Pennington suspend the entire narcotics unit, not just the officers in the raid?

I'm going to assume he knows more than we do. And his action is telling.

I'm going to assume he doesn't actually know what happened -- and why it fell out the way it did; and that's why he suspended the whole unit pending investigation: if their procedures can go so wrong, he wants to make sure it doesn't happen again; so he suspends the unit until he knows just what caused this obvious catastrophic miscalculation.

This is not evidence that he's uncovered a nest of granny-hating homicidal maniacs. That would be speculating beyond the data, which Sherlock Holmes considers the cardinal sin of investigation.

By the way, why would the cops have kicked the door and gone in guns blazing if they did not believe the place was a crack house? Cui bono? Can you give a convincing answer?

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 3:48 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Nothus:

6. A Georgia citizen has can expect to be secure in their home, and according to the Castle Doctrine (which is the law in the state of Georgia) enjoys protection from both prying and violent attack, is under no obligation to retreat, and may use deadly force to defend themselves.

Suppose Johnston had survived the shooting. I certainly wouldn't be calling for her to immediately be arrested for attempted murder of three police officers.

I would still want to see an investigation first. If it turns out that she knew they were cops there to serve a search warrant -- whether properly or improperly obtained -- then she would be guilty of a crime... even in Georgia. I am absolutely certain that the "Castle Doctrine" does not mean you're allowed to open fire on cops to avoid being arrested or to prevent them from searching persuant to a search warrant.

But if it turns out that she might reasonably have thought they were home-invading robbers, then I would hope she would not be prosecuted.

But we're not talking about whether Johnston had the legal right to open fire; I've made only two points: first, that even if she had that right, the cops certainly had the right to return fire.

Even by the libertarian standard, which would give cops no more "rights" (they mean authority) than private citizens, if libertarians believe they personally have the authority to burst into someone home to stop a crime in progress, they must also believe they personally have the right to return fire if the criminal shoots at them.

Therefore, so do the cops. The only disagreement is that libertarians believe the drug laws are inherently wrong (I agree), so therefore cops have no authority to enforce them (I disagree).

Somewhere in the comments on Patterico's, I phrased it as follows: police are obliged to enforce all properly enacted laws -- unless a law shocks the conscience of a reasonable person.

So if a law were enacted to round up all Moslems and ship them off to concentration camps, the police must refuse to enforce it, because such a thing shocks the conscience of any reasonable person. The anti-drug laws, however, do not fit that description; cops must enforce them -- but I wish the political establishment would repeal them.

My second point is that in nearly every case, resisting against the cops is really, really stupid. I'm not saying Johnston knew they were cops; but if she did, and she shot anyway, she made a horribly stupid decision that resulted in her own death.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 4:05 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Nothus:

[Y]ou point out that three police officers were shot in the entry, but you ignore WHY. They were shot because they were breaking down the door of a house and the occupant, not a 250 pound drug dealer, but a frail elderly octogenarian woman in a nightgown, [who]was terrified that someone was trying to break in and rob, rape, or kill her.

How do you come to have such insight into a woman who is now dead? How do you know whether she did or did not know they were cops?

Of course the cops exercised poor judgment; but they're hardly "immune from the consequences," as they will now go through an intense investigation that could even result in indictments, if one or more cops are found to have falsified an affidavit to obtain a warrant.

And every cop in every big city knows that those consequences always loom if he screws up badly enough. No cop imagines he's immune.

But even after bringing up the question cui bono?, "who benefits?" -- you still failed to come up with any answer at all.

I can buy police incompetence, even malfeasance: perhaps they were so sure it was a crack house, they cut legal corners to get the warrant.

But I cannot think of any conceivable reason why they'd have used such an entry, or even obtained a warrant, if they actually thought (rightly or wrongly) that the house was just the home of an 88 year old woman (and possibly some relative who smoked a little weed now and again).

Atlanta certainly doesn't have marijuana hysteria, as the whole country did at the time Reefer Madness was made. Nothing makes sense if the cops knew there was no drug dealing going on there (assuming for the sake of argument that there wasn't).

(By the way, I had to delete one word from your comment. Please look at the comment policy linked above: obscenities are not allowed here. I know they're now so common in American society that even twelve year old girls swear like sailors on shore leave in Bombay; but not here. Thanks!)

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 4:19 PM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

Never explain something via conspiracy that can be adequately accounted for by stupidity, incompetence, bad luck, or a combination of all three.

Ever watch "America's Funniest Home Videos"? An odd place to look for wisdom, I know. But how many times have you seen something that was obviously not staged, but was so extraordinary, so bizarre, you couldn't believe that it wasn't somehow staged? It happens nearly every show. In fact, well, that is the whole point of the show, right? An entire show dedicated to recording that the impossible happens all the time. And people still don't get it.

Weird things happen every day in real life, all around us. Most of the time the camera isn't even on. Most of the time we don't even notice.

Carl Sagan used to say about UFOs hold true here -extraordinary claims must be backed by extraordinary proof.

Therefore claims that police officers intentionally shot an 88 year old lady to death require extraordinary proof. What would extraordinary proof be in this case? A confession by one of the police officers that that old lady really pissed him of by letting her dog crap on his yard would be a nice start. Anything short of that is just silly, harmful, blather. Circumstantial crap is worth nil in this instance.

By the by, I was a Libertarian once upon a time. I finally got fed up with the absolutists, wannabe anarchists, and closet nihilists. Sorry chaps, I fear government power, but not so much that I prefer to shoot it out with the local mugger myself, rather than hire professionals to keep him off the street in the first place.

The above hissed in response by: Big D [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 4:30 PM

The following hissed in response by: nk

"By the way, why would the cops have kicked the door and gone in guns blazing if they did not believe the place was a crack house? Cui bono? Can you give a convincing answer?"

Well, if I were paranoid enough I would write a scenario from a James Elroy novel. Sanely, they were messed around by their Confidential Reliable Informant. (In Chicago we call them "snitches" and in New York they call them "rats" but I will respect the genteel sensibilities of the South and call them CRIs for short as they do.)

In Chicago, perhaps twenty years back, a CRI was cossetted enough by the police, having his criminal activity ignored, until he killed and robbed a young woman. If a police officer's chances of promotion or transfer depend on how many ounces of crack or how many guns he turns in to the Evidence Department ...? Will he get sloppy on the information provided by his CRI? I think that unit commanders and police chiefs who impose such performance standards should be the first ones to suffer the consequences of their policies.

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 5:24 PM

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Michael

Of course, so far everybody here is assuming that the informant lied.

You only have HIS word that he lied.

Still too early for conclusions or accusations. The thought experiment is very useful, conclusions of fact are not yet called for.

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Michael [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 5:54 PM

The following hissed in response by: Reid

First off, I've seen no one here, or anywhere else, claim there is a "vast police conspiracy to kill octogenarians" or "a nest of granny-hating homicidal maniacs." So I think you can stop beating that drum.

As for your comments about the changing police story, and the outright false statements they've made:

"They may have been misquoted;"

I live in Atlanta, and I've seen the press conferences(s) in their entirety, as they were carried live locally. There was no misquoting.

"They may have been properly quoted, but they were honestly mistaken;"

If so, being "honestly mistaken" about so many points has destroyed their credibility (why do you think Pennington turned the whole investigation over to the FBI and GBI?). After this kind of event, you don't get up in front of the public and tell them things you don't know to be true. If you do (and they did), the consequences are public mistrust.

"They may really have said what they meant but are peripheral characters who don't really know what happened;"

One press conference was by Assistant Police Chief Dreher. The other was by Police Chief Pennington. #1 and #2 in the department, hardly "peripheral players." If they don't know, who does? If they don't know, shouldn't they keep their mouths shut until they do?

"The informant may be the one who is lying;"

That is possible. Which would make him a most unreliable piece of evidence for the initial warrant as well, yet he'd been working as an informant for multiple law enforcement agencies for years. Successfully and reliably. For years. But I'm hard pressed to see how he is better off today than he was before he came forward. He was a free man, and now he's in federal protective custody. He was undercover in the dark, and now he's in the spotlight (if pixelated). But it is possible he's lying. It's also possible his conscience would not let him remain silent.

"The journalists may have an agenda and be subtlely (or overtly) pushing articles to flesh out 'the story' they already had in mind from the moment they heard about the death."

?????

As I said, I've watched the press conferences live, unedited, straight from the Chief or Asst. Chief's mouth. The only spin was their own.

The search warrant was not made public until Monday, but was available to the cops from 5:53pm last Tuesday when it was signed by the judge. Yet for five days, we were told an undercover cop made the buy, when the warrant clearly states it was an informant. We were told that more than once, by more than one police spokesperson. It was reiterated as a way of intimating, "hey, these guys didn't screw up, they made the buy themselves. They did it by the book."

Chief Pennington has already said that is not the case, that these cops violated standard department policy. No lie. No spin.

"How do you come to have such insight into a woman who is now dead?"

For someone with such a strong opinion on this matter, you sure seem to be missing many of the published facts. A 72 year old neighbor had been raped two weeks before the shooting. Ms. Johnson mentioned to more than one person that she was scared over that. Do you have a grandmother? If her elderly neighbor got raped, how would she feel about her safety? I know mine had a gun, and would have used it.

"By the way, why would the cops have kicked the door and gone in guns blazing if they did not believe the place was a crack house? Cui bono? Can you give a convincing answer?"

It's not my job to give you a convincing answer. It's the job of the police, one they've sworn to. And what they've revealed so far indeed does not seem to make any sense. They've revealed there had been no previous surveillance of the house before that day. There was allegedly one purchase of two crack rocks around 5pm on the 21st. At 5:53pm, the warrant was signed by the judge. Around 7pm, shots rang out.

It looks to me like they did no recon. The warrant claims the only person seen at the home, "Sam," was 6 feet tall and 250 pounds, 30-ish. Living in a home with a wheelchair ramp. The better to cart in large quantities of drugs, I guess, because it appears that caused no one any pause before the raid. It looks to me like they didn't sit outside for even an hour to witness additional drug traffic to the house. How could they? From buy to boom it was barely two hours.

"But I cannot think of any conceivable reason why they'd have used such an entry, or even obtained a warrant, if they actually thought (rightly or wrongly) that the house was just the home of an 88 year old woman."

No one has claimed that they did. In fact, many people have pointed out they had no clue at all who might be inside. They allegedly had one $50 purchase of drugs, hardly a major buy, and no other evidence or history, yet went in quickly and hard. And that's assuming the cops are telling the truth.

Meanwhile in Atlanta, their are other neighborhoods who screamed repeatedly to the cops about the crack house on their street, and say the cops do little to nothing about it.

There's no doubt there's a drug problem. There's no doubt that at times a no knock warrant is the proper tool. But there is also no doubt that at times it introduces imminent danger to both the cops and resident(s), where their previous was none.

And it's also obvious someone is lying here. You've twisted yourself into a pretzel trying to pin the lying on the informant. You might want to at least consider a simpler possibility: one to three cops had a raid go way bad, and quickly tried to cover it up. Very poorly.

The above hissed in response by: Reid [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 6:12 PM

The following hissed in response by: nk

But, Reid, it's insane for the police, and not the informant, to have been the ones to lie about the presence of drugs in this case. There would have only been grief for them even if the search had been conducted peacefully. And no possibility of profit, only a waste of time and a citizen complaint. And I'm the guy who wrote "The Ballad of Kathryn Johnston". They may have been morons but not insane morons.

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 6:31 PM

The following hissed in response by: Reid

nk, I honestly cannot speculate at all about the motivations or intent of the cops involved. As I said, it does not make any sense. From the beginning, this incident hasn't made sense.

An 88 year old shut-in allowing crack to be sold out her front door? Or possessing marijuana?

Either the cop(s) witnessed the CI buy crack at the front door as the warrant states (in which case you'd think they'd have found, oh, I don't know, some crack, and the claimed surveillance cameras?), or the cops did not witness that ... yet filled the warrant out that way anyhow. Why? I have no idea. Only those cops do, and they aren't speaking.

And Patterico has his interview with a use of force expert up today. The expert says that even if the cops aren't lying, "the police tactics in this case were wanting" and pointed out the "apparent lack of advance intelligence on the location."

The above hissed in response by: Reid [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 6:41 PM

The following hissed in response by: nk

Reid,

We're on the same page on the warrant. I don't think the police witnessed anything or had any objective corroboration to what their CRI told them. I read the warrant at Patterico's and to me it's marginal. I do not fault the judge for granting it but I would not fault him if, based only on the affidavits I read, he had not granted it.

I think the police were credulous, officious fools who allowed themselves to become murderous fools. But I do not believe that they ever had original intent to victimize an innocent person. There's just no evidence there for it. Still, a woman is dead and what's paved with good intentions?

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 6:59 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Reid:

They allegedly had one $50 purchase of drugs, hardly a major buy, and no other evidence or history, yet went in quickly and hard. And that's assuming the cops are telling the truth....

And it's also obvious someone is lying here. You've twisted yourself into a pretzel trying to pin the lying on the informant. You might want to at least consider a simpler possibility: one to three cops had a raid go way bad, and quickly tried to cover it up. Very poorly.

But if they didn't have that informant, then they had no reason to raid in the first place, and there wouldn't have been anything that needed covering up.

Reid, think about the implications of your statements:

  1. If Officer Smith lied on the affidavit, that means there was no drug buy at that house. We agree there was likely no surveillance on that house. So why would Officer Smith have wanted to raid it in the first place?
  2. Likewise, if the informant is telling the truth now (his "conscience" bothering him), then Officer Smith lied on the affidavit; and we're back to point 1 with the same motive problem.
  3. You argue it's not your job to come up with the motive for the raid. But you ask us to accept as plausible a scenario which necessarily assumes the cops raided a house they had no reason to suspect was a drug house.

    So your own scenario provokes the question, cui bono? How can you avoid answering a question so critical to your argument? If a lying cop means there was no reason to raid, that makes a lying cop far less likely.

That's the logical conclusion and why I keep asking that question.

Two more plausible explanations occur, both of which imply they did have an informant, hence he's lying now. And either...

  • He was telling the truth, there was a drug dealer there; but the cops foolishly didn't surveil during the critical couple of hours before the buy, and he scarpered with the stash -- possibly to make house calls selling to clients. Thus, when they raided, he was gone.
  • The informant was lying, there never was a drug deal, and the informant duped the cops.

Look, I have no trouble believing the cops acted incompetently; and of course, the informant lying -- either now or before, we know he did once -- not only messes up any drug case arising out of this raid but also may force a reopening of any previous conviction in which this informant played a role.

But I never argued that the police did a good job; I have argued that they were justified in returning fire when fired upon, and that they went in with a warrant duly issued by a judge, and which either all the cops or all but one of them believed was valid.

Nothing that has come out, including yesterday's revelations, impacts either of these points. This isn't to say nothing ever will; but it hasn't so far.

And Patterico has his interview with a use of force expert up today. The expert says that even if the cops aren't lying, "the police tactics in this case were wanting" and pointed out the "apparent lack of advance intelligence on the location."

Reid, I don't think there's any argument about that! I haven't seen anyone argue it was a good raid that went as planned.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 28, 2006 9:17 PM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

I work for a home health care agency and I was visiting a client one day when the cops showed up and arrested the grandson for murder. The grandmother gave the boy up rather than get us all shot. For which I am profoundly grateful.

We do not know who lived in that house. There could have been a half dozen young men living under the roof and the old lady was the one who happened to be there when the cops came.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 29, 2006 3:24 AM

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