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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Further fishy facts emerge in Atlanta after elderly woman gunned down in drug raid
2006-11-28
Following quotes have been rearranged.
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.

...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.

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.

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.

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.' "
Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418

#6  If a cop is going to punch a hole into someone's house and charge in, he'd better be armored and have his gun drawn, there's no way around that.
The 2 key issues in this case are (1) whether the warrant was justified in the first place and (2) how police/prosecutors/judges consider themselves above the law. "Court officials refused to release"? Have they been charged for this yet?
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2006-11-28 20:32  

#5  It was a terrible mistake. Back in the 70's there were a handful of cop killings by radicals. So there was a federal effort to get police to change their tactics from what they had been, to SWAT.

In a nutshell, this meant that police were encouraged to brandish their guns frequently. In retrospect, this has killed hundreds of policemen who get shot with their own weapon, which could have remained safely in their holster.

There are multiple reasons. Brandished guns escalate non-violent situations to violence. Often perps want to wrestle, and an unholstered weapon is recovered by them. Finally, at distances under 15 feet, a gun can sometimes be far less effective than a knife.

Ironically, cops used to have more of a MacGyver attitude towards guns, because if they took their gun from its holster, they had to report it as an "incident".

Many of these modern problems have pushed police to find less-than-lethal weapons, which they prefer to brandishing, for their own safety.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-11-28 19:39  

#4  I see a multi-million dollar payout coming. If you live in metro Atlanta, grab your wallets. The problem is, this is becoming daily newsreel. What happens ? Cops on probation. Investigation. Cops exonerated. Cities sued. Multi-millions paid out. Taxpayers suffer. No consequences to cops who did this, the department, or the chief. Innocent people killed. No repercussions to anyone, so repeat as required.
Posted by: SpecOp35   2006-11-28 19:07  

#3  no-knock where a life is not in immediate danger is ridiculous, and more likely to result in a death of an innocent than anything else. Too many cops watching COPS
Posted by: Frank G   2006-11-28 13:42  

#2  Sorry, code for the link is hosed. It's www.theagitator.com .
Posted by: just sayin   2006-11-28 12:29  

#1  FYI, Rodney Balko's blog The Agitator is all over this and similar stories. As a libertarian he's a big GWOT skeptic, but he's made a specialty on innocents killed in "fishy" no-knock and "dynamic entry" searches.
Posted by: just sayin   2006-11-28 12:28  

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