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ATLANTA, Nov. 27 — The police chief placed all eight members of a narcotics investigation team on leave Monday after a confidential informant said they had asked him to lie during the investigation of the death of an 88-year-old woman, shot and killed by police officers during a drug raid last Tuesday.
Etc...etc...
Botched Paramilitary Police Raids
Click the link. Check the map. Realize the war on drugs is amazingly convenient for cops to commit felony home invasion and murder.
Know what's funny? If the person had been younger...no one would've questioned it. A little dope? Sure, no problem.
When people like Kathryn Johnston or Cory Maye understandably mistake raiding police officers for criminal intruders, police and prosecutors are rather unforgiving, particularly if the warrant was “legal.” People like Maye and Johnston are supposed to show remarkable poise and judgment, despite the fact that
armed men are breaking into their homes..
When
police make mistakes, however, they’re nearly always forgiven.
Because we’re supposed to understand how an officer in such a volatile situation might misjudge an everyday object for a gun, or shoot a completely innocent, unarmed man — all perfectly understandable, given the volatile, confrontational circumstances surrounding SWAT raids. Such deaths — while tragic — are mere collateral damage. We have to keep fighting the war on drugs. And we have to protect our police officers by allowing them to break down doors while people are sleeping. The deaths of a few innocent people are the price we pay for the privilege of having the government tell us what we are and aren’t allowed to put into our bodies.
It’s an abhorrent double standard. Below, I’ve listed some cases in Georgia that illustrate it. The cases below tend to be below-the-radar cases.
Xavier Bennett: In 1991, police in Dekalb County conduct a 2:30am no-knock raid on the home of Bobby Bowman, a man they suspect of possessing cocaine. They were right. He did, though only enough to identify him as a user, not a dealer. What they didn’t expect is that his 8-year-old stepson Xavier Bennett would be inside, too. When Bowman, who says he thought he was being invaded, met police with a gun, the boy was killed in the crossfire. No disciplinary actions were taken against the police. So police conduct a dangerous no-knock on a home where a child’s inside. The child dies. Police blame the father of the child for (1) possessing cocaine, and (2) not realizing the raiding party was police.
Lynette Gayle Jackson: On September 22, 2000, police in Riverdale, Georgia shoot and kill Lynette Gayle Jackson in an early morning, no-knock drug raid. Less than a month earlier, Jackson had been at home when burglars broke into the same house. She escaped out a window and called the police while the intruders ransacked her home. When police arrived to answer the burglary call, they found a small bag of cocaine in the bedroom that belonged to Jackson’s boyfriend. While the quantity of cocaine wasn’t sufficient to press charges, police began a subsequent investigation of Jackson’s boyfriend that led to the September no-knock raid on her home.
As that raid transpired, Jackson, believing she was being robbed again, held a gun in her bedroom as the SWAT team entered. That’s when the police opened fire, killing her. Her maintenance man later told reporters she had been frightened by the previous burglary. Jackson had asked him to install new locks, security bars on her windows, and a motion-detecting security light. The man told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, “I think she was scared and she probably thought it was another break-in.”
No disciplinary action was taken against the officers.
So police raid the home of an innocent woman while looking for her boyfriend. She mistakes them for intruders (justifiably so, after having just been burgled), and is shot and killed. It’s all her fault. Shouldn’t have been dating a man who uses cocaine. Shouldn’t have had a gun for home protection. Shouldn’t have been scared. Shouldn’t have assumed that when armed men break into your home, it’s probably the burglars who broke in last time, not police looking for your small-time, dope-using boyfriend.
Roy and Belinda Baker. Early in the morning on September 30, 2005, police in Stockbridge, Georgia conduct a no-knock raid on the home of Roy and Belinda Baker. Officers break down the couple’s front door with a battering ram and toss in flashbang grenades. They hold the couple at gunpoint, handcuff them, and then send them out onto their porch, only partially clothed. Police ruin a family Bible and antique coffee table during the raid. Police eventually realize the intended target of the raid lives next door. Police Chief Russ Abernathy called the raid “inexcusable” and “not acceptable,” and blamed poor street lighting. But Abernathy added that no one would be fired of disciplined, and that the raids would go on, albeit after “reviewing procedures.”
The Bakers are considering a lawsuit.
So police conduct a raid on the wrong home. Had Roy or Belinda Baker owned a gun, one or both might be dead. But since no one was hurt, no harm was done, and it’s really no one’s fault. So there’s no need to assign blame. No one is punished for terrorizing two innocent people.
Deputy Joseph Whitehead. In 2006, police in Macon conduct a 1:30 am raid on a suspected drug house. Residents of the house say they were startled from sleep, believed they were being robbed, and shot to defend themselves. In the process, the shoot and kill Dep. Whitehead. Once the resident realize they’re being raided by police and not gang members, they surrender immediately. Prosecutors charge all five residents with murder, including two who had nothing to do with the shooting, one who wasn’t even home at the time of the raid. Two face the death penalty. The sheriff later says of the raid, “It just went wrong.”
So if you mistake midnight-raiding police for intruders and there are drugs in your home, your mistake means the death penalty. If your
roommates possess drugs and mistake raiding police for intruders and shoot and kill an officer, you’re looking at a murder charge.
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