Drug task force that burned a toddler this week also killed an innocent pastor in 2009

Washington Post ^ | May 30, 2014 | Radley Balko

[bamahead]

After Georgia’s Mountain Narcotics Criminal Investigation & Suppression Team burned a toddler with a flashbang grenade during a drug raid on Wednesday, Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell told Access North Georgia:

“The person I blame in this whole thing is the person selling the drugs,”

Of course, Terrell’s task force didn’t even know there was a child in the home. So it’s hard to argue they “cared” much either, at least not enough to let the kid’s safety trump the safety of the officers...

But this same task force has a history:

In September 2009, the young pastor Ayers was ministering to a young woman whom a Georgia drug task force was investigating on drug charges.

The task force followed Ayers to a convenience store, where he went in to get money from an ATM. They pulled up behind him in an unmarked black SUV. Armed agents dressed in street clothes rushed Ayers’s car...In the process, he nicked one agent. Another then opened fire, killing him. Ayers told hospital staff was that he thought he was being robbed.

Ayers had no drugs in his car or in his system, and there was no evidence he was using or distributing anything illegal.

District Attorney Brian Rickman already cleared the task force of any wrongdoing....Rickman also cleared the cops in the Ayers case.

--SNIP--

As it turns out, Officer Billy Shane Harrison, the cop who shot Ayers, hadn’t taken the series of firearms training classes required for his certification as a police officer. It turns out that Harrison also had received zero training in the use of lethal force.

[bamahead]

JBT's who don't do their homework, don't have proper training, blame the resulting tragedy on inanimate objects, and then close investigations quickly so as not to attract attention to their shoddy police work.

Welcome to Habersham County Georgia.

[bamahead]

Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!

[2ndDivisionVet]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[AppyPappy]

Can you prove that toddler wasn’t guilty of a violent crime? Can you prove the toddler wasn’t packing a Glock in its diaper?

I thought not.

[Blood of Tyrants]

All in the name of keeping a pot head from smoking a joint, munching on Doritos, and watching cartoons.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Habersham County has a long troubled history of corruption. The new sheriff was supposed to be a good guy.

[TurboZamboni]

“If it saves one Dorito...”

[nomad]

Amen.

[Wolfie]

Naturally you’re going to have to blow up a few kids to save them from drugs.

[null and void]

JBT Ping list

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“he nicked one agent”

What does that mean?

[bamahead]

I had to excerpt the crap out of the article to fit the content that I wanted inside the word limit - full sentence:

Armed agents dressed in street clothes then rushed Ayers’s car. He put his car in reverse and attempted to escape. In the process, he nicked one agent.

[PapaBear3625]

The task force followed Ayers to a convenience store, where he went in to get money from an ATM. When he returned and got into his car they pounced. They pulled up behind him in an unmarked black SUV. Armed agents dressed in street clothes then rushed Ayers’s car. He put his car in reverse and attempted to escape. In the process, he nicked one agent. Another then opened fire, killing him. Ayers told hospital staff was that he thought he was being robbed. His reported last words were, “Who shot me?”

[Doomonyou]

I’m guessing bumped him with his “deadly weapon” car.

[GrootheWanderer]

Unfortunately, it’s not just the county. The GBI investigated the shooting and declared it OK. But they never uncovered the fact that the cop who killed Ayers wasn’t POST certified. Private investigators for the widow were the ones who discovered that. How? They asked the head of the certifying agency to check his records, something the GBI didn’t do.

You’ve got to wonder just how seriously they take any officer-involved shooting.

[chiefqc]

Well at least the cop went home safe and the innocent pastor died, make sense to me.

Oh wait, innocent pastor killed by a moron cop, never mind.

[PoloSec]

Well...there is enough history of the stuff for the History Channel to run a long series, like they do with Hitler.

[TADSLOS]

High capacity assault style hang nail.

[Logical me]

It's getting to the point that maybe we should take away the heavy guns and military artillery from the sick law enforcement. They are becoming more dangerous than the criminal.

[Chode]

when? when the doughnut munchers started using this...