Posted on 01/13/2003 6:43:29 PM PST by Leisler
Unfortunately, the police were rewarded for assaulting an innocent man and his family:
4 city police officers presented certificates for valor
Each was shot during November drug raid
May 21, 2003|By Del Quentin Wilber | Del Quentin Wilber,SUN STAFF
Four Baltimore police officers who were shot and wounded during a botched drug raid last year received certificates yesterday for earning one of the department’s highest awards: the Citation of Valor.
The officers, who had received their medals from former Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris before he left the department in December, were honored during the city department’s Medal Day ceremony at the War Memorial Building across from City Hall. Norris is now state police superintendent.
Detectives Robert J. Adams and Michael H. Smith, and Officers James S. Guzie and Steven Henson were shot Nov. 19 when they stormed into the North Baltimore house of Lewis S. Cauthorne.
Cauthorne, 26, was charged with four counts of attempted murder for opening fire on the officers. But prosecutors dropped the charges in January after determining the officers did not announce they were police.
The 10 members of the police team were unable to reach a consensus on what happened. At least five of the officers said they couldn’t remember what - if anything - was spoken in the tense moments before the raid, according to law enforcement documents.
State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said in January that questions surrounding the raid led her to believe that “Mr. Cauthorne was acting in self-defense” when he sprayed his house with bullets from a stolen .45-caliber handgun.
The presentation of the certificates comes as detectives have not officially completed their report on the raid, police officials said yesterday.
The department denied a Maryland Public Information Act request by The Sun in February to inspect the department’s reports, saying there was “an open Internal Affairs investigation” of the shooting.
Police officials yesterday said that internal probe had not begun. In a narrative of the raid published in the award ceremony program, police wrote that the officers announced their presence.
“Upon arriving at the front door, members of the raiding party knocked several times and announced, `Police Search Warrant,’” the program says.
Cauthorne has said he blindly opened fire on the officers from behind a wall because he thought his family was in danger and did not know that police had smashed into his house.
The raid yielded a stolen handgun, six bags with trace amounts of marijuana, empty vials, a razor with cocaine residue and two scales, police said at the time.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003-05-21/news/0305210039_1_raid-police-search-police-officers
“The raid yielded a stolen handgun, six bags with trace amounts of marijuana, empty vials, a razor with cocaine residue and two scales, police said at the time.”
Hmmm.........
And yet, there are no charges against the man, there was no record of where exactly in the home the drugs were found, and crime lab technicians were told by police not to photograph the evidence. The raid was based on a tip from a confidential informant.
It’s not like they would plant contraband to CTA after attacking an innocent man, right?
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