Posted on 04/30/2007 10:37:19 PM PDT by FreedomCalls
Feds detail woman's death, officers' plea
Published on: 04/27/07
According to federal documents released Thursday, these are the events that led to Kathryn Johnston's death and the steps the officers took to cover their tracks.
Three narcotics agents were trolling the streets near the Bluffs in northwest Atlanta, a known market for drugs, midday on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Eventually they set their sights on some apartments on Lanier Street, usually fertile when narcotics agents are looking for arrests and seizures.
Gregg Junnier and another narcotics officer went inside the apartments around 2 p.m. while Jason Smith checked the woods. Smith found dozens of bags of marijuana — in baggies that were clear, blue or various other colors and packaged to sell. With no one connected to the pot, Smith stashed the bags in the trunk of the patrol car. A use was found for Smith's stash 90 minutes later: A phone tip led the three officers to a man in a "gold-colored jacket" who might be dealing. The man, identified as X in the documents but known as Fabian Sheats, spotted the cops and put something in his mouth. They found no drugs on Sheats, but came up with a use for the pot they found earlier.
They wanted information or they would arrest Sheats for dealing.
While Junnier called for a drug-sniffing dog, Smith planted some bags under a rock, which the K-9 unit found.
But if Sheats gave them something, he could walk.
Sheats pointed out 933 Neal St., the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. That, he claimed, is where he spotted a kilogram of cocaine when he was there to buy crack from a man named "Sam."
They needed someone to go inside, but Sheats would not do for their purposes because he was not a certified confidential informant.
So about 5:05 p.m. they reached out by telephone to Alex White to make an undercover buy for them. They had experience with White and he had proved to be a reliable snitch.
But White had no transportation and could not help.
Still, Smith, Junnier and the other officer, Arthur Tesler, according to the state's case, ran with the information. They fabricated all the right answers to persuade a magistrate to give them a no-knock search warrant.
By 6 p.m., they had the legal document they needed to break into Kathryn Johnston's house, and within 40 minutes they were prying off the burglar bars and using a ram to burst through the elderly woman's front door. It took about two minutes to get inside, which gave Johnston time to retrieve her rusty .38 revolver.
Tesler was at the back door when Junnier, Smith and the other narcotics officers crashed through the front.
Johnston got off one shot, the bullet missing her target and hitting a porch roof. The three narcotics officers answered with 39 bullets.
Five or six bullets hit the terrified woman. Authorities never figured out who fired the fatal bullet, the one that hit Johnston in the chest. Some pieces of the other bullets — friendly fire — hit Junnier and two other cops.
The officers handcuffed the mortally wounded woman and searched the house.
There was no Sam.
There were no drugs.
There were no cameras that the officers had claimed was the reason for the no-knock warrant.
Just Johnston, handcuffed and bleeding on her living room floor.
That is when the officers took it to another level. Three baggies of marijuana were retrieved from the trunk of the car and planted in Johnston's basement. The rest of the pot from the trunk was dropped down a sewage drain and disappeared.
The three began getting their stories straight.
The next day, one of them, allegedly Tesler, completed the required incident report in which he wrote that the officers went to the house because their informant had bought crack at the Neal Street address. And Smith turned in two bags of crack to support that claim.
They plotted how they would cover up the lie.
They tried to line up one of their regular informants, Alex White, the reliable snitch with the unreliable transportation.
The officers' story would be that they met with White at an abandoned carwash Nov. 21 and gave him $50 to make the buy from Neal Street.
To add credibility to their story, they actually paid White his usual $30 fee for information and explained to him how he was to say the scenario played out if asked. An unidentified store owner kicked in another $100 to entice White to go along with the play.
The three cops spoke several times, assuring each other of the story they would tell.
But Junnier was the first to break.
On Dec. 11, three weeks after the shooting, Junnier told the FBI it was all a lie.
Translation: I hate being VERY wrong and being called on it.
The sound of crickets in the dead quiet. In otherwords, no response.
"After all, tomorrow is another day!"
“It could still unfold in unpredictable ways as liars are involved.”
You’re right. It’s difficult to tell what BS story the cops will come up with next.
Did you side with Tawana Brawley?
“Why is it that when ordinary people commit robbery and someone is killed they’re charged with Murder One, but when cops do it they aren’t?”
Because,My man, the law only applies to little people.
And another thing, you can bet that this was not their first rodeo.
The police-can-do-wrong crowd are going to be all over you like ugly on a ape.
Long after hell freezes over.
Reference your post # 79:
I wish I had said that.
Some people are just addicted to licking jackboot leather.
What the jackboot lickers fail to understant is that the JBTs have less respect for them than they do us.
And Archy it is always good reading one of your posts.
I remember all the Barney Fifes badmouthing the old lady...trying to shame us because we just didn’t have sufficient empathy for cops.
That stinks.
You didn't mention that cops generally support disarming citizens...or that the Supreme Court has held that cops have no affirmative duty to protect anyone.
Tragic but true.
Ah, the moral equivalent of the "moderate muslim." You just don't get it. It isn't that most cops are bad, just a handful here and there. But when you defend them until the absurdly indefensible end then promote light sentences for horrific betrayals of trust, you do more harm to the cops than those who think they are all bad.
You demonstrate that you don't have any principles in the matter and don't expect the cops to either. Police behaving in this way should get harsher sentences than a criminal because of the trust placed in them.
I have a recording of a cop (Buffalo Transit Authority, at an airport) saying “we are the law” in response to me citing the law.
Not a lot of sympathy to those who come to that conclusion.
“Did you side with Tawana Brawley?”
Man, you’re killing me with this stuff. First you say the old lady got what she deserved and now, even though the cops have been PROVEN liars, you have the gall to ask the question above. Keep digging your hole, I’m going to sit here and laugh at your pathetic self.
This scenario is repeated all across these untied states all the time. Its all over the TV, cops busting down doors dragging people out onto the streets and the people cheer . What happened to good ole police investigating? Do the police now just believe what any ole informant says and just bust down a door with guns blazing? The bastardization of our Constitutional protections is getting worst and worst. Soon we'll end up as another 3ed world dictatorial sh*thole and when the sleeping people finally wake up, they will all stand around and wonder why 'someone didn't do something'.
The American people have been asleep for so long enjoying their blissful illusion of liberty that they will do nothing to protect what liberty we still have left.
hello,
I was this man’s best friend. This was a pointless and needless tragedy and one I lived with everyday for many years. I saw him one week before they killed him and I was the guy that brought him to FLorida. He never had a chance, I have the newspaper articles on this entire thing and they depicted him as some kind of nut. He was a great guy. R.I.P. Joe, long you live and forever. And your on the web, too bad you had to die for it, working on our book.
L
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