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.
I live in the Atlanta area and I spoke here in defense of these guys. It turns out they were bad cops and they need to be punished. The two convicted will go to jail for 10 and 12 years respectively. The third who is charged with far less serious crimes, false official statments, etc, is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty.
The problem I have with these posts is a blanket insinuation that all cops fighting the war on drugs are bad that that they kill people on a daily basis. I for one am glad there are men and women willing to take the risk of being a LEO and stand between us and these thugs who prowl our streets. If you disagree, just avoid calling a cop next time you are assualted or need help. Just handle it yourself.
Yep. And although this case will make a small splash, it will continue as before.
There WILL be some rioting if these policemen go free, and unlike LA and the Rodney King riots, I think there will be just as many white folks rioting as black.
I’m white and this pisses me off to the nth degree.
NO WONDER so many folks hate cops.
These cops make life more difficult for the ones who are doing their jobs right and truly trying to server and protect.
Prayers for the family of this woman.
I hope they see justice.
So the police in this case were incapable of disarming a sleeping man? I think the procedure would involve tip-toeing up next to the man's easy chair and picking up the gun.
Those clowns aren't even fit for desk duty.
Then there is the appalling case of Donald Scott, a 61-year-old wealthy California recluse. Scott lived on a $5 million, 200-acre ranch in Malibu adjacent to a large recreational area maintained by the National Park Service. Tragically for him, in 1992 the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department received a false report that Scott was growing several thousand marijuana plants on his land. It assembled a team—including agents from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Park Service, the D.E.A., the Forest Service, the California National Guard and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement—to investigate the tip, largely through the use of air and ground surveillance missions. Despite several unsuccessful efforts to corroborate the informant’s claim, and despite advice that Scott posed little threat of violence, the L.A. Sheriffs Department dispatched a multi-jurisdictional team to conduct a military-style raid. On October 2, 1992, at 8:30 A.M., thirty officers descended upon the Scott ranch with high-powered weapons, flak jackets, dogs, a battering ram and what purported to be a lawful search warrant. After knocking and announcing their presence, they kicked in the door and rushed through the house. There they saw Scott, armed with a gun in response to his wife’s screams. With Scott’s wife watching in horror, agents fired two bullets into Scott’s chest and killed him. They found no marijuana plants, other drugs or paraphernalia anywhere.
Following Scott’s death, the Ventura County District Attorney’s office conducted a five-month investigation of the raid. The seventy-page report found that there was no credible evidence of present or past marijuana cultivation on Donald Scott’s property. It found that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department knowingly sought the search warrant on legally insufficient information, and that much of the information supporting the warrant was false while exculpatory evidence was withheld from the judge. The report concluded that the search warrant “became Donald Scott’s death warrant,” and that Scott was needlessly killed.
The targeting of Donald Scott, and the massive multi-jurisdictional police presence, cannot be explained as any kind of crime control strategy. Rather, as the District Attorney’s report concluded, one purpose of this operation was to garner the proceeds expected from forfeiture of the $5 million ranch. The investigation found that as they invaded the property, the officers—with two asset forfeiture specialists in tow—were armed with a property appraisal of Scott’s ranch, a parcel map of the ranch marked with the sale price of a nearby property and instructions to seize the ranch if at least fourteen marijuana plants were found.
Nicholas Gutsue, executor of the Scotts estate, notes that Scott had repeatedly refused to sell his scenic 200-acre ranch to the National Park Service, which wanted to make it part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Gutsue suspects that a deal was struck: After the raid, the police would seize the $5-million ranch under federal forfeiture law, which allows the government to take property used to commit a drug crime. The Park Service would buy the land, and the other participating agencies would share the proceeds. Gutsue notes that Park Service rangers took part in the raid, along with county, state, and federal drug warriors.
Good post
Frankly, I’d RATHER handle it myself, WERE I ALLOWED TO.
Having had law enforcement training, I’d rather be able to defend myself instead of waiting on police officers who are busy enough trying to prevent crime.
You make a very good point - it’s really easy to criticize cops when one isn’t right there in the situation itself. But IACP and other police groups really shoot themselves in the feet and ask for criticism when they very arrogantly try to to deny law-biding Americans their constitutional right to defend themselves.
Can it just be that the USSC has let the pendulum swing too far in the direction of giving police too much latitude? I think so.
This is one of those things that really cause me to go ballistic. We, "the People," give governments powers denied to the individual in society to help maintain order. With those powers SHOULD be increased responsibility. Those people with whom we've entrusted powers over our lives and property should be held to a HIGHER standard, not the same, or even lower. I've long said that political corruption should carry a minimum jail sentence of 25 years at hard labor. And if police or prosecutors falsify evidence used to knowingly convict someone unjustly, they (the police and/or prosecutors) should have to serve the sentence imposed.
In this case, the police should be charged with first degree murder, as it appears that they knowingly broke the law both before AND after the death of the woman.
Mark
Rubbish. Police have lower on-the-job death rates than a lot of other jobs. They didn't even make the top-10 list of dangerous jobs in America.
Those are absolutely disgraceful sentences for the crime they committed -- premeditated, first-degree MURDER. Ten and twelve years for wilfully and maliciously making up a story, shooting an old lady, and then CUFFING HER while she bled to death on her own living room floor?
I hope they general-pop them, but as they're LEO's, they'll get special treatment behind bars, too.
“The arrogance displayed is truly disgusting and downright chilling.”
And, apparently, not uncommon.
The WOD has led to a oppotunistic police state, untold corruption, and the rise of well funded gangs and narco-terrorists.
The cure is worse than the disease.
So if I don't call the cops then what? I was still assaulted. I just won't have someone come and take a report. Seems like no big loss, frankly.
Someone needs to take these animals out in an alley somewhere and execute them.
Tip of the ice burg.
Investigations are underway that could shed a little light on things .... if the old CMA can be overcome.
Hey, what’s the big deal... If the police think that you’ve got something to do with drugs, you deserve to die. When they kill you, they’re doing society a favor, since your case won’t have to go to court and tie up the legal system even further!
If you’re a druggie, you deserve to die. If you’re related to a druggie, you deserve to die. If you happen to know a druggie, you deserve to die. If you are near a place that’s said to be where druggies hang out, you deserve to die. If you’re near a place where a confidential informant says druggies are, you deserve to die. If you’ve even even been within 100 miles of a druggie, you deserve to die.
Simple!
Mark
This is a serious question.
If I were to make a public pronouncement that if some harm were to befall these slimebags in prison that I'd deposit $50 in the commissary accounts of each man on their cellblock - would that be criminal solicitation?
I'm in Texas and it would only be criminal solicitation if the crime solicited is a capital or first-degree felony. Since a good old fashioned prison rape isn't a first degree felony, soliciting it wouldn't be a crime here. I'm just not sure about Georgia.
In Missouri, there's a state law which requires any state or local law enforcement agencies to turn over any property taken to the state, when those agencies work alone. However, federal law allows any property taken to be shared with any law enforcement agency that works with the feds in the bust. Well, it turns out that the Kansas City, MO police department didn't like the state law, so they'd do the investigations, and then at the last minute, call in the feds for a coordinated bust, allowing the KCPD to share in "the booty!" Once the state got wind of what was going on (I guess they noticed THEIR cut of the action going down), they actually sued the KCPD in court for breaking state laws.
Mark
I won't make any sweeping statements against cops, but I will say this... I would rather see 100 drug dealers free and on the streets that a single innocent person killed as a result of the WOD. Unfortunately the WOD has made dealing drugs very profitable, for both the dealers AND law enforcement, and worth taking huge risks for those dealers. I am well aware that those profits make drug dealers extremely dangerous, and the cops are taking huge risks. But when you've got innocent people being caught in the crossfire, there's NO excuse for this. Even if there's criminal activity going on (as posted, many of the cases had small amounts of drugs found at the scene), that's no reason to bring in lethal force. It's really no different than the raid on David Koresh's place in Texas. There were an awful lot of innocent people killed because the government wanted to show a strong use of force for forces sake, in order to justify it.
Mark
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