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More on SWAT shooting in Atlanta
Reason Online is noting that the story about the Atlanta raid that ended with the SWAT team shooting 88 year Kathryn Johnson ... is getting even worse. The warrant was apparently based on claims from an informant that he'd purchased crack there ... but the informant says he never did, and later was pressured to falsely claim that he had.
The report is that it was a "no-knock" warrant. As Reason notes, the department is probably hosed no matter what it does, at this point. Bottom line is they charged into a house and snuffed a grandmother when she had been doing nothing wrong. This is a pretty bad bottom line.
From there, we get to either (a) the informant is truthful, and he never told the PD what they say he did so the whole thing was BS, or (b) the informant is untruthful, and they're raiding houses and shooting people over what untrustworthy informants are reporting. (OK, I know they do that, but they're not supposed to admit it).
Via Instapundit.
2 Comments | Leave a comment
When you have a situation as this incident in Alanta that involves an informant the police need to make sure they have credible evidence before they raided Miss Johnson's home. It sounds to me that their informant was givin by a crack attact anyway if he or she purchased drugs at the home before, "suppositly." Why would police even believe an addicts word. Their words are never bond because have of the time they get arrested in order to get out they lie "nark" to tell on somebody in order to get their next fix. And this caused a elderly woman's death. I am quite sure Miss. Johnson didn't know who was entering her home.
I hope this comes to a head sooner rather than later. SWAT raids have annoyed the hell out of me since they first started to get mission creep out of the hostage/standoff arena.
Part of me worries that it (and its fraternal twin, the civil forfeiture action) have become too entrenched and profitable as LE institutions to easily be gotten rid of it. I would have hoped the mainstream media would be all over something like this. Going after police miltarization instead of grandstanding over iraq would be 10x more useful.