FATAL RAID LINKED TO LIES FOR WARRANT IN DRUG CASE

ATLANTA -- A narcotics team that shot and killed an elderly woman
while raiding her home lied to obtain the search warrant, one team
member has told federal investigators, according to news reports
confirmed by a person familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity.

The officers falsely claimed that a confidential informant had bought
$50 worth of crack at the house, the team member, Gregg Junnier, told
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Junnier retired from the
Atlanta Police Department last week.

The story backs up statements by Alex White, a police informant, who
said that after the shooting the police had asked him to claim,
falsely, that he had bought crack at the modest home of the woman,
Kathryn Johnston, whose age has been reported as both 88 and 92.

Ms. Johnston, pictured wearing a birthday crown in a widely used
photograph, quickly became Exhibit A for complaints of excessive
force by the police, prompting packed, angry town-hall-style
meetings, accusations of systematic civil rights violations and calls
for civilian review of police shootings in Atlanta.

The incident has also demoralized a police force where the number of
narcotics officers has dwindled while, some critics say, pressure to
make arrests has increased.

"The rest of the world is now hearing from the mouths of the police
officers involved what we knew all along," said the Rev. Markel
Hutchins, a spokesman for Ms. Johnston's relatives, who have
maintained that she had nothing to do with illegal drugs and that
neither her house nor her basement, which had a separate entrance,
was used by dealers.

Spokesmen with the F.B.I.'s Atlanta office and the United States
attorney here declined to comment. The shooting occurred on Nov. 21,
after three members of the narcotics team arrested a suspected street
marijuana dealer, Fabian Sheats, who said he could help the officers
hook a bigger fish.

Mr. Sheats pointed out Ms. Johnston's house on Neal Street, near a
high-crime area, saying a dealer there had a kilogram of cocaine. The
officers, according to the reports of Mr. Junnier's account, tried to
get an informant to the house to make a drug buy. But when that
effort hit a snag, a request for a search warrant was drawn up anyway.

The paper, signed by Officer J. R. Smith, one of the three officers
who made the arrest, claimed that a buy had been made from a dealer
named Sam, and that a "no-knock" warrant was needed because Sam had
security cameras outside the house -- another detail that was
fabricated, according to the accounts of what Mr. Junnier told the F.B.I.

Mr. Smith's lawyer, John Garland, declined to comment.

After a judge signed the warrant, the officers pried open Ms.
Johnston's burglar bars and broke down her door. She responded with
gunshots from a handgun that neighbors said she kept for defense. The
officers, three of whom were injured, returned fire and killed her.
No cocaine was found.

Mr. Junnier's lawyer, Rand Csehy, confirmed that his client was
cooperating with investigators. William McKenney, a lawyer for Arthur
Tesler, the third officer involved in the arrest, said his client
would also cooperate.