NO EXCUSE IF NO-KNOCK WARRANT MAKES NO SENSE

When Police Burst In Without Merit, Tragedy Ensues

Faced with troubling new allegations in the shooting of 88-year-old
Kathryn Johnston by three of his officers, Atlanta police Chief
Richard Pennington has wisely asked the FBI, assisted by the GBI, the
Fulton County district attorney and the U.S. Justice Department, to
take over the investigation.

The Atlanta police version of events has changed in disturbing ways.
First, the department claimed that an undercover officer had bought
drugs at Johnston's house earlier in the day, establishing grounds
for a search warrant. Later, police said that an informant had
actually made the drug buy. Now that alleged informant, under wraps
awaiting an FBI interview, apparently disputes that story, saying
that he never purchased any drugs at Johnston's home and that police
asked him to lie to cover up their deadly error.

Given the controversy and the conflicting details, Pennington's
decision to bring in an independent review team was appropriate and
necessary if the police department hopes to reclaim any public
confidence. In fact, an outside investigation should be standard in
any police shooting of a civilian.

Pennington also pledged to review the force's use of no-knock
warrants. Those warrants allow police offers to dispense with the
standard practice of knocking, declaring their identity and purpose,
demanding entry and then resorting to force only if entry is denied.

Those steps are more than mere niceties --- they protect residents as
well as officers who might otherwise be shot by civilians, as the
Johnston tragedy demonstrates.

According to neighbors, a frightened Johnston lived behind locked
doors and burglar bars in her one-story brick home near the Georgia
Dome. She went to bed at dark and rarely let people into her home
because of her fear of crime. It is not hard to understand why a
woman living alone in those circumstances would have grabbed an old
revolver and begun firing when three men burst through the door after
dark. Five of her shots struck the officers, who then fired back.

Under the circumstances --- being fired upon while serving a warrant
the decision of the officers to fire back may have been
justified. The real issue is whether they had justification to invade
Johnston's home in the first place.

The only time police officers should smash their way into a home
without giving notice to its occupants is when they have compelling
reason to believe that announcing themselves would jeopardize their
lives or their investigation. At the very least, officers should
conduct sufficient preliminary investigations to know who lives in
the house and who is likely to be present before they crash through a door.

Before narcotics agents went to Johnston's home last week, did they
ascertain who lived there? Considering it was two days before
Thanksgiving, did they establish whether visiting children or other
family members were in the home? Did they lean on an informant to lie
on their behalf?

If the informant never fingered Johnston's house as a drug source,
how did police end up there? What evidence did police have that the
drug quantities involved were significant enough to call for forced entry?

Based on what is known so far, it's hard to argue that Johnston was
at fault. She was not the professional trained to investigate a
situation before taking any action that could endanger innocent
people. She had no information to alert her to what was really
happening in her home that night.

Unfortunately, it appears that the APD didn't either.