ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT REBUILDING A ROAD TO RESPECT

For those who live in the area of Atlanta known as The Bluff, the
convenience store at the corner of English and North avenues is a
gathering place, of sorts. From here, James Hill and Mike Bell have
watched the ebbs and flow of the neighborhood drug trade, as well as
the comings and goings of the police.

From what they've seen, it's no longer business as usual. The drugs
are still there. But the cops are different, they say.

Members of the new drug unit have a new attitude. No longer are
regular citizens rousted along with the drug dealers as part of an
arrest-them-all-and-let-God-sort-it-out philosophy, the men said.
"There's more respect," added Hill.

They aren't the only ones noticing a change. Community leaders and
those in neighborhood meetings say much the same thing.

It's been nearly four years since narcotics officers, playing fast and
loose with the truth, burst into 92-year-old Kathyrn Johnston's
bungalow nearby and shot her to death while seeking a mother lode of
drugs that, it turns out, was never there. Four narcotics officers in
the unit later went to prison for civil rights violations, and any
remaining trust between The Bluff's residents and those sworn to keep
the peace was virtually destroyed.

The road back to relevance and respect for the Atlanta Police
Department and its narcotics unit has been difficult. It's been a day-
by-day slog that started with disbanding the unit in 2007, then
putting a new group together. "We did what you call a clean break,"
said Lt. Bill Trivelpiece, who took over the suddenly nonexistent unit
and rebuilt it from scratch. "All our folks were green."

Commanders and cops engaged in an ongoing effort to win back those who
saw them through jaundiced eyes.

An FBI investigation of the former drug unit found that several
officers used shortcuts to do their job. They used a shadowy network
of barely supervised confidential sources to buy drugs, made up
information to make arrests, planted drugs on suspected dealers to get
them to cooperate and searched random people on the street without
probable cause.

Change in mind-set

By day, Trivelpiece, who before taking over had served stints in
internal affairs and the training academy, was training his troops and
learning with them. By night, he was meeting neighborhood groups,
trying to win back trust, one roomful at a time. "I was surprised by
the amount of support in the community," he said.

Residents wanted them back on the job, going after those who were
turning their neighborhoods into wastelands.

Three years later, there are two dozen detectives in the narcotics
unit, more than there were four years ago, and the squad is back
operating with confidence. Doors of suspected drug houses again are
flying from their hinges. The unit this month executed its 88th search
warrant of the year, twice that of all of 2009.

Despite this year's increases, the latest numbers are a far cry from
2006, when Atlanta police executed more than 570 search - a measuring
stick for activity - for drugs, according to an examination of court
files by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. At least half those
warrants were obtained by the narcotics unit.

Major Chris Leighty, a former Marine and SWAT commander who heads the
Special Enforcement Section, which includes narcotics, said the unit's
focus is quality, not quantity. And adhering to procedures.

"The biggest change down there is the mind-set of not only those
assigned there but the commanders as well," Leighty said. "The
emphasis is on doing what's right. There's a fine line between being
productive and being unproductive. We no longer concern ourselves with
the numbers. That's a huge difference."

Numbers have always been important in police work and more so since
2002 when former Police Chief Richard Pennington implemented COBRA, a
computerized system that tracks crime trends and targets areas for
enforcement. The system was used to hold commanders accountable for
increases in crime.

The department was criticized for pressuring narcotics officers to
obtain at least two drug search warrants and make nine drug arrests
each month. A confidential FBI report released by a judge last month
said that "almost all APD officers interviewed" talked about the so-
called 9-and-2 rule. Some liked it, "because it forced lazy officers
to work harder." APD brass denied there were quotas.

But many have argued that drug unit members' willingness to raid
Johnston's house without investigating the situation, a decision that
led to her death, was precipitated by quotas.

Many officers told the FBI they had little training or oversight. Some
said they were taught to falsify warrants by Gregg Junnier, the
veteran detective sent to prison for his involvement in the raid on
Johnston's home and the cover-up after her killing. Before that,
Junnier was so highly thought of that he was tasked to update the
unit's standard operating procedures on informants.

Down and down

Trivelpiece took over the narcotics unit in May 2007. "The first day
was incredibly difficult," he recalled. "There was no one left." He
couldn't even find the office supplies.

The unit started with two teams, 15 detectives and three sergeants.
"The people selected had no background in narcotics," he said. They
also had to have clean personnel jackets. The GBI detached nine drug
investigators for a year to train and work with them. They took ethics
classes. They trained with the FBI, the DEA, with other cities.

The new way of doing business means the number of narcotics arrests in
the city overall are down 27 percent for the first eight months of the
year compared to the same period last year - from 3,596 last year to
2,633. But another measuring stick, crime overall, is down 12 percent
so far this year.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said APD is making an
average of seven indicted trafficking cases a month, half that of
2006. But they are better cases. "We're getting a better product," he
said.

Warrants now must be reviewed by a sergeant or lieutenant. No-knock
warrants, which allow teams to burst right in, must be approved by a
major. So far, the narcotics unit has sought five, said Leighty.

In 2007, APD sought 80 no-knock warrants in drug cases, more than half
of those originated by the then-smaller narcotics unit.

The unit also had to re-learn what was needed to search someone's
home, that there had to be articulable suspicion and real
investigation, not just hunches and snitch gossip. A review of 2006
warrants shows a run-and-gun style by Junnier and his cohorts. The
unit used to fire off batches of electronic requests at a time to
pliant magistrates, who assumed the cops were telling the truth.

On July 5, 2006, they sought three separate warrants looking for three
people simply known as "Red," "Dred" and another "Dred." Two weeks
later, from the same magistrate, it was for Red, Red and Chocolate.
The next month, it was Row, Red and Short Dred. They were seeking a
fictional "Sam," according to subsequent investigations, on the night
Johnston was killed.

Leighty said his orders from the new chief, George Turner, were
direct: "Accountability and do things the right way."

"We try to make two or three buys if it's a new location. We try to ID
perps. We try to pull histories of who lives there," Leighty said,
acknowledging the streets are filled with sketchy characters known
only by nicknames.

The unit is trying to work on building cases against bigger drug
dealers, passing on tips to other squads to free up investigative
time. But the officers still often get bogged down in smaller cases.

"You'd like to get a kilo,'' Leighty said. "But we can't control
citizens' complaints." A tip on a drug house from an old lady recently
led to a raid and just under a dozen hits of crack. It's not a kilo,
"but that's a win for the old lady," he said. Each 2.8 warrants take
guns off the street, he said.

Some busts lead to good arrests, including what police say is a
growing number of trafficking cases. But the new squad is learning
that chasing drugs on the streets of Atlanta is like playing the
arcade game Whac-A-Mole.

Back in February, police raided apartment 3 of 625 Jett St., finding
150 grams of packaged marijuana and a Glock pistol. Soon, they
observed that one of the men selling drugs from apartment 3 was now
operating from apartment 1. So, they raided that apartment and
confiscated crack, pot and bullets.

This summer, they were back investigating the occupant of apartment 1,
with a name and better description of the man they sought. That led
them to investigate and raid an apartment in the complex next door.

It's a never-ending saga.