Early this year, I directed you to the story of Cheryl Lynn Noel, a Dundalk, Maryland woman killed in an early morning drug raid. Police deployed flashbang grenades and subdued the occupants on the first floor of the two-story townhouse where the Noel family lived. When they made their way to the second floor, and into Noel’s bedroom, they found her in bed, pointing a handgun back at them. One officer fired three times, killing her. Three members of Noel’s family were charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession.

Noel was later described by an acquaintance in a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun as a “loving wife and mother, not a drug dealer.” A poster to this Free Republic thread on the shooting said he’d read that, “Every neighbor that was interviewed had nothing but good things to say about this woman. Making matters worse for this family is the fact that her teenage step daughter was murdered a couple of years earlier. The only drugs they found in the house was a little pot. Certainly nothing that would warrant these storm trooper tactics from the police.”

It’s rather farfetched to think that a 40 year-old woman would try to take down a SWAT team, even if she’d known her husband and teenage kids had small amounts of marijuana in their possession. It’s far more likely that Noel had no idea the intruders were cops, feared her home was being invaded, and brandished the weapon in self-defense.

I’ve been trying to research the Noel case for the paper I’m working on. The problem is, other than the original two stories and the letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun, I can’t seem to find anything more on the case, including any article that verifies the details provided in the Free Republic post.

This is unsettling for a couple of reasons. First because I’d like know what happened: Was there a subsequent investigation? What were the findings? Upon what evidence was the raid conducted? Did the report conclude no wrongdoing, and that it’s acceptable to conduct early morning SWAT team raids based on suspicion of marijuana possession?

But the lack of follow-up coverage of the Noel shooting is disturbing for another reason: It’s typical. With just a few exceptions in very high-profile cases, these shootings almost always trigger one or two pieces shortly after they happen, then the press falls silent. You’d think that when police storm a home in the early morning, then shoot and kill an occupant who is at best a nonviolent drug offender, and at worst completely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, it’d be worth some extended media attention. If we’ve reached the point where it isn’t, how very sad for us.

I’ve tried to follow up on several of these cases over the last few months. And when I call the reporters who filed the original story to ask for updates, nearly all of them say the same thing: They don’t know. They lost track of the story, or were assigned to a different beat, or got preoccupied with something else. The reporter who filed the original two stories in the Noel case hasn’t returned my calls.

I think a big part of the reason why the ubiquity of no-knock raids and the trend toward police militarization have gotten so out of hand is that the media has dropped the ball in its coverage of them. When the people in charge of protecting us start terrorizing, invading our homes, and killing us, that ought to be big news.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2005 at 11:18 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.