It just keeps getting uglier. Two new developments in the Johnston raid, neither of them good news.

First:

An Atlanta narcotics officer tied to last week’s deadly drug raid on a elderly woman’s home was the subject of a 2002 lawsuit that said he “fabricated” the events that led to his head-on traffic collision with a motorcyclist.

That rider, Samuel T. Gulley Jr., received a $450,000 payment from the city last year to settle his claims against Officer Arthur B. Tesler, the city and the Atlanta Police Department. The civil case was dismissed from Fulton County State Court after the settlement in September 2005.

That lawsuit alleged Tesler and other unnamed officers “fabricated traffic charges against Plaintiff, ignored evidence … and improperly initiated criminal proceedings” against Gulley to cover up the fact that Tesler was at fault in the accident that left Gulley with a broken pelvis and broken leg.

Now the credibility of Tesler and other officers involved in last week’s killing is being called into question. Tesler was one of two officers who told a judge they directed a confidential informant through the process of an undercover drug buy at the house occupied by Kathryn Johnston, according to court records.

The rest of the account makes it pretty clear that the guy lied about being in pursuit of a suspect, mostly because it’s the only way he could justify driving the way he was when he hit the victim. Unfortunately, his account is marred by the fact that he was on the wrong side of the road, had no siren or flashers on, and had failed to radio in his pursuit.

His punishment for causing an accident, covering up the accident and filing false charges against the guy he hit was no more than a reprimand from the city police department. Why why would they keep a guy on the force who by all indications lied about his own culpability in a potentially-fatal traffic accident? Why would they let him do narcotics investigations?

Search me. Maybe it has something to do with that “new police professionalism” and accountability Justice Scalia was raving about in Hudson.

Meanwhile…

The confidential informant who says police told him to lie about his role in a drug bust that led police to kill an elderly Atlanta woman is a petty criminal with a series of drug arrests in the past few years.

The informant, Alexis Antonio White, 24, has said he was told to cover the police and lie about activities at the home of Kathryn Johnston, who was killed in an exchange of gunfire with three officers who burst into her northwest Atlanta home Nov. 21.

White, whose identity was confirmed by law enforcement officials, is now in protective custody as federal, state and Fulton County officials try to sort out what happened in the raid.

White’s background and honesty are likely to be taken into consideration as law enforcement agencies, led by the FBI, reach a conclusion about whether to believe the police officers or a suspected drug dealer-turned-informant.

[...]

A list of numerous arrests stretching back over the past seven years has him living at six different apartments.

Atlanta police in a 2001 arrest report noted White’s occupation as “drug dealer.” He was 19 at the time.

In that arrest, White was standing at a gas station parking lot on Bankhead Highway leaning inside a car in what appeared to be a drug transaction, according to records. The arresting officer said he recognized White from a previous drug arrest. A search found suspected crack cocaine. The man he was selling drugs to was driving a stolen car.

Do you see what’s happening here? The informant described in the warrants as “reliable;” whom police trusted enough to conduct a high-stakes, volatile forced entry raid on his word alone; and whose identity we’ve been until now been told must remain secret to protect his identity is no longer an asset to the police. He’s now a liability.

Because of that, in nor more than a week this “reliable” police informant is now, “a former drug dealer.” We no longer need to keep his identity a secret to prevent the other dealers he’s ratted out from hurting or killing him — instead, we can now let the newspapers print his full name, along with his rap sheet. Hang him out to dry.

Keep this in mind as they trash this guy over the next few days: One week ago, his word was gold. It alone was enough to secure a no-knock warrant on an old woman’s home, with no corroborating investigation. And that’s if we’re to believe the police in all of this — not that they’ve given us much reason to. Under the best case scenario, they have to admit that they raided an innocent, elderly woman’s house based solely on the word of a former drug dealer, and a man they’re now insisting can’t be trusted.

Also keep this in mind: If White hadn’t spoke up this week, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this. A good percentage of the country would still have their doubts about Kathryn Johnston’s guilt or innocence. Many people would still suspect she was a drug dealer. Police would still be portraying this as a “good” raid, and the shooting of Ms. Johnston as perfectly acceptable and justifiable.

Is Mr. White telling the truth? I don’t know. So far, the police haven’t given us much reason to take them at their word. They flat out lied about an undercover officer making the initial buy. This is purely speculative, but I can’t see what incentive Mr. White would have to be lying now. If anything, the incentive would have been there for him to play along, and do what the cops told him to do. That way, he’d continue to get paid. No one would out him as an informant. And he wouldn’t have every cop in Atlanta cursing his name.

So why would he risk all of that and still come forward? Who knows. Perhaps he didn’t feel comfortable helping to cover up the needless killing of an 88-year-old woman. Crazy as it sounds, maybe even this drug-dealer-turned-police-informant has a conscience.

I’d also be curious to find out how Mr. White’s identity became public. He requested anonymity when he first came forward to a local TV station. So either he revoked that request (which seems unlikely), or the local media has decided not to honor it. I also wonder who gave his identity to the press. It had to have come either from White himself (again, unlikely), whatever friends or acquaintances of his knew he was a police informant (possible, but I would guess that this would be a pretty select group), or it came from someone in the police department.

If it’s the latter, well then it’s pretty clear what’s going on, here.

I’ve emailed the two AJC reporters who wrote the article about White, and posed these questions to them. But if it was a confidential leak, they of course aren’t going to tell me where it came from.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 12:16 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization, Police Professionalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.