It looks like the three police officers who shot and killed Katherine Johnston will be charged with felony murder, among other crimes.

As I wrote at reason yesterday, I’m not particularly fond of crimes like felony murder. I think there’s something pretty troubling about prosecuting a crime that lacks intent.

That said, if we’re going to have felony murder crimes, police and government agents need to be held to the same standard as everyone else. To that end, the charges against Officers Junnier, Smith, and Tesler are welcome news.

There are some concerns, here, though. First, Johnston’s family is upset because the DA’s charges may upend the federal investigation. Local crime enforcement is generally preferable to federal enforcement. But civil rights cases (via the 14th Amendment) are a bit different. Johnston’s family may have a legitimate gripe. If the failures that led to her death are as thorough and system-wide as they appear to be, political pressure, cronyism, and conflict-of-interest may prevent the DA’s office from conducting a complete investigation.

Second, and somewhat related, it’s important that these charges don’t allow public officials in Atlanta to dismiss Johnston’s death as the result of a few bad apple cops. There were systemic failures, here.

Atlanta officials need to look at the system that allowed these narcotics officers to think they could get away with making up an informant, then attempting to cover it up. A cop’s not going to try something like that in a system that has the proper oversight and accountability. Officer Tesler, for example, had previously lied about an automobile accident he was involved in, but got off with barely a slap on the wrist. It’s imperative that a police officer be trustworthy. As the Johnston case shows, his word — on an affidavit for a search warrant, for example — can literally mean life or death. Why was he not fired? Why was he allowed to continue work on narcotics cases?

More broadly, the entire country needs to have a conversation about drug policing. The informant system is too ripe for abuse. Not because all police officers are dishonest, of course. Nor are even most of them. But the confidentiality we grant to drug informers — judges and prosecutors sometimes don’t even know who they are — allows for the few cops who do take shortcuts to get away with it. Anyone think this is the first time there’s been a phantom informant in Atlanta? Hell, many of the same narcotics cops conducted a similarly botched raid on the same block just a year earlier.

Cops aren’t double checked. And then there’s the reliability of the informants when they actually do exist. See here for a visual of the consequences of over-reliance on untrustworthy informants.

Of course, because there’s no victim to report a consensual drug crime, there are really only two ways to police them — the use of informants, or the use of undercover cops. And as we saw with the recent shooting death of Isaac Singletary, the latter can result in the deaths of innocent people, too.

Finally, a quick word for those suggesting that these indictments are proof that “the system works.” This is one case. It’s one very high-profile, very high stakes case. I suppose the same indictments may have come down had there not been as much publicity, but that’s impossible to say. I can say that I’ve followed a great many more cases of botched raids that didn’t get as the publicity this one did were there wasn’t any accountability.

In short, a positive development. But there’s much more to be done.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 9:39 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Informants, Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.