Here’s another one I missed while researching Overkill.

“The lady (SWAT officer) says ‘Mother F—–, I said get down or I’ll blow your f—— brains out,’” Roach said. “We were just blown away. We didn’t know what was happening, it happened so fast.”

Court documents showed police were acting on a tip from an informant that crack cocaine was being sold from Roach’s address at the time, 1773 Wilson Avenue.

A search warrant listing that address was executed and, afterward, Roach said a SWAT team pointed guns at his family, including six children ages one to 16. Then police discovered the informant had given the wrong information.

The raid happened in December 2004. It’s in the news because the family’s lawsuit was just thrown out of court on qualified immunity grounds.

“It is fundamentally under Kentucky law that the power to exercise an honest discretion necessarily includes a power to make an honest mistake in judgement,” the judgment read.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney William O’Brien said the judgment exonerates the city from any liability and that it’s a balancing act of society’s needs.

So what incentive is there to not take shortcuts, and make sure the informant knows what he’s talking about next time?

Last week, a federal judge excoriated the FBI for not only hiding exculpatory evidence that would have exonerated four innocent men who served more than thirty years in prison, but for rewarding those who did the hiding and covering up with bonuses and promotions. For this crime against American citizens, American taxpayers will now shell out more than $100 million. Thus far, none of the government agents actually responsible for this crime have been held accountable. Only rewarded.

Well, we’re just getting started. On July 19th, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the use and abuse of confidential drug informants. The testimony Assistant Director of the FBI Directorate of Intelligence Wayne M. Murphy gave at that hearing is truly astonishing.

The transcript below was provided by the ACLU. It comes from the Q &A session after the witnesses provided their initial testimony. Murphy’s being questioned by Rep. Dan Lundgren (R-Calif.) and Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.). The context: Lundgren and Delahunt have cited incidents in the past in which the FBI has covered up evidence that its confidential drug informants have committed violent crimes (including murder) in order to protect their identities, so that they could continue providing the bureau with information. They’ve cited other incidents, including the case above, in which the FBI has hidden exculpatory evidence, and allowed innocent people to go to prison. Lundgren and Delahunt want Murphy to assure them that the FBI has instituted policies to ensure that these sorts of incidents won’t happen again–that murderers won’t be protected and innocent people sent to prison in order to preserve drug investigations.

Remarkably, Murphy refuses to make such assurances. We pick up the transcript just after Lundgren has asked his initial question, and Murphy has obfuscated. Lundgren follows up:

Representative Lungren: If I could just ask my question once again very simply. That is: Is there a policy in the FBI to share information with local and state law enforcement officials when you, the FBI, have become aware that your confidential informants have engaged in serious violent felony activity, not all criminal activity, serious violent felony activity, in the jurisdiction of the local or the state authorities?”

Murphy: It is my understanding Congressman that there is not a specific documented policy, directly to answer your question sir.

Representative Lungren: Well I thank you for that because you may have given me the basis for enacting our legislation to require that. Do you think it should be?

Murphy: I think it’s difficult to make a generalization that will fly in every circumstance. And in fact in some cases there are activities which are closely coordinated with a local law enforcement activity but have equities that affect other local law enforcement activities. We’re being asked to respect and support the acts of one local law enforcement agency against another. And I want to say again, I don’t mean in terms of confrontational but in terms of balancing the equities and the interests of a long term investigation. So I don’t think it would be fair or accurate for me to try and characterize a general solution ….

Representative Lungren: All I can say is that if I were still a law enforcement officer in the state of California and you were to tell me that the FBI was reserving judgment about whether to tell me that you have CIs in my jurisdiction that are committing serious violent felonies, I would be more than offended.

I’ll say. And let’s keep something in mind, here. This would be a morally dubious policy even if were were talking about matters of, say, national security. But we aren’t. We’re talking about the FBI concealing evidence of murder and other violent crimes, and of knowingly allowing innocent people to go to prison in order to not disrupt drug investigations. In other words, all of this is necessary, the FBI is saying, to keep people from getting high. And when confronted by the United States Congress, the FBI can’t even say outright that this is categorically a bad idea, nor can it promise that it will institute a policy preventing these things from happening in the future.

We get more of the same when Rep. Delahunt questions Murphy:

Representative Delahunt: The scandal occurred in the Boston office in the late ’90s, about a decade ago. These issues have existed for decades now…. Is there a legal responsibility on the part of the FBI, in the case of murder, to report information to local or state law enforcement agencies?

Murphy: Congressman the Attorney General guidelines in their infinite…

Representative Delahunt: I’m not talking about the Attorney General guidelines. Do they have a legal responsibility, currently, to report evidence, both exculpatory, or evidence of a crime, when a homicide is being investigated?”

Murphy: If you will indulge me Congressman, I’d like the opportunity to answer that question offline because there are various circumstances under which that question might be answered differently that would include some of the aspects about how we manage sources, how we make decisions about the management of sources. And I would appreciate the opportunity to answer that question for the record offline.

The hell with that. If the FBI is “managing its sources” in a way that allows for innocent people to be murdered by its informants, or sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit, we damned well need to know about it.

To his credit, Rep. Delahunt doesn’t back down.

Representative Delahunt:I’m not asking about qualities or guidelines or considerations. Does there exist today, in your opinion, a legal responsibility for the FBI to communicate, in a homicide investigation, either exculpatory information to the state and local authorities, or evidence that would indicate that an individual is responsible for murder? That’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.

Murphy:I would prefer to answer that question offline if you wouldn’t mind, thank you Congressman.

Delahunt: Well I do mind. And I don’t see the reason why that answer has to be provided offline. That’s a legal question.

Now, go back and read about the “House of Death” case.

Delahunt and Lundgren say they plan to introduce legislation that will force the FBI to both divulge exculpatory evidence and divulge evidence that its informants have committed violent crimes. Good for them.

Rather horrifying, though, that we’d need a law like that in the first place.

I blogged about this yesterday at Hit & Run. But the article I linked to doesn’t even include the worst of it. Via Instapundit:

“FBI officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and ruin lives, interrupted only with the occasional burst of applause,” said Gertner, berating the FBI for giving commendations and bonuses to the agents who helped send the men to prison for the killing in Chelsea of Edward “Teddy” Deegan, a small-time hoodlum.

Pardon my Frennch, but why aren’t the agents who covered this up in fucking jail?

This isn’t just something that happened 35 years ago and got swept up and forgotten. The campaign to keep these innocent men in jail remained active well into the 1990s. And the argument from the Justice Department attorney that the federal government is under no obligation to share information with state and local prosecutors that could prevent an innocent man from going to jail ought to horrify you. In this case, the FBI let four innocent men rot in prison, initially in order to protect a mob investigation, but eventually to protect the fact that the FBI had allowed this to happen in the first place.

That someone from the Justice Department would argue such situational ethics chills the blood, and draws natural questions about other federal investigations and prosecutions. Should the federal government allow innocent people to go to prison to protect terrorism investigations? To protect the identity of drug informants (we already know the DEA is willing to look the other way while murders transpire in order to protect its informants) ?

What other “greater goods” are worth robbing innocent people of their freedom?

And while I don’t have a problem with taxpayers footing part of the bill, here, every FBI agent complicit in this cover-up ought to lose everything he owns, and it all ought to go to these men and their families–similar to the way, say, FBI and DEA agents seize the property of drug suspects, and siphon the proceeds back to their respective agencies.

Federal courts may have to revisit several drug cases in the Cleveland area after a paid government informant has admitted to lying under oath in several cases.  One woman has already been released from a ten-year prison term, and charges against two others have been dropped.  Another man, who was acquitted of charges based on the informant's testimony after spending eight months in prison while awaiting trial, is suing.

This is of course merely the latest scandal involving lazy drug cops who work with shady informants and don't look for corroborating evidence before making arrests (or, in the case of Kathryn Johnston and several dozen others, before kicking down doors).

The ACLU will soon be launching a national campaign about the use of informants.  I think we'll also be reading soon about more scandals involving federal informants and drug snitches, particularly coming out of the federal prison system.

So as I noted, this weekend, I spoke about the use and abuse of confidential informants at the ACLU's biennial conference in Seattle. One of my co-panelists was Regina Kelly, a resident of Hearne, Texas who was wrongly arrested, jailed, and indicted based on the word of a confidential informant who not only had psychological problems, but was facing his own robbery charges, and claims he was beaten by local authorities. She was one of 27 black residents of Hearne arrested based on information provided by the informant. Most, including Kelly, were later exonerated. I was so impressed with her speech I asked her to sit down for an interview.

From today's Atlanta Journal:

Two months and a day before Kathryn Johnston, there was Frances Thompson.

The 80-year-old Thompson was in her bedroom the afternoon of Sept. 20, when she heard a terrible crash and shouting. Startled and confused, she grabbed a pistol and was immediately confronted by three Atlanta narcotics officers.

"They had masks covering their face. I thought I was being robbed," she recalled. "They pointed those big guns at me."

Lead officer Gary Smith said repeatedly "Police! Drop the Gun!" from behind his raid shield, according to a police report. Thompson, who had pointed the gun at the intruders, put down the black revolver as officers searched her apartment for a drug dealer named "Hollywood."

No one else was home. No drugs were found. And her pistol was a toy cap gun.

[...]

The two incidents share striking similarities: Two elderly women living alone with guns; police battering in a door; faulty reports from street-level dealers helping narcotics officers; and police parsing the truth, if not outright lying.

They also lived a little more than a mile apart. And let's not forget, in March 2005 narcotics agents conducted yet another raid on the house next door to Johnston's, which again turned up nothing. You have to wonder, at what point should Atlanta's judges start to question these officers' competence? More support for my recommendation that every large police department in the country keep a searchable database of every warrant applied for, issued, and executed. Mistakes need to be documented. And if the same judges continue to issue warrants to bad cops, they need to be held accountable, too. Ditto for prosecutors. Three wrong-door raids in the same neighborhood within the same 18-month period?

And of course, we now know of those other two raids only because of Kathryn Johnston's death. How many other wrong-door raids haven't we heard about? It's pretty clear now that the police were treating these neighborhoods like a war zone, with no consideration whatsoever for these peoples' civil rights.

More:

The team did not have a no-knock warrant as they did in the Johnston case. But narcotics agents are allowed to quickly batter in a door if they hear the residents scurrying around, presumably hiding drugs, or if they hear nothing. The team that day heard nothing, the police report said.

Emphasis mine. So if they hear something, they can break down the door. And if they don't hear something, they can break down the door. Meaning—as I've been arguing for some time—there's really no difference at all between a "no-knock" warrant and a "knock-and-announce" warrant, at least when it comes to giving the people inside a chance to avoid the show of violence. The problem lies with the license the warrant gives the police to make a destructive, volatile entry into a private home.

The prior raid seems to have been based on a wholly manufactured warrant as well. The affidavit states that an informant went into this old woman's home, and came out with a bag of cocaine. More evidence that this sickness permeates the entire Atlanta narcotics police unit, and isn't the work of a few rogue officers. More:

She never made a fuss about the incident.

"I thought it was all over with," she said. "I didn't know what to do. There's no one but just me. I thought I was just supposed to get over it."

Which is what I've found a lot of low-income, powerless people (or for that matter, even wealthier, more privileged people) tend to think. They're terrified and embarrassed. And so they never report what happened. They never go to the media. And they're certainly not going to call the police. Which suggests that awful as this map is, the real picture is likely quite a bit worse.

And as if this story couldn't get any sadder:

But what about the people who were mentioned in the affidavit — those supposedly going in and out of the apartment to buy drugs?

The police report answered that question: "We were advised that Ms. Thompson's son had just passed away and that there have been people and church members in and out of her apartment."

By the way, here's a news blurb from Idaho today:

The Sandpoint Police Department on a drug raid broke into the wrong northern Idaho home on Wednesday.

Police had their search warrant amended and returned to the Ponderay Mobile Home Park to raid the right trailer two doors away.

Police say they found illegal drugs on the second attempt and took a suspect into custody.

Police then made a third trip to pay $350 to replace the door on the home they raided by mistake.

Sandpoint Police Chief Mark Lockwood says "It was our mistake. We told the owner we will take care of any damages."

Sandpoint attorney Bryce W. Powell says he has a hard time believing that police exercised reasonable care before violating the homeowner's rights.

All this, to stop people from getting high.

There’s a documentary on the 1999 SWAT killing of Denver immigrant Ismael Mena debuting at a Denver film festival this weekend.

The Mena killing followed the sad pattern we’ve seen in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and several dozen smaller cities all over the country. A high-profile SWAT death, followed by intense media coverage, followed by police hunkering down and refusing to talk to the press. Subsequent media investigations then find that no-knock and forced-entry raids are common, are commonly mistaken, frequently turn up little or no evidence, and are often commenced based on warrants with little more than boilerplate language, which are then signed by complacent judges.

Permit me the indulgence of quoting from my own paper:

The public scrutiny that followed the botched no-knock raid in Denver that killed immigrant Ismael Mena in 2000, for example, enabled Denver’s Rocky Mountain News to get access to warrants and court records for all of the no-knock raids performed in the city in 1999. The paper’s findings were alarming: Of 146 no-knock raids conducted in the city that year, only 49 produced charges of any kind. And of those, just two resulted in prison time for the targets of the raids. In comparison, the paper noted that while 21 percent of the city’s felony defendants on average are sent to prison, just 4 percent of its no-knock defendants were. One former prosecutor said of the results, “When you have that violent intrusion on people’s homes with so little results, you have to ask why.” The Rocky Mountain News continued:

Almost all of the 1999 no-knock cases were targeted at people suspected of being drug dealers. . . . Often the tips went unsubstantiated, and little in the way of narcotics was recovered. The problem doesn’t stem only from the work of inexperienced street cops, which city officials have maintained. Even veteran narcotics detectives sometimes seek no-knock warrants based on the word of an informant and without conducting undercover buys to verify the tips.

Also…

The Denver Post investigation into the Ismael Mena shooting found that no-knock warrants on narcotics cases in Denver were rubber-stamped by the city’s judges in a way that amounted to the kind of blanket approach prohibited by Richards. “Along with an officer’s anonymous source, nearly all no-knock warrant requests over the past seven months— most of whichinvolved narcotics cases— were approved merely on police assertions that a regular search could be dangerous for them or that the drugs they were seeking could be destroyed,” the paper wrote. “That violates the spirit of a
1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires specific allegations behind every no-knockrequest.

And…

In 1998, after complaints about the increase in forced-entry drug raids, Colorado state senator Jim Congrove (R), a retired undercover narcotics detective, introduced legislation that would have puttighter regulations on the deployment of SWAT teams, the issuance of no-knock warrants, and the use of no-knock raids. The bill was rejected, due in large part to lobbying from the District Attorneys Association. The next year a Denver SWAT team would shoot and kill 45-year-old Ismael Mena in a mistaken raid.

And…

A 2000 Denver Post investigation found that judges exercise almost no discretion at all when it comes to issuing no-knock warrants. The Postfound that Denver judges had denied just five of 163 no-knock applications over a 12-month period (local defense attorneys were surprised to learn there were even five). “No-knock search warrants appear to be approved so routinely that some Denver judges have issued them even though police asked only for a regular warrant,” the Post wrote. “In fact, more than one of every 10 no-knock warrants issued over the past seven months was transformed from a regular warrant with just a judge’s signature.” Among the
paper’s other findings:

• In 8 of 10 raids, police assertions in affidavits that weapons would be present turned out to be wrong.

• Just 7 of the 163 affidavits for no-knock warrants offered specific allegations that a suspect had actually been seen with a gun, evidence that’s essential to procuring a no-knock warrant. Even here, police found weapons in just two of the seven searches.

• About one-third of the no-knock warrants were never reviewed by a district attorney before going to a judge, a violation of the police department’s stated policy. Many of the prosecutor reviews that did take place took place over the telephone.

• Nearly all of the warrants were for narcotics and were granted solely on the tip of an anonymous informant and an officer’s assertion (minus any corroborating evidence) that weapons would be found at the scene or that the suspect was likely to dispose of evidence.

Judge Robert Patterson, the presiding judge for Denver’s criminal court system provided an astonishing defense. “We are not the fact gatherers,” he said. “It’s pretty formulaic how it’s done. If you sign your name 100 times, you can look away and signing the wrong place. We read a lot of documents. We may, just like anyone else, sign something and realize later that it’s the wrong place or the wrong thing. Is it wrong not to be paying attention? No. It’s just that we’re doing things over and over again.”

And that, friends, is how you set the stage for an innocent man’s death. I hope the film is good, and that it gets some exposure.

From Peyton’s guest-host stint on SNL last night. Friggin’ hilarious. Watch it before NBC makes YouTube take it down.

(Too late! Watch the official NBC-approved clip here, complete with preliminary advertisement.)

The story of the infamous drug informant scandal in which 46 black people were wrongly arrested and prosecuted based solely on the word of a racist undercover operative is coming to the big screen.

Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton will star in Tulia.

I’m a huge Thornton fan. They couldn’t have casted a better Tom Coleman. The movie should also provide a great opportunity to bring national attention to the abuse of and over-reliance on drug informants.

While I was in Atlanta last week, a committee in the Georgia state senate unanimously passed a bill that its sponsors claim will rein in the abuse of no-knock warrants in the state (I cautiously welcomed the bill here ).

The night the bill was passed, I spoke with its sponsor, Sen. Vincent Fort. The good news is, Sen. Fort is genuinely committed to wiping out the use of no-knock raids, save for cases where the suspect poses an imminent threat to the community (think fugitives, hostage takings, etc.). In fact (self promotion alert) he plans to order a copy of my Overkill paper for every member of the Georgia legislature before the bill comes to a vote.

The bad news is, the bill was amended and watered down to the point that in its current form it won't do much at all to end the excesses associated with forced entry raids. In fact, had the bill been in place last year, it's unlikely that it would have prevented the Kathryn Johnston raid, which is the reason it was introduced and passed in the first place.

There are several problems with the bill, including:

· The bill only covers no-knock warrants. The problem is, the differences between a no-knock and a knock-and-announce warrant are virtually nil. In fact, the very night I talked with Sen. Fort, I also spoke to a former police officer, prosecutor, and now defense attorney in Texas. Like every police officer with whom I've spoken candidly about this issue, he confirmed the fact that the required "announcement" the police typically give in these raids is merely a ritual. Sometimes it's made as the door is coming down. It's often made while the suspect is sleeping. From the perspective of the people inside the home—people like Kathryn Johnston, for whom it would have made a huge difference to know if the people outside were cops or criminals—there's no difference at all between "no-knock" and "knock-and-announce." Remember, the police claim they did knock and announce before entering Johnston's house (though just about everything these particular cops say at this point is suspect).

A better bill would cover all forced-entry, paramilitary-style raids, not just no-knocks.

· Even with respect to no-knocks, the bill is far too vague. While it does require that police show "probable cause" of a suspect's threat to public safety in order to secure a no-knock, that really only brings Georgia in line with the rest of the country, where there are still routine abuses. Fort's original bill demanded the more stringent "clear and convincing evidence" standard. Fort tells me his lawyers tell him that a police officer need only show evidence that a suspect might have a gun in the home to get a no-knock under the new bill. That almost certainly means the officers in the Johnston case would have gotten their warrant under the new law, where they alleged both guns and a video surveillance system.

· The new law also grants an exception in cases where police can show probable cause that a suspect might dispose of drug evidence if police were to knock and announce themselves. Between this and the public safety component, this bill is really no more stringent than the vast majority of no-knock requirements in the rest of the country. Ironically, this exception makes it easier to obtain no-knock warrants against small-time drug offenders (those with a stash small enough to be flushed in a matter of seconds) than big-time dealers (whose stash is too large to be easily disposed of). A more sensible law would acknowledge that if a suspect has a small enough supply of dope to be flushed in the seconds between announcement and entry, you probably aren't dealing with the kind of dangerous criminal worthy of a violent forced-entry raid in the first place.

Bottom line? This bill is a tough-sounding piece of legislation that will really make no difference whatsoever in how Georgia police obtain warrants for and execute paramilitary-style raids. It almost certainly wouldn't have prevented the Johnston raid. There's no language in it to reform the deeply flawed drug informant system that allowed the Johnston raid to happen; to provide for oversight of the cops, judges, and prosecutors that have been lax in applying for and approving these warrants all over Atlanta; or to restrict invasive police raids to situations where they're ameliorating violence instead of creating it.

Give points to Sen. Fort for his effort, and for his success in bringing Georgia Republicans on board at least in talking about the right to be secure in one's home. But this bill is lots of bark, and very little bite.

If Georgia lawmakers are going to pass legislation in response to the Johnston raid, they should at least pass reforms that would have prevented the woman's death in the first place.

So in a couple of weeks, I’ll be attending this conference on the use of drug informants, sponsored by the ACLU.

The roster looks fascinating. Lots of people far more interesting than I am.

And I’m stoked about meeting Ed Burns, co-creator of The Wire, which I’ll say without reservation is the best thing ever put on television.

I hope to pull lots of material from the show for blogging, podcasts, etc. But as I understand it, some participants are fine with the discussions being on the record, and some would like their participation to be off the record.

So we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.

Daniel Castillo, Sr. buried his son tonight. Meanwhile, the details of what exactly happened in Tuesday’s raid haven’t gotten much clearer. The ABC affiliate in Houston filed a short story a little after midnight reporting that police say they found $5,000 in crack cocaine and marijuana at the home, and that they arrested Castillo’s uncle at the scene on drug charges.

But family spokesman Rick Dovalina told me on Friday afternoon that there was just one arrest, Jerome Hawkins, who was dating one of Castillo’s sisters. Dovalina also told me that the crack was found in Hawkins’ truck. He said there was hardly enough marijuana stems and seeds to merit a “trace.” I suppose these conflicting details will eventually sort themselves out.

Someone in the comments section at Hit & Run asked why the type and quantity of drugs found at the house is important. It really isn’t. The raid was wrong and needless and stupid whether Castillo’s uncle, Hawkins, or the victim himself were dealing drugs. An unarmed, 17-year-old kid was shot in the face and killed, just a few feet away from 1-year-old child. A 20-year-old woman watched her brother die before her eyes. And a father was forced to bury his son tonight.

All because a confidential informant reported seeing what at worst were a series of nonviolent, consensual drug exchanges.

Even if the drug charges are true, this is a grade-A, prime-cut example of why using SWAT teams to serve nonviolent drug warrants is needlessly dangerous, reckless, violent, and confrontational. How hard is this to understand? When you take men with guns and charge into someone’s home, you create violence. You leave very little margin for error. Of course, the police go in with ballistic shields, bulletproof vests, and helmets. So we know who catches the brunt of the errors when they happen.

The national media hasn’t picked up on this story, yet. Even the blogs have been quiet, at least in comparison to the Kathryn Johnston case. No one seemed to care much when police shot innocent Isaac Singletary to death a couple of weeks ago, either.

I’m starting to think “how many more people have to die” is the wrong question. I fear that pondering how many of these deaths it will take to spur people into seeing the perversity of our drug laws and their enforcement, and demanding reform is the wrong way to look at it. I’m starting to think that we’re now moving in the other direction — that these stories fatigue people. Numb them. Each one gets a bit less outrageous than the one before.

If that’s true, how sad. How incredibly fucking sad if the idea of a 17-year-old kid getting gunned down in his own bed in the name of preventing people from getting high is no longer capable of making us angry. And how incredibly fucking scary.

This afternoon I spoke with Rick Dovalina, director of the Houston chapter of the Hispanic advocacy group LULAC, and who has served as spokesman for the Castillo family the last few days. According to Dovalina, police say they found what appear to be stems and seeds of marijuana, either in the Castillo home or in the yard behind it. Contrary to earlier reports, the victim's father, Daniel Castillo, Sr. was not arrested or charged with a crime.

Police did arrest a man in a white pick-up truck outside the house. The man was apparently dating one of the victim's sisters, and police claim they found crack cocaine in the vehicle.

Dovalina says Daniel Castillo, Jr. was unarmed, had no criminal record, and according to his father, was not involved in the drug trade. The police affidavit for the search warrant claims an unidentified informant saw crack being sold from the house. It names "David Castillo" as a possible suspect, then later, "Daniel Castillo." That tip and police observations of "traffic" at the Castillo home formed the basis of the forced-entry SWAT raid. No one but the police knows the identity of the informant.

According to his sister, Castillo was shot just below the eye as he rose up from his bed after hearing her scream. She was holding a 1-year-old child just a few feet from the shooting.

The police have still refused to comment. Dovalina and the Castillo family held a press conference today at noon Houston time. I wasn't able to watch it from D.C. I'm hoping to chat with Dovalina later this evening to get more information, and perhaps obtain a copy of the warrant and affidavit.

In this article, Castillo’s family continues to maintain that he was unarmed, and shot as he was rising from his bed, awoken to screams from his sister. The article reiterates the presence of the 1-year-old child in the home during the raid, and confirms that it was a forced entry raid.

There seems to be some ambiguity about whether or not drugs were found in the home. The DA says there were. But the family spokesman from the Hispanic advocacy group LULAC said in the Houston Chronicle yesterday that he’s seen the warrant (and, one would guess, the return sheets), and that no drugs were found. That the DA’s office won’t say what type or quantity of drugs were found is suspicious. That kind of thing is generally announced right away. The local Wharton paper reported the day of the raid that two men, including Castillo’s father, were arrested. That’s the only account I’ve seen thus far that mentions arrests. Of course, whether or not any drugs were actually found doesn’t negate the unnecessary tragedy of a 17-year-old kid getting shot in the face.

Today’s article in the Victoria Advocate also indicates that the raid was based on a tip from –surprise! — a confidential informant who claims to have observed drugs being sold from the home, and an observation by one officer that there was lots of traffic going to and from the house. No controlled buys. No mention of a prior record. The article doesn’t mention if the officer gave justification for a forced entry raid in the affidavit.

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.

You know, I sometimes think people who describe the public schools as brainwashing or indoctrination centers are overstating their case. Then a story like this comes along:

Beware Fayetteville homeowners with trash or old tires in overgrown yards: Children might be watching.

An educational program to teach kids how to spot building and property code violations — complete with colorful characters such as “Willie Weeds” and “Trashy Tina” — will be in the hot little hands of local children soon, thanks to Fayetteville city officials.

The program is funded by a federal Community Development Block Grant and corporate sponsors.

[...]

Alan Wilbourn, director of school/community relations for Fayetteville Schools, said educating children to give information to parents can work.

“It sounds like a neat idea,” Wilbourn said of the program. “The seat belt program nationwide got kick-started the same way.”

Wilbourn said Fayetteville schools work closely with city departments to inform children about how to be model citizens.

“The DARE program has been in the schools for years,” he said.

The are apparently similar programs underway in San Antonio and Corpus Christi, Texas.

This one led to a series of raids and 33 arrests in East Texas.

All charges have now been cleared.

I suppose we should give local law enforcement some credit in exposing the informant and not attempting to cover the whole thing up.

Heads ought to roll over this one.

I wrote in the Reasonpost that this is every bit as outrageous as Abu Ghraib, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. The U.S government stood by and let people get murdered — at least one of whom was clearly innocent — because stepping in would have required them to give up their informant, and cease their investigation.

If Karen Tandy did indeed help shush the DEA agent who tried the blow the whistle on this one, she should resign. Or be fired.

What’s truly sad is that this story hasn’t generated more attention.

Glenn Greenwald has more. Note too that it looks like the NarcoNews site did much of the original reporting.

Here’s the audio of the charming Mr. Gentry’s answering machine message.

Check here if you’d like to read along with the transcript.

I also received the following email late last week:

Look, I know this fella and you’re right, he is unreliable and not very credible. Very much a racist. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard “hate niggers” come out of his mouth. Credibility should be thrown right out. Ask Mr. Gentry about his music tapes he has about bashing blacks. I am telling you this man is totally out to get blacks. He has stated in the past he would rat out a “nigger” in a heart beat. He is just a senile old man. Good luck.

I’ve been corresponding with another resident of Prentiss and a good friend of Ron Jones’ for several months now. This particular person was originally quite upset with me, but I think has now begun to suspect that perhaps something isn’t right about this case. She too says Mr. Gentry is well-known around Prentiss and Jefferson Davis County to be a bigot. At the hearing this week, one of the more bizarre arguments by District Attorney Buddy McDonald was that Mr. Gentry’s memory and state of mind have probably impaired by his lifelong abuse of drugs and alcohol. If that’s the case, why the hell was he being used as an informant in the first place?

I’ll get into why Mr. Gentry’s bigotry matters with respect to Cory’s case when I talk about his testimony at the hearing. But one thing his involvement in all of this ought to do is raise some serious questions about the use of informants, and about why courts often allow prosecutors to keep their identities secret, even in cases like this one, where a defendant’s fate may turn on the informant’s credibility. Judges give almost complete deference to police officers when they attest to the reliability of an informant in search warrant requests. There’s virtually no oversight at all. In the Overkill paper, I talk about one wrong door raid in New York City a few years ago in which an informant described by the police as “reliable” had just a 44 percent record of success.

In Cory’s case, the trial transcripts show that Judge Kruger — the man who signed off on the warrants — conceded on the stand that he didn’t ask Ron Jones much of anything about the reliability of the informant. Jones’ assertion in the affidavit that Gentry’s tip had led to at least one previous arrest was all that was necessary to estabish his credibility. No mention of his obvious and well-known biases. No mention of how many times his tips didn’t lead to an arrest. No mention of Mr. Gentry’s own problems with substance abuse.

So I have to ask…

If it was well known around town that Mr. Gentry is a raving racist who “hates niggers,” why did the police continue to use him as an informant in cases against black people? How many times has Mr. Gentry been described in a search warrant affidavit as “credible and reliable” when it’s now quite clear that not only should police have known that that’s not the case, but even the man’s own brother doesn’t consider him to be either? How many black people are in jail based in whole or in part on the word of Randy Gentry? How many more peope like Randy Gentry are serving as confidential informants — in Mississippi or anywhere else?

These aren’t rhetorical questions.

Mr. Randy Gentry testified today at Cory Maye’s hearing. He’s the confidential informant whose tip led to the raid. He’s also been the CI in several other drug busts in and around Prentiss, Mississippi.

And holy hell. You couldn’t cast a better villain. He’s a 51-year old guy with white hair pulled back into a ponytail, a long, white beard, and wears glasses in dark round frames. He’s illiterate (or, in his words, he “aint much with words”), and according to the district attorney (who wants to undermine Mr. Gentry’s credibility now that we’re post-trial, and his story his damaging to the prosecution), he’s something of a “doper” himself.

Before I indulge you with the transcript of Mr. Gentry’s rant on lead counsel Bob Evans’ answering machine from a couple of weeks ago, let’s recap the set-up:

The defense team had just found Mr. Gentry through a private investigator. He agreed to meet with the investigator and Bob Evans, and there was some talk about covering his gas fare to the meeting. But Mr. Gentry soon realized the investigator was working for the defense, and clammed up. He missed two scheduled meetings with the defense team the next day (they’d later discover that he had gone to the sheriff’s department to “turn himself in.”)

At that, Bob Evans called and informed Mr. Gentry that he could either testify voluntarily, or be compelled to testify in court. It’s at that point that Mr. Gentry left the following message on Evans’ machine:

Answering Machine:

Wednesday, 8:38 a.m.

Gentry:

Yeah, this is Mr. Randy Gentry. Hey, I got to thinkin’ about my friend. I got yo’ message this morning, Bob. Y’all — y’all threaten me all you want to and everything. I don’t like fuckin’ niggers from jump street but call me or whatever and I’ll — but the day I burn five cents on gas to help that fuckin’ cocksucker Cory Maye get out of jail is going to be a hell of a damn day. But — uh — if you want ot talk to me like a fuckin’ white man, you talk. But don’t threaten me on bullshit. Get your NAACP motherfuckers — I don’t give a fuck — niggers, bro, fuck niggers! But I’ll tell you what. That’s a good friend of mine they killed, buddy. I’ll — I’ll tell you anything. I’ll — I’ll be honest with you as fuckin’ gum (?) street. But I don’t like no motherfucker talkin’ shit to me or about my friends. Alright, well look here. Call me today and look here. Y’all buy my fuckin’ gas, the NAACP buy my fuckin’ gas I’ll come talk to y’all or whatever. But look here. I’m — I’m a poor-ass motherfucker too, bro. Call me. You got my fuckin’ number. Don’t piss me fuckin’ off.

This is the “reliable,” “trustworthy” informant who made the raid on Mary Street possible. He’s also likely put quite a few other black folks in jail over the last few years.

I’ll have more on the charming Mr. Gentry later. The guy is the antonym of “credible witness.” As noted in the Clarion-Ledger article linked below, Gentry’s own brother’s testimony directly contradicts just about everything he said today (his brother’s testimony actually jibes somewhat with the search warrants, though in the small ways it differs, it helps Cory Maye’s case — more on that later, too).

But I’m thinking the colorful passage above ought to suffice for now.

Oh, and I haven’t the slightest idea where the NAACP came from. I guess if a black man has a lawyer, it must be either the ACLU or the NAACP.