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.

Here’s the news I promised you yesterday:

One of the Covington attorneys noticed early after they took the case that the autopsy on Ron Jones reported that Jones had written a phone number on his hand. The team hired a private investigator, and after some leg work, managed to track down the guy who owned the number at the time of the raid.

Gold. The number eventually led to the informant who tipped Ron Jones off to the raid on the Cory Maye-Jamie Smith duplex. The guy’s a real piece of work. I can’t go into too much detail right now, but the story the informant told Covington’s private investigator is dramatically different than the description given in Ron Jones’ affidavits for the search warrants. The details between the two accounts aren’t even close. I’ll get into the rammifications of the discprencies a bit later.

For now? Well, here’s where it gets fun.

After the guy realized the investigator was working for the defense team, he clammed up. When Bob Evans — Cory Maye’s lead attorney — called to tell him that if he didn’t talk, they’d compell his testimony with a subpeona, the informant flipped out. He called Evans, and left a rant on Evans’ answering maching that, when Evans played it for me the other night, blew my mind. It’s a 45-second clip of absolute fury, brimming with f-bombs, anger, hate, and — by my count — at least four utterances of the word “nigger.”

This is the “trustworthy” informant whose tip led to the raid on Cory Maye’s home. An unabashed bigot. Makes you wonder how many other black people have been raided, arrested, and imprisoned based on this guy’s tips. Not to mention how many ignoramouses like him are still turning people in down in Mississippi — or, for that matter, anywhere else.

I’ll have much, much more on this after the September 20th hearing.

Needless to say, for the moment, this new development shoots a mile-wide hole in the already suspect case against Cory Maye.

It also ought to have repercussions well above and beyond Cory’s case. Every person this guy has ever put behind bars deserves to have his case reexamined.

More broadly, all of this is yet more evidence in the sad, growing, and already overwhelming sea of evidence against the use of shady informants in door-busting drug raids.

Police have apologized for the mistaken raid I told you about last week, and have apparently started taking the first steps toward reimbursing the guy for the damage done to his home (which was extensive).

Here’s the troubling part:

Officers shot tear gas through the windows and broke down a back door. The house was empty, and there were no signs of drug activity.

Blackman, who was at work when the raid occurred, said that despite the apology, he is frustrated.

“They’re not communicating with me,” said Blackman, 46. “I still have a lot of things I need to get fixed.”

According to an affidavit for a search warrant, a patrol officer met with a “reliable confidential informant” who said drug activity was occurring in the house.

The informant has on numerous occasions given officers information that has proved correct, the affidavit says.

The informant “specifically pointed out” the location for the patrol officer and said he saw Taylor selling crack cocaine in the house on a recent visit, the affidavit states.

Officer J.T. Broadwater, identified in the affidavit as assigned to the FBI Violent Crime Task Force, wrote in the affidavit that “the location appeared exactly as the patrol officer and the informant described it.”

The affidavit lists Blackman’s address and describes it as a single-story house “with a gray composition roof, brown wood trim, white wood siding, a black burglary bar attached to the front door and black burglar bars attached to the front window.”

[...]

“Informants and tips — those come in from time to time,” Sullivan said. “But … we do have some obligation to corroborate information, and procedures weren’t followed; mistakes were made.”

An FBI spokeswoman did not return a phone message late Friday afternoon.

Sullivan said he wasn’t aware of any officers involved in the investigation being shifted to other duties.

Police are also investigating whether the informant “misidentified, misconstrued or misunderstood” the exact location he was trying to direct police to, Sullivan said.

“Some kind of miscommunication occurred,” he said.

Sullivan said the department takes exception to what he called suggestions by the media that the SWAT team may have acted inappropriately when it entered Blackman’s home. SWAT officers used appropriate tactics based on the information in the warrant that a potentially dangerous suspect was inside the house.

“SWAT did their job,” he said. “They did not make a mistake.”

Of course not. And if Blackman had been home at the time, he’d probably be dead.

No worries, though. I’m sure this was just an isolated incident. Police never raid based on a tip from a single informant with no corroborating investigation. Never.

I’ve found some pieces behind a subscription wall pertaining to the shooting death of Cheryl Lynn Noel, a case we’ve been following on this site.

All are from the (very) local paper, the Dundalk Eagle. Two are articles, the rest are letters to the editor. At risk of offending the paper’s copyright, I’ve included them after the break.

Based on these stories and the two Baltimore Sun pieces, the Noel case has all the signs of a botched no-knock commenced on the tip of a single anonymous informant. What’s clear is that Noel herself wasn’t a drug dealer, or even a user, though individual members of her family seem to have been recreational users. Even they were found only with marijuana, and charged only with misdemeanors. Hardly seems worth the violence expended to make the arrest.

Noel was likely startled and frightened by the flashbang grenades cops use in no-knock raids. She probably heard the police coming up the steps, assumed them to be unlawful intruders, and grabbed the handgun to defend herself. I’d guess that the shooting murder of her stepdaughter nine years earlier only added to her fears.

I don’t necessarily fault the police in this case. At least for the actual act of shooting Noel. Certainly if, in the heat of a drug raid, a cop confronts someone with a gun, he’s going to fear for his life and shoot.

Here, I blame the policy. To the extent that the cops had other options, they deserve blame for that, too. No-knocks force confrontation. They turn serving routine drug warrants on nonviolent offenders into highly volatile, violent confontations. It’s been going on for twenty years, now. The policy has taken (by a conservative estimate) dozens of victims. And nothing has changed.

Cops themselves should be against these things. They generally aren’t because, boys being boys, SWAT team members tend to like the rush that comes with playing soldier against (usually) unarmed civilians. But it’s dangerous for police, too. In fact, Baltimore County cops needn’t look further than their own city to see why.

Back in November 2002, Lewis Cauthorne was in the basement of his Baltimore home when heard the screams of his mother, girlfriend, and three-year-old daughter. Baltimore police were conducting a no-knock raid on his home, based on a tip from a single, anonymous informant. Police never announced themselves, and raided in street clothes. Cauthorne emerged from the basement with a handgun, shooting and wounding four of the invading police officers. Cops returned fire. Fortunately, no one was killed in the crossfire.

Cauthorne spent the next seven weeks in jail. Finally, in January of 2003, prosecutors dropped the charges against him, concluding that Cauthorne had reason to believe his life was in danger. Damn right, he did.

This is one of the few times some justice has emerged from a botched no-knock raid. But even here, a cynic might conclude that prosecutors were more interested in protecting the cops than in justice for Mr. Cauthorne. Turns out that police never documented exactly where they found the drug evidence they claim to have seized from Mr. Cauthorne’s home — reported at the time as a few bags with marijuana residue and a razor with cocaine residue. Worse, crime scene forensic experts were instructed not to photograph the evidence. Worse still, the police department hid the officers who conducted the raid from investigators for weeks after the incident tok place.

Look like a coverup? It’s certainly happened before.

Right now, I’m trying to get a copy of the search warrant pertaining to the Noel case from the Baltimore County Police Department.
(more…)

Tennessee’s bid to become the state most corrupted by the Drug War continues.

In what the local FBI chief called a “sad chapter” in a series of stings, three Memphis police officers and a Shelby County sheriff’s deputy are accused of on-the-job corruption.

Memphis officers Deshone Skinner, 32, and Roderick K. Smith, 37, are charged with robbing people they thought were drug couriers of several thousand dollars in dope money.

The couriers were actually FBI informants.

“In the book of public corruption, this is a sad chapter, and the chapter is called Tarnished Blue,” FBI agent-in-charge My Harrison said.

No, it’s called “Drug Prohibition.” More Volunteer State shenanigans:

January 2004: Former police evidence room chief Kenneth Dansberry pleads guilty to looting it of drugs and money. Dansberry is one of several workers busted. A 1999 audit warned that the property room could prove an Achilles heel.

February 2005: Eight officers are suspended 21/2 years after a botched drug drug raid ends in a deadly shooting. State officials investigate if evidence was faked or hidden. Earlier, a jury said officers not only mistakenly killed a 41-year-old gravedigger, but covered their tracks.

February 2005: Two officers file suit against police, saying their names are sullied during a hit-and-run investigation. The week before, the parents of the 12-year-old boy who died sued, saying the two officers regularly loaned personal cars to an informant in exchange for tips.

March 2005: Sheriff’s officials say 11 jailers took money to sneak what they thought was Oxycontin and crack cocaine in to jail inmates. A former jail security guard later pleads guilty to selling heroin to undercover agents.

June 2005: TBI officials confirm they’re looking at whether two high-ranking police traffic officials fixed cases. They’re suspended with pay.

July 2005: Former Memphis officer David Tate gets a 14-year prison term for extortion, conspiracy, transporting drugs and prostitutes across state lines and plotting to burglarize pro wrestler Jerry Lawler’s home.

Also, don’t forget this. And this.

The DEA has set up a hotline you can call to anonymously report anyone you suspect of diverting prescription drugs. That would include your doctor, of course. In fact, doctors are the DEA’s biggest and most prized target in its Oxycontin war, even though vast quantities of prescription painkillers go missing from warehouses and supply lines all the time.

Now, let’s say you’re an MS patient in toe-curling pain. And let’s say you go to a pain doctor and you ask him for a possibly-illegal amount of oxycodone-containing medication to alleviate that pain. Which set of circumstances is going to leave you most likely to report your doctor to the DEA’s tip line?

1) Your doctor grants your request for possibly illegal amounts of pain medication, giving you relief, and giving you hope that he’ll fulfill it the next time you ask, too?

Or…

2) Your doctor denies your request, and you’re forced to continue to endure the pain, snap at your kids, strain your marriage, and put up with an all-around miserable existence?

I’d say the doctors whose names are going to be most mentioned over this tip line are those who piss off people who want pain medication, but don’t get it. If your doctor bends the rules and risks his career to help you feel better, you’re probably not going to turn him in.

The Feds have been allowing mob informants to carry out hits while agents continue ongoing investigations.

The Washington Post tells the story this morning.

Cato hosted a forum on this problem a year ago.