Posted on 03/19/2005 3:11:47 AM PST by Pharmboy
ATLANTA, March 18 (AP) - The city's embattled Police Department acknowledged Friday that it made mistakes just after the deadly courthouse rampage here a week ago, and the chief said the suspect had spent as much as 12 hours undetected outside a busy mall.
The police chief, Richard J. Pennington, said he would oversee a full review of his department's response to the attacks. Among the issues to be studied, Chief Pennington said, will be communication problems among law enforcement agencies and their mistaken focus on searching for a carjacked vehicle that they believed the accused, Brian Nichols, was using to flee.
The car later turned up on a different level in the same parking garage from which it had been taken, though a witness had told the authorities that it had been driven away.
"We should have gone through the entire building," Chief Pennington said at a news conference. "We didn't, based on the information we had at the time."
The police chief was joined at the news conference by Mayor Shirley Franklin, who said she believed it was important to review the city's protocols for responding to major crimes like the courthouse shooting and its aftermath. But Mayor Franklin also offered a reminder that the situation immediately after the attack was chaotic.
"We have nothing to hide," she said, adding that the city recognized that there were "opportunities for improvement."
The authorities say that while the 33-year-old Mr. Nichols was in the Fulton County Courthouse last Friday for his retrial on rape charges, he attacked a deputy and retrieved her gun from a lockbox, then moved on to the courtroom and killed a judge and a court reporter. Investigators say that in fleeing he then killed a deputy and later an off-duty federal agent before surrendering, some 26 hours after the courthouse attack.
Though acknowledging missteps, Chief Pennington noted in an interview after the news conference that the Sheriff's Department, not the Police Department, was responsible for courthouse security.
He also said Mr. Nichols had eluded capture for so long because of inconspicuous behavior.
The chief said Mr. Nichols boarded a subway train shortly after the shootings and rode north about seven miles to the Lenox Square Mall stop. Wearing a jacket he had stolen in the carjacking, he spent much of the day milling about in the streets around the mall, the chief said.
Mr. Nichols did not surface until some 13 hours after the shooting, when officers received a report of a couple assaulted near the Lenox Square train station by a man matching the suspect's description. It was another 13 hours before he was caught.
The police chief said the authorities were now looking into whether the birth of Mr. Nichols's baby boy three days earlier had added to his stress from being jailed and on trial in a case where conviction could bring a life sentence.
"He probably did snap," Chief Pennington said.
That, I believe was the responsibility of the Sheriff's departmant..They knew he was dangerous and gave him one escort..unbelievable.
A mistake? No kidding! How about a bunch of mistakes!
It's so easy to back-seat drive.
"We should have gone through the entire building," Chief Pennington said at a news conference. "We didn't, based on the information we had at the time."
He drove away in public sight, and then came back. DUH!!!! No donut for these kopz.
The home of racial political correctness, CNN, Coca Cola, idiotic LEOs and moronic DAs
....and you thought California was bad. LOL
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Court house security: gravy job,(sit around, be dumb, shoot the breeze, carry a gun, be hip, get paid, get fat, be dressed in a uniform that fits like a wet suit trying to hold it all in.) Ahh well, so much for stereotypes.
IMO this should be almost all Guvernment/Education jobs including the vaughted Homeland Security: gravy job,(sit around, be dumb, shoot the breeze, carry a gun, be hip, get paid, get fat, be dressed in a uniform that fits like a wet suit trying to hold it all in.) I add be slightly affiliated with an "oppressed" group, Affirmative Action, disabled, etc...like the great American Indian - Ward Churchill.
I don't think this is back-seat driving at all. This is a critique of procedures that, during and after the murders, appeared to leave a lot to be desired. Should the law-abiding citizens of Atlanta not want to improve their LE? The LEOs did not look good here and could use better systems and procedures (and I come from a LE family).
In Atlanta, if they didn't have a visiting back seat driver -- they would crash..
Incompetent is an inadequate term to describe Atlanta's racist/corrupt administrations of the recent past and present......
Criminally STUPID is the correct term.
Semper Fi
I am not from a LE family and I can see a myriad of errors that could lead to this. I think it borders on neglect of duty to the people of that city and state.
I could not agree with you more...my dad was a NYC detective and my son is on the job now in NYC. "By the book" is the way it's done when dealing with perps...
I watched the televised news conference with Chief Pennington and he said one reason there was confusions was because police us "codes" instead of "plain talk".
He said he was going to change this.
Police departments have been using codes for years. Why is this now a problem?
I find it odd that the NYTs didn't mention this at all since it was a large part of the conference.
As Mike Dukakis would call it, a good job at a good wage.
Is it true they are still looking for a white man in a white van?
This coming from the Chief of Police is assinine. The cops on the streets, know the codes, better than the English language, and when something big happens, they'll use a mixture of both to get whatever info out as quickly as possible to each other.
This is just one of many excuses the brass is coming out with to muddy the true picture.
The low level cops on the street are sent to the scene, they secure it as best as possible without any direction from anyone. Then the Watch Commander shows up and starts getting them organized to secure the scene even better and start getting information. Most street cops will have already started collecting info.
Then the brass hears what's going on and everyone shows up and gets in the way. There should have been one person in charge of the scene and investigation. And that's the poor sucker that was up for rotation for the next homicide call.
Still that person will know more in handling the scene, searching for a suspect and investigating the event, than the brass. But micromanaging is their specialty, and that is what caused things to go to crap.
I wouldn't blame the street cops for anything at all. Look above the rank of Captain.
The mistakes made after the shooting pale in comparison to the ones made BEFORE the shooting.Its the ones made BEFORE the shooting that led to the shootings themselves.
No question...and we all eagerly await the press conference the sherriff's dept. should have detailing the changes in policy.
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