My brother is a Detective with APD. He works in fugative apprehension and serves warrants. I sat with the phone in my hand all Friday night thinking he might have been involved. When I finally got in touch with him yesterday he was at the scene but his team was not involved in this particular raid. The teams are just as sickened by this as you all are. It was a terrible tragedy. I asked him if they by chance had the wrong house and he said absolutely no. It is very common downtown for young junkies and dealers to hook up with the elderly and then use their homes for dealing, usually with the owner totally oblivious to the whole thing. These cops were not yahoos, they were veterans, they had been doing these kind of raids for years without incident. I am sickened by what happened, and yes maybe the way they go about serving the warrants isn't the best but that is the policy. The way we are fighting the war on drugs is stupid, it is a revolving door fight. Dealers and users do not see jail any real jail time. In fact they go to jail and rest before being released and getting back to business as usual. Do you all realize how much time is spent on murders because of the drugs, the ones that don't make the paper? Atlanta is whole different world, it's a cesspool. Nobody really cares until it moves into Buckhead and the Highlands, then everyone is all up in arms. The thought of that poor woman makes me cry, for her and the officers involved.
Just because they invaded the exact house as specified in the warrant does not mean that there is no chance that they hit the wrong house. From Radley Balko:
All of which makes me wonder -- still -- if this was the right home. Keep in mind, there are several ways to hit the wrong house. Police could misread the warrant just before conducting the raid. They could misread the address on a mailbox. Or, the person who makes the undercover by could err in relaying the location where the buy took place.The location the informant gave could have been described incorrectly several times before even reaching the warrant.
It is very common downtown for young junkies and dealers to hook up with the elderly and then use their homes for dealing, usually with the owner totally oblivious to the whole thing.
And yet they don't take that into account when making these raids?? If that is true, then they should have had much more surveillance before raiding this house or more properly, if the elderly person living there had no knowledge of the drug-dealing going on -- and as you and your friend in the APD admit, this is common there -- uniformed PD could have just knocked, explained that they think drug dealers may be using the porch of her house without her knowledge and asked to look around -- she would have invited them in and let them search all they want. She probably would have baked cookies for them as they looked around even.
But they never ran into an armed granny with the intentional fortitude to try and protect herself.
Do you all realize how much time is spent on murders because of the drugs, the ones that don't make the paper
They had a similar problem in Chicago, and other cities, then repealed prohibition. Murders didn't go away, but you didn't see beer and liquor distributors shooting it out in streets over territory either.
LRM: She knew who she was shooting at. She figured she would survive because who would shoot an old lady. She would play the race card too. The problem with getting old is believing this crap. She got what she deserved.
You "don't know if he is telling the truth" but that's good enough anyway to justify breaking in someone's door while cocked and locked?Informant in shooting says he never bought drugs at house
Says he was asked to lieThe confidential informant on whose word Atlanta police raided the house of an 88-year-old woman is now saying he never purchased drugs from her house and was told by police to lie and say he did.
"The informant said he had no knowledge of going into that house and purchasing drugs," Pennington said. "We don't know if he's telling the truth."