The 92 Year Old Criminal

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As a police officer who works in a South-Central Los Angeles I don’t blog too much on Law Enforcement issues or my job much. The reasons why vary, but mostly it’s because these kind of issues are local issues and are of no interest to those outside of that location. But this recent shooting in Georgia has my blood boiling.

Many people on the run-down northwest Atlanta street where Kathryn Johnston lived fortify their windows with metal bars and arm themselves for protection.

Johnston, 92, was no exception.

Alone in her home, she was waiting with her gun on Tuesday night when a group of plainclothes officers with a warrant knocked down her door in a search for drugs, police said.

She opened fire, wounding three officers, before being shot to death, police said. (Watch niece’s fury at police shooting Video)

Assistant Police Chief Alan Dreher called the killing “tragic and unfortunate” but said the officers were justified in returning fire.

“You don’t know who’s in the house until you open that door,” Dreher said Wednesday. “And once they forced open the door, they were immediately fired upon.”

The Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights activist and spokesman for Johnston’s family, said he could understand why the elderly woman would arm herself.

“She was afraid,” Hutchins said. “This is a horrifying situation in a neighborhood where crime happens often. This incident is a result of a mix-up.”

The officers had gone to the old woman’s house with a search warrant after buying drugs there from a man known only as Sam, police said. (Watch what police and family say about the shooting — 2:53 Video)

Police issued a “John Doe” warrant on Wednesday for the arrest of Sam, believed to be in his early to mid 30s, who allegedly sold the drugs to the undercover agent.

Dreher would not say how the dealer knew Johnston.

Investigators also said they found drugs in the home after Johnston was killed.

Officer Joe Cobb, a police spokesman, said the type of drug involved would not be disclosed until it was verified by the crime lab.

The reason why I am upset is the idiotic, foolish, and retarded views of those Democrats, Libertarians and Republicans who believe that this shooting was unjustified.

As Law Enforcement officers we have a job to do. Whether you agree with the war on drugs, or that certain conduct should be illegal is neither here nor there. Our job is to enforce the law. The very same law that is put into place by those you elect to lead you. Furthermore our job is to protect the people of our community, and go home alive. Period.

When we get information that a certain location is selling drugs we start watching it. If the activity suggests that yes, this may be a location that indeed sells narcotics (ie. high traffic for short periods of time) we will try to make a buy with a undercover officer or certified informant. Nothing super secret about this, everyone has seen the movies and read the books.

Once we get confirmation that yes indeed this location is indeed committing crimes by selling illegal drugs from the location we will get a search warrant and shut it down.

This is what the public wants. I cannot tell you how many times I get pulled aside by a citizen begging me to take a look at this place or that place because they sell drugs. They tell me about the increase in break-ins due to the influx of drug users looking to get a few bucks of cash. They tell me about how the dregs of society has now decided their front porch is a good place to set up residence and they ask me what am I going to do about it.

I tell them we will take care of it.

We take care of it by shutting it down. We send in people to make buys, get a search warrant, then search the damn place. Do we ask for a 92 year old women to open fire on us? Give me a freakin break.

But I tell you what. If I have someone, ANYONE shooting at me, I WILL fire back at them. I will not take a bullet and be put six feet under just because the shooter is a 92 year old women. No effin way.

And for you idiots on both sides of the aisle to suggest otherwise I have one request for you.

You tell me wife and daughter that their husband and father died all because the suspect was over 90.

You people are unbelievable.

Take a look at some of the comments at DummiesU:

Sweetheart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Wed Nov-22-06 03:06 PM
Response to Reply #65
68. The cops murdered her

I hope she took down one of her criminal murderers, cops kill lots of people and get away with it, oh, i guess its’ ok, because they stole the taxes from the slaves to pay for a bunch of murderers to go around killing old ladies.

The police and the system are completely corrupt. It was murder by the state, and they will be exhonorated because she’s black, just like rodney king.

Or

Blue in Bama (32 posts) Wed Nov-22-06 04:58 PM
Response to Reply #65
92. I also regret

that she didn’t get one of her murderers….they’d shoot you, too, cigsandcoffee, for any reason that crossed their minds. And you’d be screwed. Fact of life in police state Amerika.

Webster Green (1000+ posts) Wed Nov-22-06 06:28 PM
Response to Reply #65
106. No…the pigs are disgusting!

Narcs are much worse than the usual breed of asshole control freaks who wind up being pigs.

They are fucking scum.

piedmont (206 posts) Wed Nov-22-06 10:18 PM
Response to Reply #161
169. Yeah, and the SS had warrants for the Jews…

it’s still wrong. “But, But, they were just following orders!”

Porcupine (1000+ posts) Journal Wed Nov-22-06 04:23 AM
Response to Original message
10. It’s a shame these assholes couldn’t bother to knock.

I personally think the drug war is a total waste of time and money. I lost a brother this summer to suicide. Among his many sources of pain drug addiction was one of them. Rather than being able to get continuing treatment for this as a chronic disease he alternated between being straight and being hounded by these dogs of hell.

Nice shooting granny. That’s three cops that will treat the public with a hairs more respect.


saigon68
(1000+ posts) Wed Nov-22-06 12:47 PM
Response to Reply #35
40. Right On

As I said earlier in the thread “Head Shots” down most thugs, busting in to your house

The No Knock Cowboys deserve to have their asses (and Heads)handed to them

TOO bad she didn’t have more practice

As another poster said there are other forums for thug apologists

piedmont (206 posts) Wed Nov-22-06 04:07 PM
Response to Reply #44
82. yeah, they were doing jobs– if their job description was TERRORIST

They knocked down the door of an old lady’s house at night in a neighborhood and city that has a violent crime problem. And what else could they have expected?

Ok, to be expected from the hippies and idiots on the left. But from my side of the aisle?

POLICE IN ATLANTA have shot and killed a 92-year-old woman in what appears to be another wrong-house no-knock raid. As I’ve said before, these raids should only occur when there’s reason to believe that lives are in immediate jeopardy.

No knock’s are when we feel that our lives are in danger if we give the suspect notice before we enter. Plain and simple. This would constitute “immediate” jeopardy. If the information they had gathered included the fact that the suspect was someone who had a long violent history, coupled with the fact that there was information to conclude that firearms were at the location then yes, this just may constitute “immediate” jeopardy.

This is not a cop show people. While I put my life on the line everyday for those who care little about my life I will not lay it down for reasons that are just plain retarded. If a threat is gleaned from the intelligence gathered then we will damn well confront it as a threat.

Then we have people who I respect immensely like Ed Morrissey making this asinine statement:

There may be legitimate reasons for no-knock entries or for the split-second announce-and-crash entries that caused this situation, where a 92-year-old woman got shot to death and three detectives got wounded. However, considering all of the ways it could possibly go wrong, they should only be employed when police have established a high probability of risk to the lives of officers and bystanders and no other means exists of mitigating it. That means surveillance and independent investigation and not just relying on an informant’s tip. It certainly seems that the police in this case got the wrong house and got an innocent woman killed.

Oh really? So after reading a few news reports you came to the conclusion that they DID NOT do this surveillance and investigation? You believe they said “hey fellas, strap up and lets go take down this thar darn house!”

Give me a effin break.

I have always been sickened by the lefties but after reading todays Libertarian blogs I could not tell each other apart.

Sad, just so very sad.

Ok, /rant off.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

UPDATE

Patterico has been doing a wonderful job relaying the nuts and bolts of this case:

In the Atlanta case where the 92-year-old was killed after shooting at police serving a warrant, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says of the warrant in the case:

The basis for the search warrant was not known because State Court Administrator Stefani Searcy refused to release a copy of the warrant Wednesday. State law considers all such documents public record but Searcy cited “office policy” as her reason for withholding the warrant.

[…]Furthermore, search warrants often contain information from confidential informants, information that, if publicly released, could result in the informant’s being hurt or killed.

For these reasons, here in California, not every search warrant is public record. Not only that, portions of the affidavit, and occasionally the entire affidavit, are sometimes not only withheld from the public, they’re even withheld from the defense. And for good reason.

Say a confidential informant gives an officer information about drug sales from a house. Based on that information, an undercover officer buys illegal narcotics from someone in the house. Based on that buy, officers obtain a search warrant and find piles of drugs in the house.

If the prosecution is not going to rely on the testimony of the confidential informant to make its case, and the informant can’t offer any information that might aid the defense, then there is no point in releasing the informant’s name. All that would do is endanger the informant’s life, for no discernible reason. So California law requires that the defense make a strict showing to obtain such information, and disclosure rarely happens.

Is this public information? Not here.

I suspect it’s the same in Georgia. And the statute quoted above appears to indicate that I’m right.

The MSM and the anti-law enforcement types will make a big deal about these kinds of issues but what it comes down to was a few simple questions.

Did they have a lawful reason for being there? Yes.

Did they have a court ordered warrant to search this location without knocking? Yes.

Did the dead women have a right to shoot at these officers? No.

End story.

UPDATE II

Here is a story that shows how we as police officers can never let our guard down. It doesn’t matter if the person is 12 or 97, they can all hurt or kill us. Now I am not saying that this lady was a suspect or a criminal but the below story does depict the difficulties that can be had when we let our guard down:


Law enforcement officials and experts say bank robbery is no longer just a crime for hardened criminals. Last August, J.L. Rountree, 91, was arrested after a robbery in Abilene, Tex. He is serving 12 years in prison. (Associated Press Photo)

Law enforcement officials and experts say bank robbery is no longer just a crime for hardened criminals. Last August, J.L. Rountree, 91, was arrested after a robbery in Abilene, Tex. He is serving 12 years in prison. (Associated Press Photo)

The case of J. L. Rountree seemed at first an aberration, something from “News of the Weird.” Last August, Mr. Rountree, 91 years old, walked into the First American Bank in Abilene, Tex., and handed the teller a note reading “Robbery.”

“You’re kidding,” the teller said.

“Hurry up,” snapped Mr. Rountree, who was unarmed. “Or you’ll get hurt.”

Mr. Rountree – no sprinter – left with $1,999 and was soon arrested by the local police, who gave him the perfect headline-grabbing nickname: the Grandpa Bandit. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Then in December, Sally Ann Smith, 56 and described by a neighbor as “a wonderful, caring and loving person, and a devoted grandmother,” was arrested at her home in Peoria, Ariz., on charges of robbing two banks at gunpoint. Ms. Smith, too, got a nickname: the Grandma Bandit.

Then there were Robert Day, an armed 68-year-old bank robber in Texas, and Brenda Bishop, the Granny Bandit of Macomb County, Mich., who was unarmed; both are now in prison. And on Thursday, the police said, an unarmed 70-year-old man named Gordon Bryant tried to rob the Farmers State Bank in Versailles, Ill. The police said they had found Mr. Bryant outside the bank with a stocking over his head.

[…]The people pulling off some of those heists hardly fit the profile of seasoned crooks. Last September, the police said, a 12-year-old boy made away with $30,000 from an East Village branch of Citibank after passing the teller a note that read, “Give me the money or I’ll shoot you” (He was later arrested and his mother charged for putting him up to it.)

In January, Pamela Kaichen, 44, a riding instructor known as the “soccer mom bandit,” pleaded guilty to the unarmed robbery of six banks in Connecticut and Westchester County and received a four-year sentence. (Ms. Kaichen, who wore a blond wig during the holdups, blamed her crimes on stress from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She had volunteered at Ground Zero.)

Outside New York, the story is much the same. Last June, for example, Tighue Shields, 53, the greenskeeper of the Weston Hills Country Club in South Florida and well-known in the golf world for his greens work on the P.G.A. Tour, was arrested in connection with three armed bank robberies in Scottsdale, Ariz. The authorities said Mr. Shields flew to Scottsdale to rob banks on his days off.

And just eight days ago, a 15-year-old Michigan girl pleaded no contest to bank robbery; though she was unarmed, the girl passed the teller a note saying there was an AK-47 pointed at his head.

Yes, I know, it has nothing to do with the story at hand but it does highlight a bit the reasons why we can NEVER let our guard down.

UPDATE III

Patterico linked to a video today where a 72 year old man shoots and kills a officer because he felt being pulled over was against his constitutional rights.

Here is the video. Beware, you hear the officer dying so it can be quite disturbing.

This is the news report of what happened:

Trooper Vetter died from a gunshot wound he received four days earlier while conducting a traffic stop.

Trooper Vetter had stopped a 72-year-old driver for not wearing a seatbelt. While he was sitting in his patrol car, the suspect exited his vehicle and opened fire with a rifle. The trooper was struck in the head. Trooper Vetter was able to return fire but did not hit the suspect.

The suspect then used the patrol car’s radio to say he shot the officer and then attempted to flee the scene. An off duty officer who was passing by, witnessed the shooting and alerted other officers. The suspect was then taken into custody after a brief standoff on the roadway. The suspect was known to local officers for claiming he would shoot any officer who tried to write him a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. The suspect was convicted of murder.

Trooper Vetter had been with the Texas Department of Public Safety for six years, and is survived by his wife and eight-month-old son.

A 72 year old nutcase (kinda like a few of my commentors below) who believe that anarchy should rule the day. Patterico makes some great points:

Earlier today, I linked a not-safe-for-work video of a Texas trooper killed by a 72-year-old man, to show that: 1) bullets kill people, even when they are fired by old people; and 2) police may be overly cautious about returning fire when an older person points a gun at them, a factor that could explain why a 92-year-old woman was able to shoot three separate cops in Atlanta.

[…]It occurred to me that there are more parallels between that video and the Atlanta situation than simply the age of the civilian shooting the cop.

For one, some libertarians appear to be arguing that the police in Atlanta somehow deserved to be shot because they were serving a “no-knock” search warrant in a drug case. Because these libertarians oppose both no-knock warrants and drug laws, they appear to lack sympathy for officers serving that type of warrant in that type of case.

Presumably these same libertarians oppose seatbelt laws. Do they believe that police should expect to be shot if they enforce seatbelt laws? Do they believe that the crazy old man depicted in the video is a patriot, standing up for his vision of the Constitution? Do they believe that a man has the right to shoot a police officer if he happens to think a traffic stop is unconstitutional?

Libertarians (and others) argue that no-knock warrants increase the danger to civilians and police. They argue that shootings like the one in Atlanta are foreseeable and avoidable. There may be some validity to that point, and it’s a worthy debate to have. However, keep in mind that the same arguments could apply to enforcement of traffic laws. A traffic stop is the most dangerous situation for any cop. Does that mean we should not enforce traffic laws?

Libertarians argue that bad guys sometimes pretend to be police serving search warrants, in order to rob people in the house. I am here to tell you, this is 100% true. But guess what? Bad guys also sometimes pretend to be police conducting traffic stops, in order to rob people. Again, this does not mean that we should do away with traffic stops, or that we should conclude that citizens have the right to shoot cops at traffic stops, simply because they are sometimes conducted by bad-guy robbers.

The police officer in the video, by the way, was 28 years old. He was married and had an eight-month-old son. He was a human being who did not deserve to die. And the cops in Atlanta are also human beings who didn’t deserve to be shot, assuming that (as all media reports suggest) they were lawfully executing a valid search warrant on a drug house.

As I attempted to point out with the bank robbery article, it doesn’t matter how old the suspect is. If they have enough strength to point a firearm and pull the trigger they are dangerous. Is the reason why this 90+ year old lady was able to hit 3 police officers because they held back a bit? Due to her age?

Who know’s, but it’s a sad state of affairs when we have people commenting things like “too bad she wasn’t a better shot” and so forth. All because they were doing their job to protect the community from the dregs of society.

Just sad.

But what I am coming away with from many of the liberals and libertarians is they don’t want ANY search warrants done. What they basically want is professional secretaries. Someone who responds to the scene of a crime, writes it all down and goes away. No pro-active police work. No trying to catch the criminal in the act or prior to him/her committing the crime. None of that.

As I said….just sad.

But I tell you what. If I have someone, ANYONE shooting at me, I WILL fire back at them. I will not take a bullet and be put six feet under just because the shooter is a 92 year old women. No effin way.

And for you idiots on both sides of the aisle to suggest otherwise I have one request for you.

You tell me wife and daughter that their husband and father died all because the suspect was over 90.

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The problem libertarians have with the killing of a 92 year old woman is not with the police, its with the entire incident. The police have no choice but to assume that the person on the other side of the door is a violent criminal. The homeowner has only seconds to decide whether or not to defend themselves. Guilty or innocent, if they decide to defend themselves chances are they’ll be shot to death. This is all over a non-violent crime.
The war on drugs is a proven failure. It is not law enforcement that should be questioned but the law itself. These types of incidents happen far too often.

Thank you for the response Curt, as his handle should have been the first clue, let alone the first sentence of this hogwash utopian/anarchist/moonbeam spew. Just what friggin planet or parallel universe do some people grow-up/live in? My first inclination upon reading this was rebuttal, but then someone much smarter than me once said: “When you argue with a fool you become one!” The worst part being, that there are lots of these knuckleheads out there, and it seems to be catching. Now I know what it’s like to watch a good percentage of society doing a headlong plunge into oblivion. And try as you might, you can’t even save them from themselves! Lemmings, just plain friggin’ lemmings!

After reading your first sentence we all know you are one to be ignored.

Atlanta police kill 92-year old woman in drug raid; on nothing more than a tip without evidence.

They did a drug buy there Einstein. That’s a bit more then a tip. And your allegation that the warrant is made up tags you as some paranoid schizo needing much medication.

Get some help before you hurt someone.

Atlanta police kill 92-year old woman in drug raid; on nothing more than a tip without evidence.

Warrant issuing judge (if there was a warrant) and perpetrators should be locked up for manslaughter.

If it weren’t for the promise of free drugs, free money and the non-observance of ethical law that states warrant serving profiteering prohibitionists (police) must announce their presence before entry, this would not have happened. It is an unconstitutional war. These spineless and scared police who innately know they are doing something wrong think that ignoring the law and ethics is justifiable. Clearly greed induced ignorance and violence.

If there were any real motivation to “protect the kids” as they claim, then they would protect them by getting drugs off the street by ending this dim-witted profiteering scheme of a drug war for the spoils of war. Drugs are never destroyed after confiscation, but always returned to the street for profit by law enforcement, if they don’t use it themselves.

There will likely be an argument over that. Before you look ignorant, consider this. Do you follow the path of confiscated drugs to their claimed destruction? Certainly not. Someone who has no one looking over their shoulder eventually gets them and no one is aware of their eventual sale and use.

In a free country, people have the right to peacefully use drugs and to provide them to those who want them. Some may not approve of their choices, but to interfere coercively is a violation of their rightful liberty.

Coercion is acceptable to whom the alluring promise of personal gain and elating drugs is too seductive and because most people don’t have a clue as to what is a principle. Principles are rules I decide I will live by because principles are the only thing that can support ideal realty. Freedom is a principle. Profit is way more important to heartless warmongers. Heartlessness and the seduction of gain creates unthinking and greedy members of society not to mention the sadistic pleasure derived from watching others suffer, especially if these sufferers are of the race that prejudiced these bigots hate.

If we know prohibition doesn’t work (proven for more than 80 years) and only creates a street market for crime, violence, and child addiction (prohibition creating anarchy), to continue the drug war madness (reminiscent of witch hunt days) means we are either stupid or irresponsibly greedy or both.

Prohibitionists suffer from the lack of intelligence, lack of information, insatiable greed or all three. Mainly it is the profiteering prohibitionist that stands in our way.

Lack of intelligence means you cannot see a true cause or realize that controlling others is futile. Those that lack intelligence are (for lack of better words) programmable lemmings – robots following their televised programming – unable to think for themselves or have an original thought. That only describes the little prohibitionist. The real problem cases are the heartless profiteering slime-ball prohibitionists.

All of this is something Government can control and make sane. But why would they? Their insatiable greed is the cause and they belong in their own death camps if only for non-action. They can check for ID at the drugstore. The street dealer isn’t checking ID. So it isn’t really about the children in the poor neighborhoods going to jail before they get a chance at career life. It’s about the utilitarian price of greed. Geo Group stock would crash. There would be no more “illegal” drugs to fight over.

Prohibition…goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”– Abraham Lincoln December 1840. Another President said, “Its up to you to recognize the enemy; the enemy is ambition”

If everyone doesn’t have the intelligence to take a stand, together, against the stupidity, we are doomed to this deserved insanity.

I am betting moderators will not allow this post because the truth seems a threat to their egos, prove me wrong please. A bet I would appreciate losing.

Curt,

I’m sorry – I thought they were plainclothes, and there seemed to be some confusion in the discussion about whether they yelled or not. My bad.

I had a thought on a way to handle one of these raids that might be effective, but feel free to tell me otherwise. It should minimize officer risk while reducing the bad press.
This would involve a house with two doors. Officers covertly approach the back, and prepare for an entry. Uniformed officers approach the front door, and knock. If there is no response, the back team goes in without knocking, while the front team holds its position. The criminal is waiting for the door to get kicked in, and gets taken from behind. This is just an off the cuff idea though.

I appreciate your take on this. I have reassessed my thoughts on this particular shooting.

That being said, and understanding that mistaken warrants being issued is a rarity, if anyone breaks into my home in the middle of the night yelling “Police! Search warrant!” I am not likely to believe them and will have my weapon in hand. I am not going to wait until I can see if they have identifiable “police clothing” (which anyone can buy, anywhere). However I will not be doing any shooting until I fear for my own life.

As a law enforcement officer can you give any suggestions for not getting killed in a situation like this? I don’t want to get shot by the police but I also don’t want to be shot by a$$#@!*s pretending to be cops. (I am serious, not yanking your chain.)

Curt,
Great post and follow-up, way to handle the 5150’s! I comletely agree with you on this one and I think this debate, from our perspective, is essential. Cheers!

Curt,

You were in NorCal and didn’t even call…
I’m offended!

Hey, screw these sea-lawyers that have their head up their asses. They have zero clues…

Happy Thanksgiving and my thoughts are w/ Dep. Sorensen’s survivors. Wow, three years…

Nope; there’s nothing positive about me.

Unless you stop knocking down doors before you know there’s only a 92 year old grandmother, OR ME, behind them, ass.

The Chief of Police has already stated they were wearing vests that clearly stated “police”…

Ah, I hadn’t seen that. Thanks. That makes makes more sense.

Well, now I guess you could say that I am complaining. In my first comment I wasn’t second guessing the police, but only suggesting that things would have turned out better if they actually did have a no knock warrant. At that time I thought the police didn’t have one because the department spokesman said they knocked and announced. However, if the police did, in fact, specifically ask for a “No Knock” warrant because they believed the circumstances called for it, then why didn’t they execute it as such? In my 27 years in law enforcement I participated in many searches and I know that “No Knock” warrants are not issued automatically, but rather only after it is articulated in the affidavit that an exceptional degree of danger exists. No Knock warrants are issued for the safety of officers and others present.

So, I stand by what I said earlier; if those officers were justified in making a no knock entry and had done so, chances are we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I can think of a couple reasons why they mave have felt compelled not to and they are the very reasons why I am happy to be retired.

Of course not. You are not free to break the laws of this country, to think otherwise is ludicrous.

That’s not what I meant. I meant the government infringes some of our rights.

Do you agree that the US is freer than Egypt or not? It think it is. But by what standard? I would argue that the US is freer than Egypt because our government respects the God-given inalienable rights of the individual. But our own government, while being better than all or at least most other governments, can itself fall short of fully respecting those rights. And this is how our country can be less than fully free.

Nothing is perfect and the rights you believe should not be trampled on someone else believes that right should not even exist.

But in addition to what the majority says, we have certain inalienable rights. This idea was recognized by the founding fathers, and it is an idea which allows for the possibility that the government is trampling on rights even if the majority’s elected representatives mistakenly believe it is not. Rights are not a matter of subjective belief.

Bullshit. They had a lawful warrant to enter that location and to suggest she had a right to open fire is ignorant.

I didn’t say that she did, I said that she would have, had these been merely men and not police.

Would you perfer us to do nothing but issuing speeding tickets?

Well, since you ask, what I would prefer is that drugs be legalized. If they were legalized then the distribution of drugs would be taken over by pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Phizer instead of the shady and dangerous dealers like the ones that police have to deal with now.

Yeah, we will suddenly be able to solve the neighborhood crimes by superpower means then I suppose.

Disallowing this sort of break-in does not render the police powerless.

Very well said.

Back when Waco first went down, there was a lot of noise about the “jackbooted thugs”, and G. Gordon Liddy advised citizens to aim for their heads to defeat their body armor. Those were federal officers serving a warrant. The same talk came out again during the Elian Gonzales capture.

It seems that police are heroes until they have to enforce a warrant or judgment you don’t happen to agree with. Then they’re thugs. I expected no better from DU but some people I admire seem to be going along with this sentiment.

I’ve never understood why this aggression against particular laws and policies gets transferred to the poor guys who have to carry it out. I didn’t like the assault weapons ban, and I didn’t like the bureaucrats who administered it nor the politicians who drafted it, but the guys who charged into the Branch Davidian compound thinking they had a .50 caliber machine gun in there…those guys had some guts.

Didn’t know you were a cop, Curt; you don’t hear this much when stories like this are in the news but thanks for the work you do and the risks you take.

I live in Atlanta and am a white upper middle class woman. I think it is an outrage that she was killed. I have read more and more in the news paper here.
I think the judge should be more aware of what they are doing when signing a no knock warrent. They are to freely signed and to freely written.
A law officer has access to who is living in a house . If more care was taken then this awfol shooting would not have happened.
I feel it is time that the officers and the judges take responsibility for their actions and be held accountable for them.

Hey Curt, can we get an update on this story? Has anything major transpired in this case since your originally post?

originally = original

The reason I ask is because I can’t find a single post about this case after you posted this. Not that it matters, the old lady deserved what she got!

So, Curt…

Now that nearly the entire incident has been deemed a lie and cover-up by the narcotics unit – any current thoughts on the situation?

he looked for the update on this post as would be logical to do. You know, like you did with updates I, II and III. So I went to your new post on this and found “But I am withholding judgement for now since I know, from personal experience, how informants can become quite skittish and outright lie when it looks like their names will be found out.” Which explains the title of the post “The 92 year old criminal”.
“But I tell you what. If I have someone, ANYONE shooting at me, I WILL fire back at them. I will not take a bullet and be put six feet under just because the shooter is a 92 year old women. No effin way.” Which, in this context means that if you mistake one home for another and break into the wrong house on a no knock raid and wake up a 92 year old woman who justifiable believes her home is being invaded by criminals (as she knows she has done nothing to cause the law to break in and there is a pattern of criminals posing as cops on home invasions, assuming you actually announce yourself) who defends herself, family and home, you will kill them. And this is acceptable because……Hey! Your job is dangerous! Look over here at a unrelated story where someone kills a cop! Forget about the sloppy police work and disregard for public safety in the 92 year old criminal story. So back to the above readers question: Any kind of update on this story? Here where the other updates are?

There wasn’t a drug buy at the house. The warrant was obtained by lying. Strictly speaking, the entire raid was an illegal entry and gross violation of civil rights. The people shooting at Ms. Johnston had no right to be there; in fact, their actions were criminal. They had no legal right to be shooting at her.

Given all of this – and given your statement above regarding when you would choose to shoot – would she have been justified in shooting back?

I suspect you would say no… that only police have the right to defend themselves with deadly force. Citizens don’t have this right, even if they’re attempting to defend themselves against criminal cops.

If my suspicion is wrong, please let me know.

I cannot speak for others… but i dont hate cops, Curt. I hate thin blue lines, cover ups. I hate the mentality we so often see that when it’s a citizen shot down in forced entries – it’s a good shoot until proven otherwise… but if it’s an officer down, the LE community assumes the citizen is guilty.

I’m not actually trying to extend debate on the matter. I wondered about your thoughts on the case, and you’ve provided them.