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ATLANTA (AP) — An appeals court on Thursday overturned the conviction of a former Atlanta police officer sentenced to prison for lying to FBI agents about the killing of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid.

A Fulton County Superior Court judge sentenced [Arthur] Tesler to 4 1/2 years in prison and six months probation last May. Tesler has also pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges.

Kathryn Johnston was killed by a barrage of bullets fired by officers who stormed into her home in November 2006 with a no-knock warrant.

Police originally said officers had gone to Kathryn Johnston’s northwest Atlanta home in 2006 after an informant bought drugs there. But after finding none, officers tried to cover up the mistake by planting baggies of marijuana, prosecutors said.

Two other officers, Jason R. Smith and Gregg Junnier, pleaded guilty to state and federal charges. Tesler, who did not fire a shot, faces sentencing next month after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy to violate civil rights resulting in death.

Tesler was in Johnston’s backyard when plainclothes officers burst in through the front door the night of Nov. 21, 2006, using a special “no-knock” warrant to search for drugs. Johnston fired a single shot from a rusty revolver at the intruders, but hit no one, and officers fired 39 bullets, hitting the woman five or six times, prosecutors said.

via The Associated Press: Conviction nixed in deadly botched Ga. drug raid.

Does it bother anyone else that police missed at least 33 shots at close range against a 92-year-old woman?  Or that cops thought that finding planted weed on a dead elderly woman wouldn’t raise a few eyebrows?  Or that cops in Georgia are running around with a couple of baggies of weed on them “just in case”?

I even have a small (very small) degree of sympathy for the officers in this case because their job requires them to serve these no-knock warrants to catch what they believe will be gun-totin’ drug-addled violent thugs.  The lying and planting evidence is inexcusable, of course, but treating all drug warrant as if they are taking down Tony Montana is bound to get innocent people and police officers killed (see: Corey Maye).

Why can’t police officers watch a suspect’s home, wait til he leaves the home, and apprehend him, when they can see he’s not armed? I know the no-knock warrants are so a suspect doesn’t have the time to flush the cocaine down the toilet, but why are no-knocks given for marijuana raids?  Lights, ballasts, pots, soil, and live plants are not exactly easily disposable, there should be plenty of time for police to knock, identify themselves, and enter calmly.

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Pr. George’s Police Arrest 2 In Marijuana-Shipping Plot – washingtonpost.com
Prince George’s County police announced yesterday that they have arrested a deliveryman and another man who they say are involved in a scheme to smuggle marijuana by shipping packages addressed to unsuspecting recipients, including a delivery last week to the wife of the mayor of Berwyn Heights.

The county Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and narcotics officers raided the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, after intercepting a package addressed to her that was filled with 32 pounds of marijuana. During the raid, officers broke down Calvo’s door and fatally shot the family’s two black Labrador retrievers.

Police said the package was one of about a half-dozen retrieved by authorities in the past week along the route of a deliveryman in northern Prince George’s. The packages contained a combined 417 pounds of marijuana valued at about $3.6 million.

So the mayor and his wife may be the completely innocent victims of a large-scale marijuana shipping plot?  You’ve rounded up six packages on this guy’s delivery route, but you just couldn’t wait to put the pieces together without dressing up like Rambo and terrorizing who you thought was an “evil doper”?

The Washington Post wrote an editorial on this case called “Shoot First, Ask Later”:

…[T]he deputies, guns drawn, kicked in the door, stormed the house and shot to death the Calvos’ two Labrador retrievers, one of them, apparently, as it attempted to flee. The canine threat thus dispatched, the mayor — in his briefs — and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated in close proximity to the bloodied corpses of their dogs.

Wihin an hour, it seems, the police concluded that something was seriously wrong and that there was at least a strong possibility that the Calvos — whose home contained not the slightest evidence of involvement in the drug trade — were unsuspecting victims.

Unfortunately, these drug busts run amok are not an uncommon occurrence.  Drug War Victims tells many stories of people not as lucky as the Calvos – people shot to death during drug raids, many of whom either weren’t the intended suspect or just happened to be home when SWAT teams served a warrant at the wrong address.

The purpose of a no-knock warrant (which these police didn’t have) is so police can have the element of surprise when busting violent bad guys with guns, before they can destroy the evidence of their crime.  Think of a cocaine dealer with a handgun and the ability to easily flush powder down the toilet.

Did the police think that 32 pounds of marijuana could easily be flushed down a toilet?  Did the home have a fireplace where it could be easily burned?  And why does any of that matter when you’ve already tracked a 32 pound package with the man’s address on it and it’s tested positive for weed?  And did they really think that the mayor of this suburban bedroom community was a thug-4-life brandishing a TEC-9 in his home to protect his weed dealing?

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