Aunt Custer [updated]

Police raid the house of a 92 year old woman looking for drugs and get more than they bargained for:

A 92-year-old woman was killed after she shot three Atlanta narcotics officers Tuesday night when they broke down the front door of her home trying to serve a search warrant, police said.

One officer was hit in the arm, one was struck in the shoulder, and one was shot in the thigh. All were rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where they were in stable condition late Tuesday night. Police did not release their identities.

Atlanta assistant police Chief Alan Dreher, in a news conference outside the hospital emergency room, declined to confirm the identity of the woman, but he said the warrant was served at the correct address. He said he did not know what name was on the warrant. He said the woman was the only one in the home at the time.

A couple of things strike me as odd about this case. For starters, how could the assistant police chief not know who's name was on the warrant? Any other cop of a lesser pay grade - or a private citizen for that matter - can find out the who, what, where, how, and when of most search warrants as soon as they're served; surely the second highest poo-bah can obtain that information with little more than a phone call.

Another thing that bothers me is the fact that it was a narcotics officer serving this warrant - yet there is no mention anywhere of drugs being found at the scene, no stockpiles of weapons save a "rusty old pistol", no huge piles of cash, no methlab, no "paraphenalia"... absolutely nothing. This honestly leads me to the conclusion that nothing was found - the headline would have been significantly different had they found any of those things. That begs another question...

What kind of oversight went in to verifying this address? Did they at least try to send an undercover officer to the address first? I mean, if this person was supposed to be so dangerous, wouldn't it have been a good idea to send in a scout first, get a lay of the land?

Now with all that being said, I don't blame a single person involved in the shooting (unlike the niece interviewed in the article). The police on the scene believed they had a potentially dangerous person (most people in to the heavier drugs are just that); the lady believed she was being broken in on by criminals. Whether or not she heard them, to me, is irrelevant - there have been a rash of home invasions in the Atlanta area where the invaders screamed "police" or "FBI" as they ran through the house. From the police perspective, somebody was shooting at them - as a person who takes self-defense a bit seriously, I don't age-verify the person shooting at me, I stop them. I'm afraid the fault of this falls on the higher-ups, and I hope that heads roll, people are fired, and somebody faces something a little more than misdemeanor charges.

Finally, I can't let this pass without tossing in my 2¢ about the War on drugs (the libertarian in me just can't resist). Understand that I don't toe the party line of "legalize them all!" - but I do think that jailing people for lesser addicting drugs (pot) and treating them the same as a meth-head is wrong. I would be curious to know what kind of drugs these officers were looking for and if it was really worth their lives as well as the lives of anybody else (the 92 year old). It just doesn't make sense to me.

[11/28/06] Update - now, more details are coming to light, and it is not looking good for the Atlanta police:

An informant who narcotics officers say led them to the house where an elderly woman was killed in a drug raid is accusing the officers of asking him to lie about his role, Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington said Monday.

The informant, who has not been identified, complained to department officials that the drug investigators involved in the bust had asked him to go along with a story they concocted after the shooting, said Pennington. He said the informant had been placed in protective custody.

Quoting the police officers, the informant told Fox 5 News: " 'This is what you need to do. You need to cover our (rear). ... It's all on you man. ... You need to tell them about this Sam dude.' "

While not mentioned in this article, it has since come to light that this was a no-knock warrant. The reigning school of thought on this type of warrant is that it's necessary sometimes for the police to enter the house before the bad guys can destroy or flush away the evidence; as this is generally only issued for narcotics, that means the police want in there before the drugs can be flushed.

In this blogger's completely untrained but semi-well-read opinion, no-knock warrants are dangerous to all involved at worst; at best, they're illegal. As I don't particularly wish to debtate the legality of them, I'll just say that I've read the arguments offered from justices that allow these warrants, and I disagree with them; to me, it's a Fourth Ammendment issue plain and simple.

I'll stretch for a bit and say that I agree completely with the war on drugs on all fronts. Wouldn't a better way of executing these warrants be to completely surround the house with a display of force, cover every entry and exit, have eyes (or cameras) through every window, and then knocking to announce who you are and your intentions? Even if the bad guys started to scatter around grabbing drugs and rushing them to the toilet or sink, then enter - if it's a quantity of drugs that's worth risking lives over, they won't be able to get rid of it all that quickly. Nevertheless, there is a better way.