aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, May 04, 2007

Atlatnta’s Narcotics Team 1

Remember Kathryn Johnston, the Atlanta woman variously reported to be 88 or 92-years-old who was shot and killed in a botched drug raid?  Turns out, two months earlier there had been another:

The team did not have a no-knock warrant as they did in the Johnston case. But narcotics agents are allowed to quickly batter in a door if they hear the residents scurrying around, presumably hiding drugs, or if they hear nothing. The team that day heard nothing, the police report said.

They smashed the door twice with a battering ram. The door still bears the gouges. The first thing the team would have seen across the cramped living room is a night table with an old Bible and a picture of Jesus. Across the room is a plaque marking Thompson as a member of the Berean Seventh Day Adventists Widows Club.

Seconds later, they encountered the terrified woman.

Police quickly determined there was no wrongdoing and were very apologetic, [80-year-old Frances] Thompson said. “They said, ‘Do you want to go to the hospital?’ “

She didn’t.

At least five of the eight members of that team, Narcotics Team 1, were on the fatal November raid in which Kathryn Johnston died.