Someone asked...
...about motivation for this raid, this article provides specific answers and a little background. "This happened because we're way understaffed". Surprisingly (or not) one upshot from the botched raid, may be that more resources are allocated to the drug warriors.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/01/12/0113metdrug.html
Big score holy grail for drug officers
While minor busts pad narcotics squad's statistics, heat from top for major haul may tempt agents to cut corners.
By BILL TORPY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/13/07
Atlanta narcotics officers cradled their bulletproof shield, battering ram, prying tool and guns as the van rolled to a halt. They anticipated a large haul, one of the biggest in the past three years.
Hours earlier on Nov. 21, police say, a suspected street dealer they arrested told them he had just seen a kilogram of cocaine in a squat brick bungalow on Neal Street. The officers wasted no time. They quickly secured a no-knock warrant from a magistrate, telling her a trusted informant bought $50 worth of crack cocaine at the house from a man named Sam who kept the house under electronic surveillance.
The outcome of that raid is now well-known. The elderly resident, Kathryn Johnston, frightened by her door getting smashed in, fired on the officers, who killed her. There was no cocaine in the house.
Almost immediately, questions emerged about the narcotics cops' story. A longtime informant came forward to say police asked him to lie to cover up what happened, saying he made a buy at the house. Earlier this week, a report surfaced that one of the officers involved in the raid had told federal investigators that a narcotics officer lied to obtain the warrant.
A person close to the investigation said one of the three officers wounded by Johnston, Gregg Junnier, told federal investigators there was no drug buy at the house.
While the truth of what happened that night remains hidden in official investigations, suggestions that the narcotics officers may have cut corners with such horrific results raise tough questions. "Why are they willing to risk their career for this?" asked retired Atlanta police Sgt. Faye Coffield. "What would have happened if they got this bust?"
The officers involved aren't speaking publicly about the incident or the atmosphere in which they work, nor is Police Chief Richard Pennington. But interviews with current and former Atlanta police officers, a review of a departmental critique, a look at last year's search warrants and an analysis of drug tests by the state crime lab show the cauldron in which the officers work — and why the prospect of a one-kilogram bust would have been enticing.
"The desire to show an increased arrest rate probably played a significant role in this, said City Councilman H. Lamar Willis.
'One rock at a time'
Forget the piles of cocaine cops seize on TV shows.
Being a narc in Atlanta is a dangerous, often frustrating job of repeatedly busting two-bit dopers who are leaned on to give up others, usually small-timers themselves. The narcotics officers operate in a netherworld of pursuing shadowy criminals known only by street names, and they get approval from judges to raid homes on the word of equally suspect snitches who frequently make buys of $20 or less.
Unlike the nickel-dime busts that occupy most of the officers' time, the kilo of cocaine the officers said they expected to find at Neal Street would have been one of the year's best seizures — literally a thousand-in-one bust.
Over a nearly three-year period, 6,121 drug confiscations sent by Atlanta police to the GBI crime lab tested positive for cocaine. Just six were more than a kilogram, a little more than 2 pounds. On the other hand, more than 4,000, or
64 percent, were less than a gram, which is roughly the weight of a single raisin.
Coffield, a former police union leader, said a joke has circulated for years: "The Atlanta police narcotics unit is solving the cocaine problem one rock at a time."
"All they care about is numbers," said Coffield, expressing a complaint being voiced by current Atlanta officers and city officials. "It's not hard to lock someone up for drugs. The problem is getting people with large amounts."
Indeed, such deficiencies in Atlanta's 30-officer narcotics unit were cited in an audit of the department released in 2004 by the New York-based Linder & Associates, a law enforcement consulting firm.
"Although drugs are driving violent crime in Atlanta, the Narcotics Unit has been so understaffed that it has had negligible impact on drug trafficking," the report noted. "Narcotics enforcement historically has prioritized lower-level, street activities, not narcotics distribution."
All about the numbers
In 2005, Pennington said he needed 100 narcotics officers to make a dent in the city's drug and gun problem.
The department has not approached that goal. Before the shooting, there were fewer than 30 narcotics officers, about half of them working the streets in two teams, said Sgt. Scott Kreher, president of the Atlanta local of the International Brotherhood of Police.
Now there are even fewer on the streets. Eight officers on the team involved in the shooting are on paid leave pending an investigation by federal and state authorities. The department is reviewing its policy on executing search warrants in drug cases.
"There is only one [team] left on the street," Kreher said. "That's down from two before Neal Street and down from four [teams] two or three years ago."
"I'm told they are told tips but can't get to them," Kreher said. "It's all about the numbers game. In narcotics, you can't spend weeks and weeks investigating the mid- and higher-level" dealers.
"They're not trying to put the fire out, they're just trying to keep it from spreading."
Angling for the big fish
Atlanta police would not disclose how many detectives are in the narcotics division, but spokesman Officer Joe Cobb said the anti-drug work isn't limited to that unit. He said that making drug cases is a priority for all officers.
"The goal is to get the big fish but it's not that easy," he said. "It's not for lack of effort."
Officers fighting drug dealers are detached to the federally funded "Weed & Seed" and Project Safe Neighborhood units and regular detectives assigned to the zones work drug cases.
In addition, officers are detached to the federal-state-local High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area unit. Jack Killorin, a retired federal agent who runs that metro area drug unit, said Atlanta police usually fill about a quarter of the unit's 80 positions. The unit has the time and resources to work large cases with no geographic boundaries, making busts that are often not credited to APD's stats.
Still, pressure from Atlanta's numbers-driven command staff trickles down to the street cops, said Kreher and other officers who did not want to be identified for fear of punishment.
In 2002, Pennington implemented COBRA, a computer-centered accountability program that quickly tracks crime trends and targets areas for enforcement. In weekly meetings, commanders are grilled by higher-ups when crime numbers increase or arrests decrease.
Officers feel that pressure in their annual reviews, Kreher said. But Cobb said, there is no quota system, formal or informal.
Councilman Willis said several officers have told him they are constantly pressured to make more drug arrests, regardless of size.
"When you base what you do on statistics, the arrests become almost more important than the volume [of drugs] you garner from those arrests," he said.
Volume is the name of the enforcement game, one that is always changing.
"The more places you're knocking in, the more bad guys you're getting at," said former Atlanta police Deputy Chief Lou Arcangeli, who once headed the department's statistics unit and also worked as a narc.
Lack of follow-up
Enforcing the law "is cat and mouse" said Arcangeli. The city's RED DOG unit — for Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia — sweeps dealers off the street, so they go inside and become the narcotics team's prey.
Atlanta police were busy last year, warrant records indicate. They executed more than 400 search warrants looking for drugs. The searches were based on tips from neighbors, police surveillance or criminals trying to gain favor with police by ratting out other dealers.
The work can be frustrating. Arthur Tesler, one of the detectives mentioned in the warrant for Johnston's home, had a two-week run in March when four of his search warrants turned up just 2.2 grams of crack and a business card from a clothing store, records show.
Other times, there's a healthy payoff. On May 8, a "cooperating defendant" told Officer W.B. Munson of the Safe Neighborhoods task force a large amount of marijuana was being stored at a southwest Atlanta home. The search found 1.45 kilos of cocaine, $69,740 in cash and a handgun. An analysis of records from the GBI crime lab indicates Atlanta has been getting some bigger cases — four of the six kilo-plus cocaine hauls in the past three years came in 2006. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined the GBI's log of drugs sent to be tested by APD from Jan. 1, 2004 to Nov. 28, 2006.
The widespread drug problem and lack of follow-up takes a toll, the 2004 audit indicates.
"According to the Department survey, 55.1 percent of officers agree that 'it is futile to arrest drug dealers since they end up back on the street the next day,' a slap at the perceived inability of the rest of the criminal justice system to keep arrested criminals off the streets," the report stated.
Making drug cases, like any vice enforcement, is often controversial and "just plain dirty," Arcangeli said. "When you get to court the defense attorneys always attack the character of the officer. You get your character assassinated. It stays with you."
Corners sometimes cut
Defense lawyers, such as Nicole Kaplan, complain narcotics officers sometimes cut corners. She accused Gregg Junnier of doing that in the 2003 arrest of Bobby Mabry, a career criminal, who, according to court papers, had 23 drug arrests.
In that case, Junnier testified he became aware Mabry when a snitch bought $50 of cocaine at his house.
In testimony, Junnier, who estimated he had served 300 warrants in his career, said he wrote the Mabry search warrant using a computer template but accidentally entered the address of a previous bust, though they went to the correct house.
Nonetheless, Mabry was convicted and faces a hefty prison term.
Junnier received a commendation for that bust. He retired from the force last week and, like several comrades, anxiously awaits what the federal investigation will bring.
Computer-assisted reporting specialist Megan Clarke contributed to this article.
