Something fishy?
Some facts seem to indicate a pattern for Georgia...
* no-knock warrants routinely granted with little/no justification;
* playing fast and loose with "confidential informants" stories to backfill questionable raids
An appeal: Please, please, lets not divert the thread with ad nauseum discussion of inconsequential side points, like a half hour difference in the raid time, or the definition of "constructive possession"? Thanks in advance.
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http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=89171
Details Emerging in ATF Shooting
Reported By: Catherine Kim
Web Editor: Michael King
Last Modified: 12/16/2006 12:02:47 AM
New details are emerging about what led to the shooting of two ATF agents at an apartment complex in DeKalb County on Friday morning.
Chardriguez Durden and Paul Thompson are being held in jail on a series of local charges. Police say federal charges are pending.
Police say it all started when ATF agents tried to serve Durden a warrant for a .45 caliber pistol.
Agents made their way to a Pine Woods apartment to find out what special agents believed began at a pawn shop in Conyers.
According to the warrant, Durden had illegally purchased two firearms from the pawn shop.
But his lawyer, Tony Mathis, is not buying that, saying that the circumstances of the warrant were not valid.
“That’s the person who it had got stolen from,” Mathis said. “For some reason, they come to this man’s house at 5:00 in the morning with a no-knock search warrant, looking for one gun. But there is nothing in this warrant that says why they would need a no-knock search, anyway.”
In the warrant, an ATF agent says Durden instructed a second person to buy two guns, and then stole the guns from the legitimate owner, whom the ATF used as a confidential informant.
According to Mathis, the confidential informant mentioned in the warrant was another woman -- Sonia Reed.
“I’m confused,” Reed said. “They came to me out the blue, to my parents house, asking me questions about what was supposed to have happened with the gun, and I was frightened. I told the truth about what I knew, but I was scared into telling them.”
Reed says she told the ATF a different story than what they used to issue the warrant.
“No, I never told them that he stole the gun from me, because he stayed at the same house. They implied that someone had got killed with one of the guns, is what they said. They wouldn’t tell me which one, basically saying he stole the first one, trying to say he still had it.”
The two agents were treated and released.
