The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides follow-up on the incident in which an old woman was shot dead after she fired on police officers who burst into her home on a drug raid:
Atlanta police Chief
Richard Pennington confirmed Monday that the informant now claims
police asked him to lie about his role in an alleged drug buy that led
to the shooting.
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.
The informant told an Atlanta television station that the officers asked him to lie to provide them cover in the shooting.
Pennington confirmed the television station's account of what the
informant had claimed and said it mirrored what the informant had told
his internal affairs unit over the weekend.
"The informant said he had no knowledge of going into that house and
purchasing drugs," Pennington said. "We don't know if he's telling the
truth."
All seven narcotics investigators and a sergeant have been suspended with pay pending the investigation, Pennington said.
Radley Balko at Reason provides analysis:
Atlanta police are pretty much screwed at this point. They have no good options.
Attack
the informant's credibility and you admit that you conducted a
high-risk, forced-entry raid based entirely on a tip from an informant
you now say is unreliable. You admit you did no corroborating
investigation. You admit you didn't even send an officer to check to
see if the informant was right about, for example, an external
surveillance system. And all of this ineptitude led to the death of an
innocent woman, not to mention to three officers getting wounded.
And
if the guy's telling the truth? Well, now you're talking about a
major-league shit storm. If this guy's telling the truth, not only
did the officers originally investigating this case lie on the warrant,
but the officers investigating after the shooting then lied
again to cover it up. That means you not only have corruption problems
with your narcotics officers, but you have problems with your internal
affairs unit, the cops who are charged with investigating the abuses of other police officers.
See also Glenn Reynolds' article on the dangers of a militarized police force here.