http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/06/02/0603metops.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13
Eighteen months before Atlanta narcotics officers killed Kathryn Johnston in a bogus drug raid, police investigated six of the same officers for allegedly inappropriate conduct in the search of a southwest Atlanta home.
The Office of Professional Standards failed to substantiate charges against the officers after Alphonso Howard, a plumber, claimed they broke down his door without presenting a search warrant, held his wife and three sobbing children at gunpoint and ransacked his home for nearly four hours.
The Atlanta Police Department's investigation, cursory at best, missed an opportunity to scrutinize the methods of the narcotics team that killed Johnston before they spiraled out of control, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found. It also offers a troubling glimpse into procedures that assess officers' conduct and safeguard the public from rogue cops.
The department's internal affairs unit's final report summarized Howard's complaint in one sentence, while devoting 13 pages to officers' explanations.
Most significantly, the 2005 investigation failed to examine the basis for the search warrant — a critical first step, according to experts.
"If you just accept, immediately, they got a warrant, therefore it was good, you open yourself to a lot of problems," said Lou Reiter, who has 24 years of experience training police in internal-affairs procedures.
The investigation also never considered the possibility that the officers might have lied, either to obtain the search warrant or cover for their conduct.
Federal agents investigating Johnston's death are examining the details of Howard's search, which also relied on a confidential informant, as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into corrupt practices at the APD.
The officer who secured Howard's search warrant, Gregg Junnier, has since admitted that he lied about information used to obtain warrants and used unreliable informants. Jason R. Smith, the second officer to plead guilty in Johnston's death, was not involved in the Howard search.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think anyone had done anything illegal," said W.X. Moss, the investigator who handled Howard's complaint. "No one had any idea they were doing what they were doing."
From his experience, Moss said most complaints against officers were from people upset at having been arrested or inconvenienced by police officers doing their jobs.
After Howard complained about the search, Moss took the officers' statements, prepared a summary of the differing accounts and kicked it up to superiors, who decided wrongdoing could not be proven and took no disciplinary action.
In dozens of other cases, the Office of Professional Standards almost never upheld complaints against the same officers, APD records show.
Over their careers, the six officers involved in both the Howard and Johnston searches have been investigated by internal affairs 57 times for complaints of excessive force, use of firearms, abuse of authority and acting unlawfully, the specific infraction alleged in the Howard and Johnston cases.
The internal investigations went against an officer only once, according to APD records. In every other case, internal-affairs officers exonerated them or failed to substantiate the charges.
In the Howard case, an internal-affairs officer verified the legality of the search warrant only by establishing that a magistrate had, in fact, issued a warrant for Howard's address.
Steve Rothlein, a former deputy director of the Miami Dade Police Department who has trained 3,000 investigators in police procedures, said it was essential that internal affairs examine if police searched the right house, including the grounds for the warrant.
"That would be an extremely important part of the investigation," Rothlein said.
The investigation also did not try to verify whether a confidential informant bought drugs at Howard's house, or explore the inconsistencies between the officers' accounts of the raid.
Reiter, based in Rhode Island, said internal affairs should closely scrutinize search warrants obtained with confidential informants. The investigation should look at the informant's file and record and evaluate his reliability, he said.
Reiter said the investigation should retrace the officer's every action, proving the officer "did all the steps that he or she is saying that they did" to obtain the warrant.
The officers' claims also must be regarded skeptically, Reiter said.
"You want to believe that officers are honest and trustworthy, but unfortunately, we've got some who aren't," he said. "And that's what internal affairs are. We police the police."
Since learning that Junnier and Smith admitted lying about the evidence used to justify Johnston's search, Moss said he might have approached Howard's case differently.
"When I did that investigation," Moss said, "I didn't have a clue about anything illegal going on."
Family terrorized
Nearly two years before Johnston's death, Alphonso Howard was living in Atlanta and, for the most part, minding his own business.
In 2004, he had his only brush with the law.
An argument with another man led to blows and Howard was charged with battery and aggravated assault, the larger charge stemming from an allegation that he tried to run the other man off the road. Howard pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and got probation.
In late summer 2004, he moved his wife and children into a new, two-story house on Elizabeth Street in southwest Atlanta. With a front porch bounded by white pickets, the home's inviting, Southern style stood in stark contrast to the mostly run-down, cinder block homes around it.
The tranquility was shattered about 10:30 p.m. on March 2, 2005, by a succession of loud booms.
Thinking a tree had fallen on his house, Howard said, he leaped out of his upstairs bed and raced toward his children's bedrooms. He reached the staircase when two narcotics officers, guns drawn, ordered him to the floor.
"I kept telling them they had the wrong house," said Howard, 44.
Cuffing Howard, the officers moved to his bedroom, where they found Tia Carter, his wife, huddled under the covers. Carter said she was ordered out of bed naked, enduring the officers' leers before they searched her clothes and let her dress.
"He's asking me, 'Where the money at?' " said Howard, quoting the officer. " 'I'm not here for nothing. Now, you can quit playing with me. ... You can either give me that money, or we can go through the long process and get the [drug] dog out here, and then you explain to me when we find it.' "
In Howard's bedroom closet, the officers found an AK-47 assault rifle and in the kitchen they found a revolver. Howard has registrations for both.
Learning of Howard's criminal record, the officers threatened to charge him with gun possession by a convicted felon, a charge that would apply only if he had been convicted of felony charges, not misdemeanors.
Carter said the officers repeatedly told her the three children, all under 7, would be turned over to child-welfare workers.
In the end, they simply left without charging Howard or Carter with anything, confiscating Howard's guns.
"I'm going to keep my eyes on you," one officer told Howard on his way out, he said.
Warrant unexplained
Investigator Moss' final report hardly mentions the details of Howard's complaint.
The investigation covered only what officers did inside Howard's house, not what they did to get inside.
To get the warrant, Junnier had said, he directed a confidential informant to buy $30 of marijuana at Howard's house a week earlier. Howard denies drugs were sold in his house.
Junnier's affidavit said the informant bought the drug from "Black," described as a "black male (dark complexion, gold colored teeth, mustache)" weighing 200 to 215 pounds.
Though he is African-American, Howard has no gold on his teeth and said he has never worn a mustache. He is also shorter and weighs less than the man described in the warrant.
In his subsequent statement to internal affairs, Junnier did not explain how he obtained the warrant or any of the discrepancies in Howard's physical appearance and that of "Black." In the nine months following the Howard raid, Junnier sought search warrants against four suspects named "Black," all of varying physical descriptions.
In pleading guilty to killing Johnston, Junnier admitted that he and other narcotics officers did not always verify informants' buys and acknowledged that some never took place.
The seven officers' statements in the Howard case are nearly uniform. But there are unexplained inconsistencies.
Several officers said they found, in plain view, a scale containing "cocaine residue" and plastic bags used to package drugs.
But Junnier said he discovered the alleged drug paraphernalia in kitchen drawers. In the Johnston case, Junnier admitted knowing that a second officer planted marijuana in her home after her death.
All officers said the scale field tested positive for cocaine.
Inexplicably, however, the dog handler's statement made no mention of finding any drugs or drug residue.
Neither Moss' investigation nor the officers' statements explain why Howard was not arrested if Junnier found drug paraphernalia with cocaine residue in his kitchen.
On June 16, 2005, Maj. W. Harris, head of Office of Professional Standards, closed the case, concluding Howard's charges had not been substantiated.
Two weeks ago, Police Chief Richard Pennington reassigned Harris as part of a reorganization that also replaced all members of the APD's narcotics team.
Mystery informant
FBI agents have interviewed Howard and his wife as well as Junnier about the 2005 raid. Rand Csehy, Junnier's attorney, said Junnier is cooperating with the investigation.
Fearful for their own safety, Howard and Carter moved out of the Elizabeth Street house in the fall of 2005. After months of phone calls and several trips to City Hall East, including one to Chief Pennington's office, Howard was able to get back the two guns that police had seized in the search. He was never charged with a crime.
In August, four months before Johnston's death, Howard demanded $100,000 from the city for damage to his home and his family's suffering. The City Council rejected the claim on advice of the city attorney.
Howard sued in December, three weeks after Johnston's death.
APD officials and city attorneys have refused to identify the confidential informant allegedly used to secure the search warrant, or allow Howard's attorneys to question him.
"We don't think he exists," said
Brad McMillan, one of Howard's attorneys.
The attorneys also contend the narcotics team planted the scale and drug paraphernalia in Howard's kitchen.
The ordeal has been hardest for Carter, a soft-spoken native of Atlanta. Carter said she began treatment for depression and insomnia after the raid.
"I can't even watch TV, cop shows or anything like that, I'm so terrified," Carter said. "I know I haven't done anything, but I still get panicky."
Howard said he plans to move his family out of Georgia once his lawsuit against the city has been resolved.
"They could have killed me and my children," he said. "For nothing."
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