The Liberty Papers

There is a guest editorial from Radley Balko in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the use of paramilitary raids by police:

After taking a year to research and write a paper for the Cato Institute on the proliferation of forced-entry, paramilitary-style raids, I’m sorry to say Johnston is just one of at least 40 innocent people killed in botched raids over the last 20 years in America. Worse, there are dozens more cases of low-level offenders, bystanders — and police officers killed or injured.

In 2005, for example, Baltimore’s Cheryl Lynn Noel, a mother and churchgoing woman, was shot to death when she mistook raiding police officers for intruders. She was holding a legal handgun when they kicked open her bedroom door. That raid was conducted after police investigators found marijuana seeds in the family trash.

Last January, Fairfax, Va., optometrist Sal Culosi was accidentally shot and killed when a SWAT team apprehended him. He was under investigation for wagering on football games with a group of friends.

The Johnston raid isn’t even the first such tragedy in Georgia. In 2000, Riverdale’s Lynette Gayle Jackson called the police after her home had been invaded by burglars. While investigating the break-in, police found a small amount of cocaine that belonged to Jackson’s boyfriend.

A few weeks later, police raided Jackson’s home, looking for her boyfriend. Jackson, understandably afraid after having been robbed less than a month earlier, was holding a gun when police entered her bedroom. The raiding officers opened fire and shot her to death.

In 2005, Stockbridge’s Roy and Belinda Baker were startled from their sleep by a raiding police team that destroyed the couple’s front door with a battering ram. The Bakers were handcuffed and made to stand on their porch at gunpoint. Police had mistaken the Bakers’ home for the house next door.

The botched raid in Stockbridge could be expensive for taxpayers in Henry County (which is where I live). In June it was reported that the Bakers were seeking $8 million in damages.