[Wuchak]

Apparently it's not that hard to get these type of warrants in a lot of parts of the country and an alarming number of them are issued on fabricated or very sketchy information. If you don't want to read the excellent article below after it I have posted a number of the short accounts from the CATO site I linked to earlier. If they don't make your blood run cold you need help. The MSM loves to complain about civilian casualties in Iraq yet there is no national outcry over the hundreds of innocent Americans that have been slaughtered in their homes by corrupt and inept police forces nationwide. Also disturbing is that the rise in these warrants parallels the rise in the number of SWAT teams. In the early 80's there were about 3000 no knock warrants annually, today there are over 50,000. It's the favorite tactic of the increasingly militarized police forces nationwide.
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‘No-Knock’ Searches Get People Killed by Vin Suprynowicz
http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowi...ynowicz66.html
Last week, we were asking how police found themselves in the bedroom of a naked couple in Lancaster, Calif., in 2001, guns drawn.

This led to a discussion of the problem with "no-knock" – or even "shout-once-and-storm-in" – search warrants.

On Nov. 21 of last year, Atlanta police planted marijuana on Fabian Sheats, a "suspected street dealer." They told Sheats they would let him go if he "gave them something." Sheats obligingly lied that he had spotted a kilogram of cocaine nearby, giving them the address of the elderly spinster Miss Kathryn Johnston, who neither used nor dealt drugs, but who did live in fear of break-ins in her crime-infested neighborhood.

Police then lied to a judge, claiming they had actually purchased drugs at the Johnston house, acquired one of those once-rare "no-knock" warrants, and violently battered down the reinforced metal door of a private home where there were no drugs.

Miss Johnston fired a warning shot at the unknown people busting down her door. That bullet lodged in the roof of her porch, injuring no one. Police replied by firing 39 rounds at her, hitting her five times, and wounding each other with another five rounds – though they lied and said they’d been shot by Miss Johnston.

They then handcuffed the old woman as she bled to death on the floor, and searched her house. Finding no drugs, they planted three bags of marijuana.

Next day, the cops picked up one Alex White, an informant, advising him that they needed him to lie, saying that he had purchased cocaine at Johnston’s house. White refused, managed to escape, and went to the media with the story.

Last month, two of those officers pleaded guilty to manslaughter – in deals which helped them escape murder charges – and now face more than 10 years in prison, after authorities demonstrated they lied to get their warrant.

Greg Jones of the Atlanta FBI office said at a news conference that the FBI is investigating "additional allegations of corruption that Atlanta police officers may have engaged in similar conduct."

Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard said he has started to review hundreds of other cases involving Officers Jason Smith and Gregg Junnier; convictions may be overturned. Last week, Police Chief Richard Pennington transferred his entire narcotics squad to other duties, contending his department would review its policy on "no-knock" warrants and its use of confidential informants. That "review" and seven bucks will get you a fancy cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Officer Smith’s attorney, John Garland, said his client "was trained to lie by fellow officers to establish probable cause."

Meantime, a black man named Cory Maye was still sitting on death row in Mississippi, the last I heard, because he heard men trying to break into his Prentiss, Miss. home late at night in December of 2001, where he was alone with his 18-month-old baby daughter.

Mr. Maye, who had no criminal record, got the child down onto the floor and lay down beside her to protect her. When one of the men finally broke into the bedroom, Cory Maye shot and killed him.

The man was hit in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest, and died a short time later. It turns out the man who had failed to knock and identify himself before breaking in was a cop, who was really after suspects in the other half of the duplex where Cory Maye lived. Turns out the cop was the white son of the white chief of police. An all-white jury sentenced Cory Maye, who is black, to death for exercising his right to defend his locked home and family against violent invasion by an unknown intruder. The all-white jury took only a few hours to do so, at least one juror explaining he wanted to get home for supper.

The list of such abuses goes on and on – without even mentioning the dozens of innocent women and children who eventually died thanks to the bungled and totally unnecessary 1993 BATF "incredibly-no-knock" raid on the Branch Davidian Church in Waco, Texas, whose residents (including Wayne Martin, a black Harvard Law School graduate) had previously demonstrated they would cheerfully cooperate with any law enforcement officer who merely knocked at the door and asked to see their guns.

(At Waco, the agents shot a dog and her puppies in their outdoor pen before they even got to the front door. Agents in National Guard helicopters – their ban from such actions on U.S. soil bypassed by the simple expedient of filling out sworn and thoroughly laughable affidavits claiming there was a "meth lab" inside a Christian church full of women and children – shot down through the roof, killing a nursing mother inside as her infant played by her bedside. When the unarmed Rev. David Koresh opened the front door to say, "Wait a minute, there are women and children here, let’s talk," agents fired at him, hitting his unarmed father-in-law, who stood behind him. Later, agents couldn’t even remember who carried the warrant. No one even CLAIMED they tried to "serve" it.)

For a partial rundown, see "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" by Cato Institute analyst Radley Balko along with the accompanying "map of botched paramilitary raids."

Charles P. Garcia, in "The Knock and Announce Rule: A New Approach to the Destruction-of-Evidence Exception," 1993, reports: "In 1970, the Nixon administration declared a ‘War on Drugs.’ The Justice Department urged Congress to enact a comprehensive anti-drug strategy and suggested that a general ‘no-knock’ provision could constitutionally be added to aid in enforcement. ...

"The ‘no-knock’ experience lasted four years. ... During the four-year period when ‘no-knock’ warrants were issued, horror stories were legion. ... In an exhaustive eight-week investigation by The New York Times, consisting of interviews with victims of ‘no-knock’ raids, reporters found that ‘Innocent Americans around the country have been subject to dozens of mistaken, violent and often illegal police raids by local, state and Federal narcotics agents in search of illicit drugs and their dealers.’

"In Florida, complaints of police harassment during drug searches were so overwhelming that Legal Services of Greater Miami was unable to handle the caseload. In Virginia, a terror-stricken woman, a previous burglary victim, shot and killed a young police officer executing a ‘no-knock’ warrant as he burst into her bedroom in the middle of the night."

(Astonishingly, no prosecution resulted, so far as I’ve been able to learn. The old woman, waiting terrified behind her closed bedroom door, had repeatedly called out, "Who’s in my house?" As with Chief Pennington in Atlanta, the bereaved Virginia chief said he would "review" his department’s use of no-knock warrants.)

"In California," Mr. Garcia continues, "one father was shot through the head as he sat in a living room cradling his infant son. Both the woman and the man were totally innocent of any wrongdoing. The federal ‘no-knock’ warrants were so disruptive that Congress repealed them four years later ... once again making ‘no-knock’ searches illegal under the federal ‘knock-and-announce’ rule."

So: what were those L. A. sheriff’s deputies doing in that bedroom in Lancaster, Calif., forcing Max Rettele and Judy Sadler to crawl out of bed naked, pointing guns at their heads and screaming and not allowing them even to grab a sheet or blanket to cover their nakedness?

The African-American suspects – who had moved – were sought for "identity theft," not a violent crime. There was no suspected "stash" that could be flushed down a toilet.

So why didn’t police knock at that door at suppertime, allowing the clothed couple to come to the door and calmly read their warrant before inviting police in to look around and confirm that the three African-Americans that police sought no longer lived there?

"While the facts in this case are unusual, not to say humorous," chuckled the reliably pro-police-state Los Angeles Times in an editorial last week, "the bottom line is important: Even when police follow the law, pursuit of the guilty will sometimes inconvenience – and embarrass – the innocent."

Oh, ha ha. Naked in their own bedroom. A little embarrassment. A little inconvenience. Chuckle chuckle.

And if Max Rettele and Judy Sadler had been armed? If they had opened fire on those gun-brandishing home invaders – as the terrified innocent victims Kathryn Johnston and Cory Maye did? If both that innocent couple and one or two pumped-up L.A. County sheriff’s deputies had ended up dead on the bedroom floor that early morning, would the Times still find it all so amusing?

June 4, 2007
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Here are some of the stories from the Cato map site http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ Under the map is a set of filters and you will see the stories for each incident listed under this box. For these stories I filtered on Death of an innocent.

Kathryn Johnston

November 21, 2006—GA

Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, police conduct a no-knock raid on the home of 88 year old Kathryn Johnston.

Johnston, described by neighbors as feeble and afraid to open her door at night, opens fire on officers as they burst into her home. Three of the officers are wounded before Johnston is shot and killed.

Relatives say that Johnston lived alone, and legally owned a gun because she was fearful of intruders. She lived in the home for 17 years. Police claim that they find a small amount of marijuana in Johnston's home, but none of the cocaine, computers, money, or equipment described in the affidavit that was used to obtain a warrant.

There are now allegations of a police cover-up.
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Cheryl Lynn Noel

January 21, 2005—MD

Baltimore County, Maryland police descend on a home in the Dundalk neighborhood at around 5 a.m. on a narcotics warrant. They deploy a flashbang grenade, then quickly subdue the first-floor occupants -- a man and two young adults.

When officers enter the second-floor bedroom of Cheryl Llynn Noel, they break open the door to find the middle-aged woman in her bed, frightened, and pointing a handgun at them. One officer fires three times. Noel dies at the scene.

Friends and acquaintances described Noel as "a wonderful person," who ran a Bible study group on her lunch breaks. One man collected 200 signatures from friends, neighbors, and coworkers vouching for her character.

Officers conducted the raid after finding marijuana seeds in the Noels' garbage can.

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Alberta Spruill

May 16, 2003—NY

On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers storm an apartment building in Harlem on a no-knock warrant. They're acting on a tip from a confidential informant, who told them a convicted felon was dealing drugs and guns from the sixth floor.

There is no felon. The only resident in the building is Alberta Spruill, described by friends as a "devout churchgoer." Before entering the apartment, police deploy a flashbang grenade. The blinding, deafening explosion stuns the 57 year-old city worker, who then slips into cardiac arrest. She dies two hours later.

A police investigation would later find that the drug dealer the raid team was looking for had been arrested days earlier. He couldn't possibly have been at Spruill's apartment because he was in custody. The officers who conducted the raid did no investigation to corroborate the informant's tip. A police source told the New York Daily News that the informant in the Spruill case had offered police tips on several occasions, none of which had led to an arrest. His record was so poor, in fact, that he was due to be dropped from the city's informant list.

Nevertheless, his tip on the ex-con in Spruill's building was taken to the Manhattan district attorney's office, who approved of the application for a no-knock entry. It was then taken to a judge, who issued the warrant resulting in Spruill's death. From tip to raid, the entire "investigation" and execution were over in a matter of hours.

Spruill's death triggered an outpouring of outrage and emotion in New York and inspired dozens of victims of botched drug raids, previously afraid to tell their stories, to come forward.

Still, the number of real, tangible reforms to result from the raid were few. Though the number of no-knocks in New York has by most indications declined, there's still no real oversight or transparency in how they're granted and carried out. And victims of botched raids still have no real recourse, other than to hope the media gets hold of their story.

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Tony Martinez

December 20, 2001—TX

On December 20, 2001, police in Travis County, Texas storm a mobile home on a no-knock drug warrant.

19-year-old Tony Martinez, nephew of the man named in the warrant, is asleep on the couch at the time of the raid. Martinez was never suspected of any crime. When Martinez rises from the couch as police break into the home, deputy Derek Hill shoots Martinez in the chest, killing him. Martinez is unarmed.

A grand jury later declined to indict Hill in the shooting. The shooting occurred less than a mile from the spot of a botched drug raid that cost Deputy Keith Ruiz his life. Hill was also on that raid. The same Travis County paramilitary unit would later erroneously raid a woman's home after mistaking ragweed for marijuana plants.

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John Adams

October 4, 2000—TN

On October 4, 2000 at about 10 p.m., police in Lebanon, Tennessee raid the home of 64-year-old John Adams on a drug warrant. In what Lebanon Police Chief Billy Weeks would later say was a "severe, costly mistake," police indentify the wrong house.

According to Adams' wife, police don't identify themselves after knocking on the couple's door. When she refuses to let them in, they break down the door, and handcuff her. Adams meets the police in another room with a sawed-off shotgun. Police open fire, and shoot Adams dead.

One officer would later be fired after the incident, and several others suspended, but no criminal charges would ever come of the raid. Adams' widow eventually won a $400,000 settlement from the city.

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Lynette Gayle Jackson

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Alberto Sepulveda

September 13, 2000—CA

Early in the morning on September 13, 2000, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the Stanislaus County, California drug enforcement agency conduct raids on 14 homes in and around Modesto, California after a 19-month investigation.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the DEA and FBI asked that local SWAT teams enter each home unannounced to secure the area ahead of federal agents, who would then come to serve the warrants and search for evidence. Federal agents warn the SWAT teams that the targets of the warrants, including Alberto Sepulveda's father Moises, should be considered armed and dangerous.

After police forcibly enter the Sepulveda home, Alberto, his father, his mother, his sister, and his brother are ordered to lie face down on the floor with arms outstretched. Half a minute after the raid begins, the shotgun officer David Hawn has trained on Alberto's head discharges, instantly killing the eleven-year-old boy.

No drugs or weapons are found in the home.

The Los Angeles Times later reports that when Modesto police asked federal investigators if there were any children present in the Sepulveda home, they replied, "not aware of any." There were three.

A subsequent internal investigation by the Modesto Police Department found that federal intelligence evidence against Moises Sepulveda -- who had no previous criminal record -- was "minimal." In 2002 he pled guilty to the last charge remaining against him as a result of the investigation -- using a telephone to distribute marijuana. The city of Modesto and the federal government later settled a lawsuit brought by the Sepulvedas for the death of their son for $3 million.

At first, Modesto Police Chief Roy Wasden seemed to be moved by Sepulveda's death toward genuine reform. "What are we gaining by serving these drug warrants?" Wasden is quoted as asking in the Modesto Bee. "We ought to be saying, 'It's not worth the risk. We're not going to put our officers and community at risk anymore.'"

Unfortunately, as part of the settlement with the Sepulvedas, while Modesto announced several reforms in the way its SWAT team would carry out drug raids, there was no mention of discontinuing the use of paramilitary units to conduct no-knock or knock-and-announce warrants on nonviolent drug offenders.

there are lots more like these at the Cato site