SmarterthanYou
rebel
http://www.abajournal.com/gallery/warrior_cops/848
1)
1969: The Black Panther Raid
Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had been cooking up an idea for an elite team of police specialists trained in military tactics to respond to emergency situations like riots, active shooters, bank robberies, and hostage situations. The idea hadn’t been received warmly by Chief William Parker and other higher-ups at the LAPD, who were wary of allowing civilian police officers to engage in military tactics. After Parker died of aneurysm, Gates was given the green light by new chief Thomas Reddin.
Gates’ first opportunity to use this new “SWAT Team” came after an altercation between police and armed militants at a Black Panther holdout. The country’s first SWAT raid was a logistical nightmare as the LAPD and the Black Panthers exchanged thousands of rounds of gunfire. But somehow, no one was killed.
2)
1972: Dirk Dickenson
Federal narcotics officers and local law enforcement were expecting to find a million-dollar drug laboratory in a 1972 drug raid on a Humboldt County, Calif., home. Instead, they found Dickenson and his girlfriend, two hippies who didn’t even have running water.
As they rushed the house, one officer tripped; a fellow officer mistakenly thought his colleague had been shot. Dickenson thought he was being invaded and fled. Federal agent Lloyd Clifton shot an unarmed Dickenson square in the back as he ran.
Clifton was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing by the Department of Justice, but Humboldt County District Attorney William Ferroggiaro got Clifton indicted for second-degree murder. Nixon Attorney General Richard Kleindienst (pictured) personally intervened in Clifton’s defense, deputizing a prominent defense attorney known for representing cops in police abuse cases. The charges were ultimately moved to federal court, then dismissed.
A thorough search of the property turned up only a personal-use supply of various illicit drugs.
3)
1973: Herbert and Evelyn Giglotto
This Collinsville, Ill., couple was sleeping when federal agents broke into their home, woke them, screamed and cursed at them, and held guns to their heads. The raid team, one of the dozens of new federal strike forces Richard Nixon had set up across the country, had targeted the wrong home. Worse, they hadn’t even bothered to obtain a warrant.
The Giglotto raid received national news coverage, and inspired investigations by the New York Times and Associated Press, both of which found dozens of similar examples all across the country. The officers were indicted on federal charges. Congress held hearings, showed some sense of shame for what their anti-drug fervor had wrought, and actually repealed the policies that allowed the raid to happen.
4)
1983: Katherine Bauer
In the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting raids, black helicopters hovered over fields, farmland, even backyards, sometimes while blaring Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
U.S. postal worker Katherine Bauer was stopped by CAMP troops while working her mail route in Humboldt County, made to return home to get identification, then searched for weapons. The next night, she heard chanting, honking and cheering; the CAMP troops were leaving town, celebrating on their way out. As she walked out to see what was causing the commotion, shots rang out from the hillside. It was a rural area and the sound of gunshots was common.
But the CAMP warriors hopped out of their trucks. One of them screamed at Bauer to “get moving.” She replied that she was standing on her own property. Bauer later said a deputy sheriff and part of the CAMP effort charged at her, put a rifle to her head, and told her she was an “asshole.” If he heard another shot, he said, he’d “open up” on her home.
“If there’s going to be any shooting around here, I’m going to be the first son of a bitch to open up on all you motherfuckers,” he said. Bauer said the helicopters often buzzed her property. Her son was terrified.
“Mommy, they are going to shoot me and they are going to shoot you,” he said after one incident. Bauer said, “He cried and lay down on the ground covering his head, repeatedly asking me to ‘take me away from here where I can’t hear them.’”
5)
1986: Operation Caribbean Cruise
During the Reagan administration, SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics once reserved for riots and active shooter situations were increasingly used to wage Reagan’s war on drugs. At times, joint local, state, and federal operations raided entire city blocks, or every unit in a public housing complex.
In a February 1986 operation dubbed “Operation Caribbean Cruise,” police mistakenly raided a retired lieutenant with the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department, a career foreign service worker, and a Washington Post employee, among others. The latter described the experience as “like the allied troops at Normandy.”
In all, 530 police officers—12 percent of the Washington, D.C. police department, plus federal agents from the IRS, U.S. Parks Police, ATF, immigration, and the Internal Revenue Service—conducted 69 simultaneous raids all across the city. They anticipated over 500 arrests, hundreds of pounds of marijuana worth millions of dollars, and dozens of automatic weapons. The final tally: 27 arrests, 13 for possession of marijuana. They seized 13 weapons and found $20,000 worth of illicit drugs.
6)
1988: 39th & Dalton
“Operation Hammer” was Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates’ (pictured) plan to battle gang violence with mass arrests, frequent SWAT raids and mandatory curfews.
On Aug. 1, 1988, police raided four apartments at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue. As the raid began, Tammy Moore was sitting on her porch holding her 7-month-old son. An officer struck Moore in the neck, causing her to drop her son onto the concrete; he remained unconscious for 30 minutes. Another man was struck four times by an officer wearing a weighted-knuckle sap glove. This was before police entered the apartments.
Of the 37 people the police detained, they arrested seven. Those seven were beaten, then taken to the police station, where they were told to whistle the tune to The Andy Griffith Show. Those who didn’t, or couldn’t, were beaten again. None were ever charged with a crime.
In the end, the raid turned up six ounces of pot, and less than an ounce of cocaine. The city paid out $4 million in damages, a record at the time.
7)
1998: Peter McWilliams
In 1996, voters in California voted to legalize medical marijuana. But the Clinton administration maintained that because the drug was still illegal for medicinal purposes under federal law, the federal government could shut them down. And so it did. The show of force wasn’t about officer safety. The government was using violence to make a political point.
One raid was on the marijuana grow run by Todd McCormick and Peter McWilliams. It was a large operation, but it was legal under state law, and it was likely targeted because McWilliams was also a prominent medical marijuana advocate. He personally used the drug to treat the symptoms of AIDS and his nausea and during his chemotherapy treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma brought on by HIV infection.
A federal judge later ruled that McWilliams would not be allowed to argue at his trial that his marijuana grow was legal under state law, or that medical marijuana was keeping him alive.
Part of his bail agreement was that he not smoke pot, so McWilliams abstained. He was found dead in his bathtub on June 14, 2000. He had vomited from nausea, then aspirated on his vomit. Federal prosecutors called his death “unfortunate.”
8)
2000: Alberto Sepulveda
Early in the morning of Sept. 13, 2000, agents from the DEA, the FBI, and a Stanislaus County, Calif., narcotics task force conducted raids on 14 homes in and around Modesto. According to the Los Angeles Times, when local police asked if there were any children in the Sepulveda home, the feds answered, “Not aware of any.” But Moises Sepulveda had a daughter and two sons.
After the police forcibly entered the Sepulveda home, Moises, his wife, and children were ordered to lie face down on the floor with arms outstretched. They were told to remain still as officers pointed guns at their heads. Eleven-year-old Alberto was lying under the gun of Officer David Hawn. Shortly after the raid began, Hawn mistakenly fired his gun. The boy died instantly. (no charges were filed against the officer because the shooting was 'accidental'.)
There were no drugs or guns in the Sepulveda home.
9)
2003: Alberta Spruill
On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers stormed an apartment building in Harlem on no-knock warrant. They were acting on a tip from a confidential informant who told them a convicted felon was dealing drugs and guns from the sixth floor. But there was no felon. The only resident in the building was Alberta Spruill, a 57-year-old city employee described by friends as a “devout churchgoer.”
Before breaking in, the raid team set off a grenade. The boom stunned Spruill and she fell to the ground. Once they had figured out they made a mistake, the officer attempted to help Spruill to her feet. But she went limp, and slipped into cardiac arrest. She died two hours later.
The ensuing NYPD investigation found that the alleged drug dealer was arrested days earlier, and had been in police custody ever since. The informant had lied. The officers who conducted the raid had done no investigation to corroborate the informant’s tip. By 2006, New Yorkers filed more than a thousand complaints about botched raids, a 50 percent increase over 2002, the year before the raid on Alberta Spruill.
10)
2006: Kathryn Johnston
In November 2006, members of an Atlanta police narcotics team got a tip from an informant about an alleged drug stash. The alleged drug house actually belonged to 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston (pictured).
The police were supposed to confirm such tips by using an informant to make a controlled drug buy. Instead, the police simply lied on the search warrant, claiming to have conducted such a buy when they hadn’t.
When Johnston awoke hours later to the sound of someone breaking into her home, she met the police with a broken old revolver she kept by the bed to scare off intruders. They opened fire.
The officers called for medical help for their three colleagues who had been wounded by friendly fire. As for Johnston, upon realizing their mistake they handcuffed her and left her to bleed to death on her own living room floor while one of them planted marijuana in her basement.
A subsequent federal investigation found that Atlanta drug cops routinely lied on search warrants. Media investigation and city council hearings followed, and found lots more botched raids on Atlantans who had previously been afraid to come forward.
1)
1969: The Black Panther Raid
Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had been cooking up an idea for an elite team of police specialists trained in military tactics to respond to emergency situations like riots, active shooters, bank robberies, and hostage situations. The idea hadn’t been received warmly by Chief William Parker and other higher-ups at the LAPD, who were wary of allowing civilian police officers to engage in military tactics. After Parker died of aneurysm, Gates was given the green light by new chief Thomas Reddin.
Gates’ first opportunity to use this new “SWAT Team” came after an altercation between police and armed militants at a Black Panther holdout. The country’s first SWAT raid was a logistical nightmare as the LAPD and the Black Panthers exchanged thousands of rounds of gunfire. But somehow, no one was killed.
2)
1972: Dirk Dickenson
Federal narcotics officers and local law enforcement were expecting to find a million-dollar drug laboratory in a 1972 drug raid on a Humboldt County, Calif., home. Instead, they found Dickenson and his girlfriend, two hippies who didn’t even have running water.
As they rushed the house, one officer tripped; a fellow officer mistakenly thought his colleague had been shot. Dickenson thought he was being invaded and fled. Federal agent Lloyd Clifton shot an unarmed Dickenson square in the back as he ran.
Clifton was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing by the Department of Justice, but Humboldt County District Attorney William Ferroggiaro got Clifton indicted for second-degree murder. Nixon Attorney General Richard Kleindienst (pictured) personally intervened in Clifton’s defense, deputizing a prominent defense attorney known for representing cops in police abuse cases. The charges were ultimately moved to federal court, then dismissed.
A thorough search of the property turned up only a personal-use supply of various illicit drugs.
3)
1973: Herbert and Evelyn Giglotto
This Collinsville, Ill., couple was sleeping when federal agents broke into their home, woke them, screamed and cursed at them, and held guns to their heads. The raid team, one of the dozens of new federal strike forces Richard Nixon had set up across the country, had targeted the wrong home. Worse, they hadn’t even bothered to obtain a warrant.
The Giglotto raid received national news coverage, and inspired investigations by the New York Times and Associated Press, both of which found dozens of similar examples all across the country. The officers were indicted on federal charges. Congress held hearings, showed some sense of shame for what their anti-drug fervor had wrought, and actually repealed the policies that allowed the raid to happen.
4)
1983: Katherine Bauer
In the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting raids, black helicopters hovered over fields, farmland, even backyards, sometimes while blaring Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
U.S. postal worker Katherine Bauer was stopped by CAMP troops while working her mail route in Humboldt County, made to return home to get identification, then searched for weapons. The next night, she heard chanting, honking and cheering; the CAMP troops were leaving town, celebrating on their way out. As she walked out to see what was causing the commotion, shots rang out from the hillside. It was a rural area and the sound of gunshots was common.
But the CAMP warriors hopped out of their trucks. One of them screamed at Bauer to “get moving.” She replied that she was standing on her own property. Bauer later said a deputy sheriff and part of the CAMP effort charged at her, put a rifle to her head, and told her she was an “asshole.” If he heard another shot, he said, he’d “open up” on her home.
“If there’s going to be any shooting around here, I’m going to be the first son of a bitch to open up on all you motherfuckers,” he said. Bauer said the helicopters often buzzed her property. Her son was terrified.
“Mommy, they are going to shoot me and they are going to shoot you,” he said after one incident. Bauer said, “He cried and lay down on the ground covering his head, repeatedly asking me to ‘take me away from here where I can’t hear them.’”
5)
1986: Operation Caribbean Cruise
During the Reagan administration, SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics once reserved for riots and active shooter situations were increasingly used to wage Reagan’s war on drugs. At times, joint local, state, and federal operations raided entire city blocks, or every unit in a public housing complex.
In a February 1986 operation dubbed “Operation Caribbean Cruise,” police mistakenly raided a retired lieutenant with the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department, a career foreign service worker, and a Washington Post employee, among others. The latter described the experience as “like the allied troops at Normandy.”
In all, 530 police officers—12 percent of the Washington, D.C. police department, plus federal agents from the IRS, U.S. Parks Police, ATF, immigration, and the Internal Revenue Service—conducted 69 simultaneous raids all across the city. They anticipated over 500 arrests, hundreds of pounds of marijuana worth millions of dollars, and dozens of automatic weapons. The final tally: 27 arrests, 13 for possession of marijuana. They seized 13 weapons and found $20,000 worth of illicit drugs.
6)
1988: 39th & Dalton
“Operation Hammer” was Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates’ (pictured) plan to battle gang violence with mass arrests, frequent SWAT raids and mandatory curfews.
On Aug. 1, 1988, police raided four apartments at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue. As the raid began, Tammy Moore was sitting on her porch holding her 7-month-old son. An officer struck Moore in the neck, causing her to drop her son onto the concrete; he remained unconscious for 30 minutes. Another man was struck four times by an officer wearing a weighted-knuckle sap glove. This was before police entered the apartments.
Of the 37 people the police detained, they arrested seven. Those seven were beaten, then taken to the police station, where they were told to whistle the tune to The Andy Griffith Show. Those who didn’t, or couldn’t, were beaten again. None were ever charged with a crime.
In the end, the raid turned up six ounces of pot, and less than an ounce of cocaine. The city paid out $4 million in damages, a record at the time.
7)
1998: Peter McWilliams
In 1996, voters in California voted to legalize medical marijuana. But the Clinton administration maintained that because the drug was still illegal for medicinal purposes under federal law, the federal government could shut them down. And so it did. The show of force wasn’t about officer safety. The government was using violence to make a political point.
One raid was on the marijuana grow run by Todd McCormick and Peter McWilliams. It was a large operation, but it was legal under state law, and it was likely targeted because McWilliams was also a prominent medical marijuana advocate. He personally used the drug to treat the symptoms of AIDS and his nausea and during his chemotherapy treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma brought on by HIV infection.
A federal judge later ruled that McWilliams would not be allowed to argue at his trial that his marijuana grow was legal under state law, or that medical marijuana was keeping him alive.
Part of his bail agreement was that he not smoke pot, so McWilliams abstained. He was found dead in his bathtub on June 14, 2000. He had vomited from nausea, then aspirated on his vomit. Federal prosecutors called his death “unfortunate.”
8)
2000: Alberto Sepulveda
Early in the morning of Sept. 13, 2000, agents from the DEA, the FBI, and a Stanislaus County, Calif., narcotics task force conducted raids on 14 homes in and around Modesto. According to the Los Angeles Times, when local police asked if there were any children in the Sepulveda home, the feds answered, “Not aware of any.” But Moises Sepulveda had a daughter and two sons.
After the police forcibly entered the Sepulveda home, Moises, his wife, and children were ordered to lie face down on the floor with arms outstretched. They were told to remain still as officers pointed guns at their heads. Eleven-year-old Alberto was lying under the gun of Officer David Hawn. Shortly after the raid began, Hawn mistakenly fired his gun. The boy died instantly. (no charges were filed against the officer because the shooting was 'accidental'.)
There were no drugs or guns in the Sepulveda home.
9)
2003: Alberta Spruill
On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers stormed an apartment building in Harlem on no-knock warrant. They were acting on a tip from a confidential informant who told them a convicted felon was dealing drugs and guns from the sixth floor. But there was no felon. The only resident in the building was Alberta Spruill, a 57-year-old city employee described by friends as a “devout churchgoer.”
Before breaking in, the raid team set off a grenade. The boom stunned Spruill and she fell to the ground. Once they had figured out they made a mistake, the officer attempted to help Spruill to her feet. But she went limp, and slipped into cardiac arrest. She died two hours later.
The ensuing NYPD investigation found that the alleged drug dealer was arrested days earlier, and had been in police custody ever since. The informant had lied. The officers who conducted the raid had done no investigation to corroborate the informant’s tip. By 2006, New Yorkers filed more than a thousand complaints about botched raids, a 50 percent increase over 2002, the year before the raid on Alberta Spruill.
10)
2006: Kathryn Johnston
In November 2006, members of an Atlanta police narcotics team got a tip from an informant about an alleged drug stash. The alleged drug house actually belonged to 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston (pictured).
The police were supposed to confirm such tips by using an informant to make a controlled drug buy. Instead, the police simply lied on the search warrant, claiming to have conducted such a buy when they hadn’t.
When Johnston awoke hours later to the sound of someone breaking into her home, she met the police with a broken old revolver she kept by the bed to scare off intruders. They opened fire.
The officers called for medical help for their three colleagues who had been wounded by friendly fire. As for Johnston, upon realizing their mistake they handcuffed her and left her to bleed to death on her own living room floor while one of them planted marijuana in her basement.
A subsequent federal investigation found that Atlanta drug cops routinely lied on search warrants. Media investigation and city council hearings followed, and found lots more botched raids on Atlantans who had previously been afraid to come forward.