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ATLANTA - The police chief placed all eight members of a narcotics investigation team on leave Monday after a confidential informant said they had asked him to lie during the investigation of the death of an 88-year-old woman, shot and killed by police officers during a drug raid last Tuesday. Chief Richard J. Pennington said the Federal Bureau of Investigation would investigate the death of the woman, Kathryn Johnston, who was killed after she fired at three officers who breached the door of her small house, with its green shutters and a wheelchair ramp. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is also examining the case. The informant's claim fueled more outrage over Ms. Johnston's death, which had already prompted Chief Pennington to announce a review of the Atlanta Police Department's policies on the use of no-knock warrants and confidential informants. Since the shooting, civil rights activists and community groups have demanded a federal investigation, saying excessive force was used. In a news conference Monday afternoon, Chief Pennington said the officers involved and the informant had given contradictory accounts. "There are many unanswered questions," he said. "But we must all exercise patience as we examine and re-examine every aspect of these tragic events." Chief Pennington's announcement came as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York suggested that the shooting death by the police of a groom-to-be in Queens seemed to be the result of excessive force. And another Atlanta-area police force, in DeKalb County, has been the subject of investigative reports of 12 fatal shootings since January. The events leading to the death of Ms. Johnston, whose photograph in news reports showed her with a cane and a birthday crown, began with a warrant stating that an unnamed informant had bought two bags of crack cocaine from a man at the house, near Vine City, the neighborhood where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family once lived. The warrant was known as a no-knock, giving the police the authority to burst through the door without warning in order to prevent the destruction of drugs. But in an interview broadcast Monday by the local Fox affiliate, the informant, whose identity was concealed, said he had never been to the house in question and had not bought drugs there. Ms. Johnston's family has said that she lived alone. "They were going to pay me just to cover it up," he said in the interview, arranged after he placed a call to one of the station's reporters on Thursday. "They called me immediately after the shooting to ask me, I mean to tell me, 'This is what you need to do.' " He added that the officers told him explicitly that he was needed to protect their story. The reporter, Nicole Allhouse, said in her report that the informant had told her Ms. Johnston's death had prodded him to come forward. Mr. Pennington said it was not clear if the drug dealer, referred to in the warrant only as Sam, existed. He said the officers claimed they had found a small amount of marijuana, but no cocaine, in the house. In asking a judge for the no-knock warrant before the raid, the narcotics investigator named in the warrant, Jason R. Smith, had said it was needed because a drug dealer inside had several surveillance cameras and monitored them closely. But Chief Pennington said it was not clear if that was true, either. He confirmed that the informant's account in the television interview was the same as what he had told the internal affairs division of the Police Department. Department procedures call for investigators to observe drug buys conducted by informants, and to watch them enter and exit if a deal takes place indoors. But again, Chief Pennington said it was not clear if that had occurred. He said the informant was considered reliable and had been involved in previous cases. Once the search warrant was signed, three officers appeared at Ms. Johnston's door with bulletproof vests and raid shields emblazoned with the word "police." Department officials have insisted that the officers went to the correct address. They announced themselves as the police after cutting through the burglar bars and forcing down the door. But Ms. Johnston was already at the door with her revolver, which neighbors said she kept for self-defense in an area where drugs are rampant and an elderly woman was recently raped. She shot Officers Gary Smith, 38, Gregg Junnier, 40, and Cary Bond, 38, in the face, chest, arm and leg, prompting them to release a volley of bullets. Ms. Johnston died of a bullet wound in the chest; the officers are expected to recover. Ms. Johnston was initially said by family members to have been 92, but the medical examiner and public records indicate that she was 88. At the news conference, David E. Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, issued a warning. Now that the case is under federal investigation, he said, "anyone who lies or obstructs justice is committing a serious crime." |
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