Report charges misconduct at Atlanta Police Department

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta police drug investigators would often bend and break the rules, lie to get search warrants and work extra jobs when they were on city time, according to a report by a police oversight panel.

Though the Citizen Review Board  report was focused on events before, during and after a botched raid that left an elderly woman shot dead in 2006, the CRB report released Monday said the Atlanta Police Department would ignore instances of abuse and unofficially had established arrest quotas -- at least nine arrests and two search warrants a month.

“What is disturbing about the misconduct … [of] both indicted and unindicted officers is that the system did not detect them earlier,” the report said. “The patterns of misconduct were longstanding, repetitive and ongoing. The misconduct cannot be characterized as isolated incidents.”

The report also said two officers still on the force should be fired for lying in reports and to get search warrants.

“The city continued to employ two of these officers,” according to the report. “This is also a symptom of internal oversight that is slow to investigate and discipline, and this undermines the ability to ensure that officers are performing in a constitutional, legal and ethical fashion.”

The Citizen Review Board was created in 2007 following a botched drug raid on the house of Kathryn Johnston, and elderly woman shot dead in her living room.

The narcotics officers claimed an informant had told them he bought crack cocaine from a man named “Sam” at 933 Neal St., Johnston's house, and he had seen a kilogram of cocaine there hours earlier.

The secured a “no knock” warrant based on that information.

It was nighttime when undercover officers broke through the bars on Johnston's door and crashed into her living room where the frightened 92-year-old was waiting, armed with a rusty revolver. She got off one shot before she was mortally wounded in return fire.

The officers have admitted they soon began trying to cover up their mistakes. When no drugs were found, the officers planted drugs taken in a previous bust.

Then they spent the next few days searching for informant, Alexis White, because they wanted to back up their story.

Eventually, three officers – Arthur Tessler, Gregg Junnier and Jason R. Smith -- pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison for conspiring to violate Johnston's civil rights. Last June, a fourth officer, former Sgt. Wilbert Stallings, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate Johnson’s civil rights, and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. A fifth officer caught up in the FBI investigation, Daniel Betts, pleaded guilty to taking payments from businesses in exchange for extra police vigilance and was sentenced to probation.

It was after Tessler pleaded guilty on Oct. 30, 2008, that the FBI turned over its files to APD for an internal investigation. That internal investigation is still open, which means the FBI report is not available to the public. APD spokesman Sgt. Carl Davenport said the internal investigation should be completed soon.

The board originally agreed to delay the release of its report until the APD internal investigation was completed, but Beamud said it looked like it would be at least several months more before the police department would release its findings.

“We were hoping the police would have an opportunity to complete this investigation before we put it out,” Beamud said. “They originally stated it would be ready in January.”

The police department declined, however,  to comment Monday on the report’s findings.

“I don’t know that they have fixed the problems,” board chairwoman Joy Morrissey said. “I would hope that they have made substantial policy changes so that something like this never happens again.”

The CRB review was of three areas: the culpability of individual officers, the culture of second jobs and arrest quotas.

The report said undercover agents padded vouchers for drug money to give to informants to buy gas and food. The review also found officers took money from businesses in exchange for additional protection from officers on duty. Officers also worked extra jobs during the times they were on the clock for the city.

The CRB did not find direct evidence of arrest quotas for police officers. However, the report stated that APD's policy of tracking numbers in drug arrests may have played a role.

"The count of drug arrests creates significant problems,” said Cristina Beamud, executive director of the CRB. “Frequently, it leads to arbitrary enforcement.”

She said the review found APD had “a system of discipline that is slow and not terribly analytical.”

Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit brought by Johnston’s family against the city and APD is pending.