12 years for murder for Atlanta’s killer cops?
Documents reveal details in Johnston slaying, cover-up
Three former Atlanta police officers will be sentenced in court for the botched raid
Jason Smith was losing it. “I [screwed] up; I think I killed this woman,” the Atlanta narcotics cop told partner Arthur Tesler in the yard behind a small brick bungalow on Neal Street. “You guys got to help me.”
Inside, a 92-year-old woman lay dead, killed by a fusillade of police bullets. Officer Gregg Junnier, his face grazed by a bullet and bleeding, stalked through the home looking for suspects and contraband.
Desperation and self-preservation kicked in. Smith remembered the marijuana seized earlier that day. Better make it look like a drug house, he reckoned. He pulled baggies of pot from his sleeve, nodded to Tesler, and planted them in the basement.
The Nov. 21, 2006, killing of Kathryn Johnston, two days before Thanksgiving, outraged residents of the northwest neighborhood, shocked the nation and rocked Atlanta’s police force. It laid bare the corruption of an out-of-control narcotics squad that lied to get search warrants and planted drugs on suspects.
This time, Smith had authored the trumped-up affidavit. For all three, it was business as usual.
On Monday, the three former officers will be together again in federal court to be sentenced for conspiring to violate Johnston’s civil rights. A sentencing memo from prosecutors to the judge, along with prior testimony and other court records, reveals how the officers concocted a sophisticated cover-up that fell apart when Junnier, the squad veteran and the son of a cop, turned on his colleagues. He crossed the “blue line.”
Prosecutors say the three ex-cops should be equally responsible for one thing: They must pay Johnston’s estate $8,180 – the cost of burying her.</em>
So a raid on a non-existent drug dealer results in the murder of a 92 year old woman, and these lying sacks of shit face “up to” 12 years for “conspiring to violate Johnston’s civil rights”? Is that Federal chin music for murder? These guys should rot in jail for the rest of their miserable lives, which, since I imagine corrupt cops don’t last long in jail, probably wouldn’t be a very long life. Of course, if we didn’t have the insipid “war on drugs” that does nothing but create incidents like this, then the woman would be alive today. But she’s dead, and her killers are sweating 12 whole years in jail. Yeah, that’s justice for ya.
