Friday, July 24, 2015

No-knock Warrant Disaster

Grenade lobbed in baby's crib, now cop indicted, SWAT raid on house left boy badly burned, family broke, by Leo Hohmann, 7/22/15, WND
ATLANTA – A former sheriff’s deputy has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of providing false information to a magistrate judge in order to obtain no-knock warrants that led to a near fatal SWAT raid.
The Habersham County, Georgia Sheriff’s Office conducted the raid on a house in Cornelia where a 18-month-old boy was severely burned by a flashbang grenade thrown into his playpen, leaving him with severe burns on his face and chest that required months of painful surgeries.
Nikki Autry, 29, of Clarkesville, Georgia, was acting as part of the sheriff’s office and the Mountain Judicial Circuit Criminal Investigation and Suppression Team on May 27, 2014, at 3 a.m. when the units conducted the raid.
Flashbang grenades were developed for combat use and are meant to temporarily blind and deafen anyone nearby.
“I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him,” the boy’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told Salon. “He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn’t see my son. I could see a singed crib, and I could see a pool of blood.”
No drugs were ever found in the house.
Now, more than a year later, the indictment against Autry indicates the operation was botched from the start.
One of the SWAT members tossed a flashbang grenade into the house, and it landed in the playpen where little Bou Bou Phonesavanh was sleeping. He required more than a dozen reconstructive surgeries costing his family more than $1 million. The county has refused to reimburse the family for their child’s medical expenses.
Autry, who resigned from the department not long after the incident, will be arraigned later this week by a federal magistrate.
Providing false evidence to a judge to obtain a warrant is a federal civil rights violation.
“Our criminal justice system depends upon our police officers’ sworn duty to present facts truthfully and accurately – there is no arrest that is worth selling out the integrity of our law enforcement officers,” said Acting U.S. Attorney John Horn in a statement. “In this case, Autry is charged with making false statements to a judge in order to obtain search and arrest warrants. Without her false statements, there was no probable cause to search the premises for drugs or to make the arrest. And in this case, the consequences of the unlawful search were tragic.”
As WND previously reported, the county’s own grand jury investigation determined that the SWAT raid was planned in a “sloppy and hurried” manner and conducted “not in accordance with practices or policies” but found no evidence of criminal negligence on the part of any officer. But an FBI investigation did not concur with that determination.
FBI investigators allege Autry knew the confidential informant wasn’t reliable but presented information from the informant to the magistrate anyway.
When a criminal gives a tip
John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and author of several books on government abuse of power including “A Government of Wolves” and “Battlefield America,” said confidential criminal informants are notorious for giving police bad information.
“Many of these informants are unreliable. I’m told this by police across the country,” Whitehead said. “Often it’s someone the police may have something on. So that’s not the way to go.”
Whitehead said 80 percent of SWAT raids are for mere warrant service, where a simple knock on the door would suffice.
“Looking at this case, that is what they should have done, knock on the door,” he said. “But they took a military approach instead and went to attack the house, knock the door down in the middle of the night and used a flashbang. That’s all military tactics, and they view people differently as the military.”
Growth of SWAT teams war against private property
With the escalation of SWAT raids, Americans are losing their private property rights, Whitehead said.
“The Supreme Court has upheld this stuff. The casualties you’re seeing here are outrageous. SWAT team raids up until the 1980s were for hostage situations, extreme situations, and that changed when they started getting paid, started getting monetary incentives to launch these raids.”
Whitehead said police departments in cities large or small can qualify for federal grants if they have SWAT teams and use them regularly.
“They get actual federal grants for this, and the older cops hate this stuff because it creates an incentive to enter the house,” Whitehead said.
In 1980, local police and sheriff’s departments carried out 3,000 SWAT raids. That’s ballooned to 80,000 such raids per year, Whitehead documents in his book.
He said police unions are very aggressive and will react to defend their SWAT teams whenever a town talks about disbanding or scaling back the raids.
Sending a message?
The decision to indict the Habersham County deputy is seen as a positive step by Whitehead, but he doubts it will send any strong message about the overuse of SWAT team raids.
“I don’t believe so. They’ll just say this one is a crooked one. And she hasn’t been convicted yet,” he said. “So the SWAT team raids will continue to grow in my opinion, because of monetary incentives, militarization of the cops, and just the difference in the way they are trained to view us as citizens compared to regular cops. When they call me a civilian, I say, ‘No sir, I’m not a civilian. I’m a citizen.’ This is a standing army, which our Founding Fathers warned against.
“So it’s very dangerous stuff. The SWAT teams should be scaled back to real hostage situations and cops should knock on your door first to make sure it’s the right place if nothing else,” Whitehead said. “This is America.”
According to Acting U.S. Attorney Horn, the indictment, and other information presented in court: Autry worked for the Habersham County, Georgia, Sheriff’s Office from 2004 to 2014. On the night of May 27, 2014, Autry and other members of a regional drug investigative team called NCIS were attempting undercover narcotics buys from various subjects in Habersham County.
Eventually, a brand new NCIS informant and two of his associates – his wife and a roommate – went to the home in Cornelia. The informant’s roommate, who was not officially working with NCIS, approached the residence and allegedly purchased a small quantity of methamphetamine from an individual unknown to him who was standing outside the residence. There was no police surveillance to verify the purchase.
Shortly afterward, Autry presented an affidavit to a Habersham County magistrate judge falsely swearing that the NCIS informant made the purchase and that the NCIS informant was “a true and reliable informant who has provided information in the past that has led to criminal charges on individuals selling narcotics in Habersham County.”
The federal indictment alleges that Autry knew the NCIS informant had not purchased any methamphetamine from anyone at the residence and the NCIS informant had not proven himself to be reliable in the past.
The indictment also alleges that Autry had not confirmed there was heavy traffic in and out of the residence. Based on this false information, the magistrate judge issued a “no-knock” search warrant for the residence and an arrest warrant for a man identified only as “W.T.” The warrant obtained by Autry was executed approximately two hours later, during the early morning hours of May 28, 2014.
During the execution of the search warrant, a Habersham County deputy sheriff tossed a flashbang grenade into a side door of the residence. The flashbang grenade was thrown directly into the room where the 18-month-old toddler was sleeping. The grenade landed inside the toddler’s playpen and critically injured him. The toddler and his family had been staying at the residence for approximately six weeks prior to the incident. They are relatives of the lawful occupants of the residence. “W.T.” was arrested shortly after the flashbang incident at a nearby residence.
The indictment charges Autry with four counts of civil rights violations for willfully depriving the occupants of the residence of their right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by a police officer and for knowingly depriving W.T. of his right to be free from arrest without probable cause.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/grenade-lobbed-in-babys-crib-now-cop-indicted/

Comments
The Georgia legislature needs to outlaw No-knock warrants, stop believing tips from felons, stop using grenades and begin to comply with the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party

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