Too Bad These Police Are Still Alive
I'm glad the old gal got some shots in and actually wounded three of them.
Woman, 91, Dies in Shootout With Police
By Associated Press
3 hours ago
ATLANTA - A police official said narcotics officers were justified in returning fire on a 91-year-old woman they shot to death after she shot them as they tried to serve a warrant at her house.
Neighbors and relatives said it was a case of mistaken identity. But police said the woman, identified as Kathryn Johnston, was the only resident in the house at the time and had lived there for about 17 years.
Assistant Chief Alan Dreher said the officers had a legal warrant and "knocked and announced" before they forced open the door. He said they were justified in shooting once they were fired upon.
As the plainclothes Atlanta police officers approached the house about 7 p.m., a woman inside started shooting, striking each of them, said Officer Joe Cobb, a police spokesman.
One was hit in the arm, another in a thigh and the third in a shoulder. The officers were taken to a hospital for treatment, and all three were conscious and alert, police said.
Sarah Dozier, identified as a niece of the woman, told WAGA-TV that there were never any drugs at the house.
"My aunt was in good health. I'm sure she panicked when they kicked that door down," Dozier said. "There was no reason they had to go in there and shoot her down like a dog."
Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights leader, said Johnston's family deserves an apology.
"Of the police brutality cases we've had, this is the most egregious because of the woman's age," Hutchins said.
Hutchins said he would try to meet with Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington and would also meet with lawyers.
Ok, ya ya, the police were... "only doing their job", yadda yadda blah blah blech!
It's a job that should not be done or even exist in the first place! You can never successfully legislate morality and especially prohibit what substances people ingest! It is insanity to even try! How many more innocent lives must be lost in this failed "War on Drugs"? Drug use and abuse is a victimless crime.
It only harms the user/abuser if left alone without artificial free market constraints. Plenty of people use and still live productive lives. There would be no crime to pay for drugs if they did not cost so much because of the artificial risk constraint placed on the market by the anti drug laws. How can so called, Conservatives, those that so often align themselves as pro law enforcement and anti drug, and who claim to also be fiscal conservatives, fail to see their effect upon the free market through these useless prohibition polies?.
This poor woman was merely defending herself and her property as is her and everyone's natural right to do. She had to in a city known for violence and violent break-ins. She like as not had bad hearing impaired enough to only hear the loud crashing into her door and not their calls of identification, if indeed they did identify in their zealous pursuit of ooooohhh the bad bad drug dealers. Those drug dealers did not exist.
I'd like to know if before this she was perhaps refusing to move out of subsidized rent apartment or something similar. Maybe a landlord knowing she was armed called in a false claim of drug activity banking on her being shot or arrested or in the very least scared into leaving? I know it sounds too "Hollywood so the drama" but truth is so often stranger than fiction.
In California a man and wife were murdered and property confiscated by the county sheriffs department when on orders of another agency Ca's equivalent of Parks and Wildlife, that wanted their land that backed up to a state park, falsified evidence that the couple grew marijuana. In that case also the man was armed and awakened abruptly hearing intruders, plain clothed officers, late at night. Confronting what he thought were burglars he was shot dead and so was his wife, if I recall correctly.
A PERSONAL VIEWPOINT
I am disabled and as such have had to rely upon others for caregiver service. In about the mid 1980's once upon a time I had just hired a new caregiver to live-in care for me. Just before doing so she abruptly marries some guy she's just met and known for only a week. His just jilted ex girlfriend was none too happy about this and since he had a past record, I came to later learn about, of Marijuana cultivation, she found an eager ear with the local law when she apparently informs them that my new caregiver's new hubby is dealing from my house. I was away the evening the raid went down but it was reported to me that a gaggle of gentlemen came up to the front door laughing and carrying on as if a bunch of my friends coming to party for the evening.
When the door was opened they kicked the person opening it down to the ground stood on his neck then the rest rushed in and threatened everyone with a weapon in their face. I was told and believe they even trained them on the 5 children that belonged to the woman that was to be my caregiver. They turned my house upside down, rip everything to shreds top to bottom and found nothing. No compensation was ever offered, no apology was ever given even when demanded by me. Personal information of mine on an invention concept I meant to patent was never returned. A few years later it turned up on late night TV, you know it as the electronic dog fence. I guess you can say I have a personal interest in the abolishment of these kinds of incidents.
THIS NONSENSE HAS TO STOP PEOPLE!!
How long will we tolerate the ruination of lives that this failed drug war continues to cause? Stop spending the money on corrupt and corruptible law enforcement agencies and personnel and put that money instead to work in educating young people on the dangers of drugs. Provide rehab centers with that money.
Make all drugs legal and taxed and purchasable at a state licensed store. Use the added tax revenue to provide user/abuser work camps where the totally down and out that cannot handle drug use and are unable to remain productive while recreation using will have lodging and medical care and rehab. But provide no mainstream medical for people testing positive for drugs. Allow ubiquitous testing. There would be a price in social status and availability of products like medical, life & vehicle insurance, so that a user's choice does not cost society.
In short the upshot is people that in this plan would decide to take drugs will self marginalize. To keep them out of the gutters and side streets they must submit to living in work camps if they cannot maintain a certain level of financial security and competence. These camps would be where they will receive treatment but may leave when clean and ready to try life sober again.
Eventually over time most of all people will learn that "the good life" is attained by working for it and that drug abuse can and most likely will get in the way of the efforts of so many. Rather than chance becoming one that cannot handle the drugs and would become addicted and down & out, people would learn it is better to just avoid that possibility altogether and get on with working for the good life.
This could be easily funded with the added revenue from taxing drug sales and the savings from not funding bogus anti drug agencies and their corrupt Drug Czars, like the ones that recently broke the law to oppose free elections in Nevada to legalize Marijuana.
posted by FutureQ at Too Bad These Police Are Still Alive
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