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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