88-Year-Old
Woman Gunned Down By Drug Squad
Two days before Thanksgiving, an Atlanta
narcotics team crashed through the door of 88-year-old Kathryn
Johnston in a 'no-knock' drug raid. Johnston, a "feeble
and frightened woman" who lived alone, according to her
friends and neighbors, apparently heard police breaking through
the burglar bar before taking down her front door. Johnston,
an African-American, fired a revolver and five shots struck the
officers as they rushed in the door. The police, heavily armored
and only slightly injured, returned fire. Ms. Johnston was killed
instantly.
The tragedy began with a no-knock warrant
stating that an unnamed informant had bought crack cocaine from
a man at the house, giving police the authority to burst through
the door without warning.
But in an interview with a local FOX-TV
affiliate in late November, the informant, whose identity was
concealed, said he had never been to the house in question and
had not bought drugs there.
"They were going to pay me just to
cover it up," he claims. "They called me immediately
after the shooting to ask me -- I mean to tell me, 'This is what
you need to do.'" He added that the officers told him explicitly
that he was needed to protect their story.
The informant's claim has resulted in the
suspension of the entire narcotics team, and prompted the FBI
and local US Attorney to open their own investigations. Police
Chief Richard Pennington has also announced a review of the Atlanta
Police Department's policies on the use of no-knock warrants
and confidential informants.
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(GA)
Groom Dies In Hail Of Police Bullets On
His Wedding Day
Sean Bell, 23, an African-American man
leaving a night club in Queens, NY after attending his bachelor
party, died on November 25 after police opened fire on his car.
Bell's friends, Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23, were
both seriously injured. All were unarmed, according to The
New York Times.
Over 50 shots were fired by five undercover
officers documenting narcotics and prostitution at the club.
Police claims of justification have fallen on deaf ears. Now
an angry community wants answers.
About 400 people gathered the next day
across from the hospital where Bell was pronounced dead to hear
speeches from community leaders. In the crowd was Bell's fiancee,
Nicole Paultre. Tears trickled down the face of their 3-year-old
daughter, Jordyn. New York City Councilman Charles Barron has
promised "an explosion in the community," and said
"every one of those police officers should be in jail for
the rest of their lives, and after they die, they should go straight
to hell."
"We are here because this could have
been us," Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd. "We've got
to understand that all of us were in that car."

For more graphs &
charts, visit www.november.org/graphs
U.S. Correctional Population At New Record:
7 Million People
A record 7 million people - or one in every
32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole
by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department.
Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or
jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year. More
than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on
parole at the end of 2005.
Men still far outnumber women in prisons
and jails, but the female population is growing faster.
From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses
have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.
In the 25-29 age group, 8.1 percent of
black men - about one in 13 - are incarcerated, compared with
2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men.
Source Reports from US Bureau of Justice
Statistics (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs)
- Prisoners in 2005, NCJ 215092, and Probation and Parole in
the United States: 2005, NCJ 215091
CA Prison Health System In Receivership
The court-appointed receiver overseeing
the $1.5 billion California prison medical system has promised
to have federal marshals raid the state treasury to fix a problem
he described as largely political, according to The Sacramento
Bee.
In a riveting 1 1/2-hour presentation to
the Little Hoover Commission, Robert Sillen said 65 inmates have
been dying every year in the prison system due to poor medical
care.
Sillen said the fatalities have continued
even since his appointment, and he told the government watchdog
panel about a death earlier this year in which a quadriplegic
inmate with a colostomy bag and internal catheter fell into a
coma with a 109-degree temperature and died after an 11-hour
van ride in July heat. No medical personnel accompanied the inmate
on the trip.
Sillen said the root of the prison health
care problem is political, with not enough people in state government
willing to tackle the crisis.
Under questioning from commission members,
Sillen said he expects his receivership to last upwards of several
years and that when he is finished, he expects to have established
a prison health care system similar to a major private system
such as Kaiser.
Study: Over 50% Of Prisoners Have Mental
Health Problems
More than half of all prison and jail inmates,
including 56 percent of state prisoners, 45 percent of federal
prisoners and 64 percent of local jail inmates, were found to
have a mental health problem, according to a study published
in September by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS).
The report, "Mental Health Problems
of Prison and Jail Inmates" (NCJ-213600) can be found
at: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/mhppji.htm
Border Agents Imprisoned For Shooting,
Cover-Up
Two U.S. Border Patrol agents watching
the Mexican border last year stopped a van carrying marijuana.
The driver fled back across the Rio Grande -- with a gunshot
wound in his buttocks. Federal prosecutors convinced a jury in
March that the agents had shot a defenseless man and schemed
to cover it up. The agents' description about what had occurred
was contradicted by other agents who arrived on the scene. One
testified that one of the accuse agents had admitted to picking
up shotgun casings to cover up the fact that he fired at the
smuggler.
Walter Boyaki, an attorney representing
the alleged smuggler, commended federal prosecutors for having
the courage to carry on with a politically unpopular case, and
argued that if the agents had not been punished, it would have
"put a bull's-eye on every illegal alien." The smuggler
has sued the federal government for $5 million, claiming he was
permanently injured.
"Federal agents do not get to shoot
unarmed people as they are running away in the back and then
lie about it and cover it up," said Johnny Sutton, U.S.
attorney for Texas' Western District.
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Former Thai Prime Minister To Be Tried
For Drug War Killings
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)
and the Lawyers Council of Thailand are pressing the government
to try deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra for crimes against
humanity.
The Thaksin administration is accused of
having blood on its hands for waging its so-called war on drugs,
which killed more than 2,500 people, most of them accused drug
traders and traffickers.
Law enforcement officials were allegedly
obeying a Thaksin policy which included a "license to kill"
when it came to drug crimes.
"Saddam Hussein, former president
of Iraq, was charged with committing crimes against humanity
for the killing of 170 people. In this case, the 2,500 deaths
we witnessed here must constitute crimes against humanity,"
Somchai Hom-laor, chairman of the NHRC human rights cabinet,
told The Bangkok Post.
Children Handcuffed, Dog Killed In Misdemeanor
Pot Raid
A police strike team raided Anita Woodyear's
Schenectady, NY apartment, handcuffed her children and killed
her dog in September. The woman called it excessive force and
a case of mistaken identity, but officers said they have no reason
to apologize, and claimed they raided the house because Woodyear's
18-year-old son, Israel, sold $60 worth of marijuana there.
"I heard a big boom. My first reaction
was to jump out of bed. We were trying to find where our kids
were at and all of a sudden we had guns in our faces," Woodyear,
an African-American woman, told the Albany Times-Union.
During the ensuing chaos, police handcuffed
two of the woman's children, Elijah, 11, and 12-year-old Victoria,
sprayed Victoria with pepper spray, and shot at her dog in the
kitchen before killing it in the bathroom, Woodyear said.
"That seems like an awful lot of firepower
for marijuana," said Fred Clark of the Schenectady chapter
of the NAACP. "That's like spending $125,000 for $5."
Freedomwalk: An Annual Exercise In Undoing
Racism
Since 1996, the GA Prison & Jail Project
has led a sojourn through Southwest Georgia. The Freedomwalk
is not a trip on a tour bus; it's not a visit to honorable, historic
sites. Instead, it is a humble 85-mile journey that calls attention
to abuses in the Southwest Georgia criminal justice system. The
stops include prisons built to house 1500 "criminal aliens;"
courthouses where harsh sentences are passed; small, suffocating
jails, which meet no standard of building, health, plumbing,
or fire code, and yet imprison human beings -- mainly young,
African American men as they await their trial and sentencing.
US Department of Justice numbers show that
Georgia rates first among all states with 6.8% of its adults
in prison, jail, on probation or parole. Three of every four
Georgia prisoners are African Americans. In many of the state's
150 county jails, 9 of every 10 prisoners are African American.
The Freedomwalk visits many of those jails.
This year's Freedomwalk took place Sept.
10-16, and began and ended in Americus, GA. Walkers journeyed
through Macon, Taylor, and Marion Counties, where vigils and
rallies were held at different county jails, courthouses, and
prisons along the way.
Source: Resist, Inc. (www.resistinc.org)
Mexico Orders Army Offensive Against Drug
Gangs
Mexico's new government, struggling with
rampant drug trafficking and crime, ordered thousands of troops
to the western state of Michoacan on December 11, 2006 to fight
drug cartels locked in a vicious turf war.
President Felipe Calderon's security cabinet
said more than 5,000 soldiers and marines were being deployed
to crack down on drug gangs in the state, a key air and sea transshipment
point for U.S.-bound cocaine.
"We will establish control points
on highways and secondary roads to limit drug trafficking, along
with raids and arrests," Interior Minister Francisco Ramirez
Acuna said.
The soldiers, accompanied by federal police,
also would search for and destroy drug plantations in the state,
famous for poppy and marijuana production, Ramirez Acuna said.
Almost 3,000 people -- mostly drug gang
members and police -- have been killed in the past two years
in escalating cartel wars across Mexico.
The conservative Calderon took office on
December 1 and has vowed to stand up to the gangs, who are frequently
better armed than local police and have de facto control of some
coastal areas and parts of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Hundreds of people have been killed in
the once-tranquil state. Brutal drug gangs fighting for control
of lucrative production and trafficking routes leave behind severed
heads and mutilated corpses, reminding rival gangs and authorities
who is in charge.
Source: Reuters News, feature by Gunther
Hamm
US Supreme Court Upholds 55-year Marijuana
Sentence
In the first week of December 2006, the
US Supreme Court let stand the mandatory 55-year prison sentence
that a lower court imposed on a man who was convicted of carrying
a handgun during three marijuana deals in Utah.
By refusing to hear the case, the Supremes
ensured that 27-year-old Weldon Angelos will spend just about
the rest of his life behind bars for selling three eight-ounce
bags of marijuana to an undercover informant.
As Angelos' attorney noted, "The sentence
he will serve is harsher than the sentence for raping a child
-- or the sentence for detonating a bomb aboard an aircraft."
Even the federal judge who was required
to issue the mandatory minimum sentence called it "unjust,
cruel, and even irrational." Yet, the Highest Court let
the sentence stand without comment.
Source: Marijuana Policy Project, www.mpp.org
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