Vol. 71/No. 19      May 14, 2007

Officers Jason Smith and Gregg Junnier pled guilty to several felonies, including voluntary manslaughter. A third cop facing charges in the Johnston case, Arthur Tesler, said he will fight the charges. The deals include dropping of murder charges. Smith will reportedly get about 12 years, and Junnier a 10-year sentence.

Roy Pettaway Jr., the father of Ron Pettaway, who was killed by Fulton County cops on April 15 in the Atlanta suburb of College Park (see last week’s issue), said at an April 29 protest here against the police killings, “We’re about justice. I lost my son, and I’m blessed to have my other son with me,” referring to Roy Pettaway III, who had also been shot and wounded by the cops in the same incident, and was there. “It’s out of hand,” Roy Pettaway Jr. said. “This is going on too much right now. Too many people are dying for no reason at all. ”

Keith Jones, 39, a cable contract worker, said eight cops where he lives, near Johnston’s neighborhood, drive around in black vans and routinely arrest people. He said he was arrested last year on the charge of “pedestrian walking in the roadway,” while walking with his wife and 11-year-old daughter to a program in which his daughter participates. “The way they done me, I know what they said was a lie. However much time they get, they deserve it.”

“Look at all the ones they been killing in DeKalb,” said Benjamin Christopher Agee, another protester. “The inner city police ain’t going to dig too deep, it’s a brotherhood. It’s just like the dude in New York who just left his bachelor party. Racism is still going on.”

The facts that have emerged from the federal investigation of Johnston’s killing point to how the police frames and kills small-time users and innocent people.

According to the results of the inquiry, Junnier and Smith planted marijuana near Fabian Sheats, a “suspected street dealer,” when they spotted him November 21 on a street near Johnston’s home. The cops told Sheats they would let him go if he gave them something. Sheats lied that he had spotted a kilogram of cocaine nearby, giving Johnston’s address. The cops then got a no-knock warrant on the false grounds they had purchased drugs at Johnston’s house.

As the raiding officers broke into Johnston’s home with no warning, she fired a shot in self defense that hit the roof of the porch and injured no one. The cops fired 39 shots, hitting Johnston at least five times, including in the chest. The police then handcuffed Johnston as she bled to death on the floor and searched her house. When they found no drugs, they planted three bags of marijuana. The next day, the cops picked up Alex White, an informant, to force him to lie that he had purchased cocaine at Johnston’s house. White refused, managed to escape, and went to the media with the story.

Greg Jones of the Atlanta FBI office said at a news conference that the FBI was investigating “additional allegations of corruption that Atlanta police officers may have engaged in similar conduct.”

Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard said he has started to review hundreds of other cases involving Junnier and Smith, and some convictions may have to be overturned.

Smith’s attorney, John Garland, said his client “was trained to lie by fellow officers to establish probable cause.”

Police Chief Richard Pennington denied accusations by some cops that they falsify evidence because they are pressured into meeting arrest quotas. “The Atlanta Police Department does not have a quota system,” he told the media. “Yes we get on officers for performance. Any corporate system does that.”

Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, on a trip to Asia to drum up business for local capitalists, defended Pennington. “We have come a long way from where we started,” she said in an email to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “to become a best-in-class police department. But I have no doubt that Chief Pennington’s professionalism and compassionate leadership throughout this investigation are evidence of his commitment to help us reach that goal.”

Many workers here see it differently. “The deal that the district attorney made with the two officers is illegal and unconstitutional,” said Donald Kimball, 57, a meatpacker and member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1996. “They dealt away Johnston’s civil rights and her basic rights as a human being. Under ordinary circumstances, these people would be indicted and convicted for murder, but because they are puppets of the establishment and the government they are given leniency.”

Ellie Garcia contributed to this article.
 
 
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