Gangsters in Blue

Gwinnett County, Georgia:

[Georgia Bureau of Investigation] spokesman John Bankhead said state agents along with Gwinnett and Hall County police narcotics officers had been keeping watch over a drug suspect’s home at 4237 DeJohns Way for about three weeks. Officers thought they saw the suspect enter the duplex around 2 p.m. Tuesday and moved to arrest him, Bankhead said.

A no-knock search warrant had already been obtained from a judge — allowing law enforcement to enter the suspect’s home without knocking or announcing their presence — because the duplex was in a known gang area, Bankhead said. However, the agents and officers mistakenly forced entry into a duplex adjacent to the suspect’s home.

No one was home at that unit, Bankhead said. The agents also banged on the door of the other unit in the same duplex, startling residents inside. Within minutes, Bankhead said the officers figured out that they were at the wrong building.

[...]

Jainet Rios, 25, a Home Depot supervisor, said she was at work when the officers came to her parents’ home. She said her parents, her two sisters ages 18 and 19, and the 19-year-old’s infant baby were terrified when drug investigators began yelling at them with their guns drawn. She said the incident especially shook up her mother, who suffers from bipolar disorder and was recently released from a psychiatric treatment facility.

It’s the second wrong-door raid in Gwinnett County in two months.

Big development in the Ryan Frederick trial today.

This morning, Frederick’s attorney, James Broccoletti, requested and was granted a recess after three attorneys contacted him last night with concerns about state’s witness Jamal Skeeter, a jailhouse snitch who testified on Tuesday.

According to local TV station WVEC, one of the attorneys was actually another prosecutor, Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney Earle Mobley.

Broccoletti said Mobley told him Skeeter is well-known to prosecutors for giving false testimony and is considered a “professional witness.”

Ebert apparently told the court, “he did not realize Skeeter had questionable credibility.”

His long felony record and wholly implausible testimony didn’t give it away?

MORE: From the Virginian-Pilot:

A spokesman for Mobley said this morning that Portsmouth prosecutors had used Skeeter as a witness but stopped. The spokesman, Bill Prince, could not immediately identify what cases Skeeter testified in.

“We didn’t find him to be trustworthy. We felt an obligation to turn that over to the Chesapeake people,” Prince said this morning. “We got to the point where we wouldn’t use him anymore.”

To sit on such information, he said, would be “offensive.”

Mobley’s office also sent a letter last year to the Norfolk commonwealth’s attorney upon learning that Skeeter was scheduled to testify against a homicide suspect.

Norfolk did not use Skeeter as a witness.

You don’t often hear about one state’s attorney undermining another’s case in the midst of a trial. Mobley deserves a ton of credit, here.

Informant and jailhouse snitch testimony dominated yesterday’s proceedings at the Ryan Frederick trial. Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). My prior coverage of his trial here.  Virginian-Pilot coverage of yesterday’s events here.  Coverage from the local libertarian blog Tidewater Liberty here.

The star for most of yesterday was Steven Wright, the informant who tipped police off to Frederick, and who illegally broke into Frederick’s home three nights before before the raid to obtain probable cause.

A few observations, before I excerpt from the Virginian-Pilot’s coverage of his testimony:

• The Virginian-Pilot article doesn’t mention it, but Wright was arrested a few days prior to the raid on charges of credit card theft and fraud. Those charges were dropped shortly after the raid, then reinstated months later, when Wright was arrested again. He was due to stand trial last month. Conveniently, his trial date was moved to tomorrow, two days after his testimony against Frederick.

• Wright’s portrayal of Frederick as a vengeful killer with a gangsta’ vibe runs contrary to everything I’ve heard about Frederick from neighbors, coworkers, and friends and family.

• According to Wright and the police detectives the state has put on the stand, Wright not only illegally broke into Frederick’s home, he lied to police about it for months, possibly compromising not only a drug investigation, but an investigation into the killing of a police officer. Yet he’s never been charged—not for the break-in, nor for lying about it for months.

Here’s the Virginian-Pilot’s account of Wrights testimony:

Ryan Frederick threatened to kill police informant Steven Rene Wright after learning that Wright broke into his garage and stole five marijuana plants, Wright testified at Frederick’s murder trial Tuesday.

“I had a week to turn myself in to him or he was going to go after my family,” Wright said from the witness stand. “He said he was going to… kill me if I didn’t come.”

[...]

Wright said he and a friend, Renaldo Turnbull Jr., broke into Frederick’s garage on Jan. 14, 2008, and stole five of about 10 plants growing in a sophisticated hydroponic tent. They then went to another friend’s house where they made a cell phone video of the plants.

The plants were never turned over to police, he said, but Frederick learned Wright took them and called with the threats.

Wright said he met Frederick earlier in 2007 while dating the sister of Frederick’s fiancee.

In the six to eight months prior to the raid, Wright said, he’d been to Frederick’s house at 932 Redstart Ave. 30 to 50 times; he saw the marijuana growing operation at almost every visit; and he smoked the drug with Frederick and others. He said Frederick even explained to him how the hydroponic system produced superior cannabis.

Wright said he became a police informant after seeking help from a drug dealer in an unrelated case who threatened him. He said police paid him $60 for information that led to the arrest of that dealer.

Despite being limited by the judge to testifying about one or two marijuana sales between November 2007 and the night of the raid, Wright blurted out that he bought marijuana from Frederick some 20 to 30 times throughout 2007.

Wright insists he was never asked by Chesapeake police to break into Frederick’s home. Rather, he said he did so voluntarily as part of a scheme he planned with several friends. They’d steal half the plants, then leave the other half for the police to find after Wright tipped them off. The problem for the prosecution, here, is that in order to believe Wright’s testimony, they’ll also have to accept his own testimony that he’s a habitual liar who routinely spins out falsehoods when it’s in his interest.

The state then called Jamal Skeeter, a jailhouse snitch with a long felony record.  From the Tidewater Liberty blog:

Mr. Skeeter said that he had been in the Chesapeake jail for a period of about 10 days in June of 2008. He had been brought here from the Correctional facility at Lawrenceville, where he was serving a 14 year sentence. He was here to testify as a witness in another case.

He wore red coveralls, indicating that he is in solitary confinement. (Mr. Frederick has been in solitary confinement throughout his entire stay at the jail). He said that in June he was in the gym (on his one hour daily “break”) when “someone” pointed Mr. Frederick out (thru a glass door) as “the guy who shot a policeman.” Mr. Skeeter somehow arranged to speak to Mr. Frederick (through a glass door) and that Mr. Frederick immediately “broke out in a story” saying that he knew he was shooting a cop, but that he was trying to get off on self-defense.

[...]

He said Mr. Frederick told him that he was high when the police got to his house, and that he had hollow points in his gun. When asked about Mr. Frederick’s demeanor, Mr. Skeeter said he “was trying to be a gangsta” and didn’t seem sorry for what he had done.

[...]

Mr. Skeeter claimed that he has made no deal with anyone, and that he’s doing this (testifying against Mr. Frederick) for Det Shivers family because “it ain’t right.”

To sum, the career felon Mr. Skeeter took interest in Frederick after “someone” told him Frederick shot a cop. In their first conversation, through a glass door, during an hour-long break in the jail’s gym, Frederick apparently confessed everything to Mr. Skeeter.  Skeeter, the felon, then contacted prosecutors, not to get time off his own sentence, but because of the overwhelming sense of empathy he felt for the dead cop’s family, and because Frederick’s confession violated his own personal sense of right and wrong.

Sure.  Sounds plausible.

The state then called jailhouse informant Lamont Malone, who is serving time for seven different felonies.  Malone has already testified once against someone else, resulting in a reduction in his sentence from life to about 19 years.

Again from Tidewater Liberty:

He said he is currently in the Chesapeake jail (he has also been in Suffolk and Portsmouth), and has “gotten to know” Mr. Frederick. He said Mr. Frederick’s jailhouse nickname is “Calvin.” He said that Mr. Frederick calls his gun “Roscoe” and that Mr. Frederick shot the police after they kicked in his door because he “panicked” and “had to get rid of his product.” He said that Mr. Frederick told him that he grew “Hydro” and that he had to get rid of his plants. He didn’t say how he did this.

He said that Mr. Frederick told him that he wanted to keep his case in Chesapeake because of the support, and that he expects that his lawyer is going to get him off.. He said that Mr. Frederick has expressed no remorse.

[...]

He said that Mr. Frederick makes unkind comments about Mrs. Shivers, and that he doesn’t seem sorry for what he did. He said that Mr. Frederick has been “laughing it up” with another prisoner, who is facing similar charges.

Laying it on thick, aren’t they?

When weighing yesterday’s testimony against Frederick’s story, it’s probably useful to remember that Frederick had no prior criminal record, and had a full-time job that required him to get up early in the morning (with kind words from his employers). Friends and neighbors described him to me last year as a shy, introverted guy who smoked pot recreationally.

It’ll be interesting to see if Renaldo Turnbull gets called to testify, and what his testimony might look like if he does.

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). Prior coverage of his trial here.

(Note: My analysis of the trial is based on coverage by the Virginian-Pilot and by local blogger Don Tabor.)

On Friday, the jury heard more testimony police officers who were on the raid. It’s notable that the testimony from the various officers varied about which and how many announcements individual officers heard. One officer who was with the second raid team that hit Frederick’s garage, for example, says he only heard one announcement, from a female officer. This, even though he was outside with the other raid team, only a short distance away. Frederick, meanwhile, was sleeping, separated from the officers by walls, and distracted by barking dogs and likely his own paranoia from having just been burglarized.

The second raid team was also slowed down by a fence, and entered the garage after the other team began taking down Frederick’s door.  That means the garage raid team’s announcements wouldn’t have been a factor in determining whether or no Frederick should have known the people invading his home were police.

One thing I neglected to mention from Thursday’s proceedings that’s worth rehashing: Just as they did at a preliminary hearing last March, the police again said they moved to break into Frederick’s home after one officer peered through a window and saw a moving human figure. If the purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement is to give the home’s occupant time to answer the door and avoid a violent confrontation, a figure moving toward the door shouldn’t be a reason to commence with the battering ram. Doing so renders moot the whole point of knock-and-announce. If the cops see you move to answer the door, they invade because you’ve blown their cover.  Of course if you don’t answer the door, they’ll also be taking down your door.

The other two notable items from Friday involved more shenanigans from the prosecution. During opening statements, prosecutor James Willett told the jury Frederick was “stoned out of his mind,” and “in a blind rage” when he shot Det. Jarrod Shivers the night of the raid.

During his own opening, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti showed video of an interview with CPD Det. Edward Winkelspecht, who said Frederick didn’t appear high after his arrest. Despite the fact that his name was on the prosecution’s witness list, when Broccoletti said in court Friday that he’d like to hear from Det. Winkelspecht, the Virginian-Pilot reports,

“…prosecutors told Judge Marjorie T. Arrington that the officer was unavailable to testify because he was in Georgia for training and was expected to be there for weeks, if not months.”

Seems odd that the prosecution wouldn’t have ensured that such an important witness would be around for questioning—or, if you’re sufficiently cynical, it isn’t odd at all.

At Broccoletti’s request, the judge compelled the officer to come back. Det. Winkelspecht then testified today that Frederick was coherent and responsive the night of the raid, that his eyes weren’t bloodshot, and that he had no concerns about Frederick not understanding or comprehending his rights. The police also apparently either didn’t give Frederick a drug test, or they did and the results either weren’t positive or weren’t conclusive.

All of which means Willett had zero evidence for the “stoned out of his mind” and “blind rage” description of Frederick he made to jurors in his opening statement. I’m not sure what Broccoletti can do about that, other than to remind the jury during his closing, and to take note of it all for the appeal should Frederick be convicted

The other major detail from Friday involves a videotaped reenactment of the raid conducted by police and prosecutors that the state has fought vigorously to keep the defense from seeing. From Tabor’s report:

Though the video was the product of a search warrant, the prosecution has maintained it was an internal ‘work product’ of the prosecution crafted to help them develop their theory of the case and not subject to discovery by the defense. They admitted that the defense was entitled to any measurements, drawings, photos or graphs resulting from the search, but not the video. But they also claimed they made no measurements, photos or drawings, only the video.

The problem is that the prosecution then entered a still from the video into evidence, which one of Frederick’s attorneys noticed included a string used to measure the trajectory of the fatal bullet. That’s pretty clearly a measurement, which means the prosecution wasn’t telling the truth about what’s in the video, and hasn’t given the defense all of the evidence it’s required to turn over. The judge ruled that the defense be allowed to view the video, and ordered the prosecution to look again to be sure it wasn’t holding any evidence that could be relevant to Frederick’s lawyers.

According to the Virginian-Pilot, the police also revealed today what they found in Frederick’s home—lights, tubing, and some books about growing marijuana. None of those things are illegal, though they do indicate—as Broccoletti conceded in his opening statement—that Frederick was likely growing marijuana. Broccoletti told the jury Frederick grew solely for his own use, and so far the prosecution has provided no evidence of selling or distribution. The police found no plants in the house or garage on the night of the raid, but did find misdemeanor amount of dried marijuana. Still, it looks like this will all boil down to whether this jury can look at the holes in the state’s case long enough to get beyond “growing pot + shot a cop.”

The jury was supposed to view Frederick’s home this afternoon (over the objections of the prosecution), but that visit was cancelled. The reports I’ve seen don’t say why.

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). My coverage of the first two days of his trial here.

I should note in these updates that I’m not actually in Chesapeake for the trial. My analysis of what’s happening is contingent on reporting from the trial from the Virginian-Pilot newspaper and from local blogger Don Tabor, who is writing up reports from notes he’s taking in the courtroom (and whom I’ve found to be pretty fair in his prior coverage of the case).

Yesterday began with the state calling Jarrond Shivers’ widow to the stand. I found this odd, and a couple of criminal defense attorneys I spoke with (both not related to the case) confirmed my suspicions. I don’t doubt Nicole Shivers’ grief, but her tearful testimony added nothing substantive to what’s at issue in this case: whether Ryan Frederick knew or should have known that the men breaking into his home were police officers. Shivers testified about her first date with her husband, about their relationship, and about the last time she saw him. This sort of testimony at least makes some sense during a sentencing hearing, but during the guilt phase of a criminal trial, it’s inappropriate. It’s only purpose is to spark juror emotions—to put in their head that a "not guilty" verdict may only inflame the widows’ grief.

According to Tabor, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti didn’t object to Shivers taking the stand, though it’s possible that he objected to her inclusion as a witness at an earlier hearing. Broccoletti didn’t respond to an email query (understandably, given that he’s in the middle of a trial). It’s possible that Broccoletti calculated that objecting to allowing Shivers to have her say would lose him sympathy with the jury, particularly if he thought he’d be overruled, anyway. I’d be interested in what readers with a criminal law background think of Nicole Shivers taking the stand.

The rest of the day was taken up by testimony from police officers involved in the raid. They reiterated the claim that they knocked and announced themselves repeatedly. Tabor found their testimony believable. I’ve heard from others at the trail who found them less credible.  But I’m not sure their credibility matters. Even taking the officers’ testimony at face value, from the first knock until the battering ram took out the lower panel of his front door, Frederick had at most 25 seconds to wake up, gauge what was going on outside his home, and determine what to do about it. This, while his dogs were going nuts, and after he’d been burglarized days earlier (by the police department’s own informant).

A few other items that came out yesterday that are worth noting:

•  On the day of the raid, Frederick bought two dead bolt locks for his door. A relatively minor point, but it helps establish his state of mind the night of the raid.

•  Broccoletti conceded that Frederick did at some point grow marijuana plants for personal use, but Frederick adamantly denies ever selling any. The police had no evidence at the time to suggest otherwise. (I don’t know what the state has in store for the trial.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they trotted out a jailhouse snitch claiming to have bought marijuana from Frederick). They attempted no controlled buys from Frederick. They surveilled his home and found nothing unusual. The affidavit mentions no complaints from neighbors (the neighbors I’ve spoken to speak highly of him). This raid wasn’t conducted on a community menace. It was conducted on a guy who smoked and sometimes grew pot in his own home, for his own use.

• Indeed, the police officers who testified yesterday conceded that the only evidence they had on Frederick was the word of their informant, Steven Wright. Wright at the time was being held on felony charges related to credit card theft. According to the officers who testified, Wright had helped them on one prior case, and was paid $50. 

I should first add that this testimony conflicts with what Renaldo Turnbull (the other man who broke into Frederick’s house with Wright) told me in June, and with what he told the Virginian-Pilot last February. Turnbull said both he and Wright had been working with the police for months, and that the police had encouraged them to illegally break into private homes to obtain probably cause for search warrants.

But let’s assume the police officers are telling the truth. If so, that means they broke into Frederick’s house after nightfall, using a battering ram, based solely on the word of a shady informant who at the time was facing his own felony charges. Not only that, but he didn’t even have the marijuana plants he claimed to have taken. Those plants, if they even exist, have never been in police possession.

• From the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts, Shivers’ partner in the Frederick case, testified at length about the history of the investigation, the informant used and the surveillance conducted.

He described how they pulled up to the house that night in an unmarked van with the lights off. A second group was in an unmarked car, and a marked patrol unit rolled up past the house.

Dressed mostly in black, they “approached in a stealth manor,” [sic] Roberts said. Shivers was to be the first through the door.

They started pounding on the door, shouting and then trying to break it down with a battering ram.

“I wanted, without a doubt, Mr. Frederick to know that we were the police outside,” Detective Sgt. Scott Chambers said.

This doesn’t make sense. If they wanted Frederick to know there were police outside "without a doubt," why approach the house in a "stealth-like manner"?  Why dress in black, and pull up silently in black, unmarked cars? If they wanted Frederick to know "without a doubt" that the police were outside his home, they should have used lights and sirens.  Perhaps a bullhorn.

This is the typical position the police take in these cases. They simultaneously maintain that the ninja tactics are necessary to take the suspect by surprise—and that the suspect should have known it was the police who were breaking into his home. The only way to resolve those two positions is to say that the police want to be stealth until they get to the door, at which point they want to be loud and boisterous.  That is, they want to take the suspect by surprise until just before entry, at which point they want to make it clear who they are. That puts an incredible amount of pressure on, in this case and others, a sleeping person to wake up and correctly ascertain what’s going on.

(I’d encourage readers to experiment sometime.  Lay down in a bedroom and have a friend pound on your front door and yell.  See if you can decipher what they’re saying, even while awake.)

• As I discussed yesterday, the other gaping hole in the prosecution’s case is that they’re maintaining that even though Steven Wright told them Frederick’s home was broken into three nights before the raid, and even though they knew that Wright was in Frederick’s home the same night it was burglarized, they didn’t know until months later that it was actually Wright who conducted the burglary, and that he conducted it specifically (and illegally) to obtain probable cause for the search warrant.

Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts’ testimony drew the most intense cross-examination after he named the informant – Steven Wright, whose full name is Steven Rene Wright. The police have refused until the trial to name him.

Also for the first time, Wright was identified as the person who alerted police to a break-in at Frederick’s house days before the raid.

Wright failed, however, to tell police that it was he who broke into Frederick’s garage and stole several marijuana plants, despite being asked “15 times,” Roberts said. Police didn’t learn that until about three months ago, he said.

Again, lots of problems, here. If they had to ask Wright "15 times," might that speak to his trustworthiness as an informant—particularly one on whose word would be the sole reason you conduct a home invasion raid?

Moreover, why would Wright possibly implicate himself by telling the police about the burglary in the first place? Did the police think Frederick invited him in?  Did they ask Wright how he was able to take several plants without Frederick noticing?

The state seems to be arguing that Wright came to the police that night and said something to the effect of, "Okay, I found several marijuana plants in the guy’s garage tonight.  I took a few. Don’t ask me how I got them. Also, I don’t have the actual plants anymore. Must have lost them. But I’m sure they were marijuana. Trust me on that. Also, somebody broke into his garage tonight. But it wasn’t me."

And they bought it?  In fact, they not only bought it, they bought it enough that they didn’t feel they needed to do any further investigation before conducting a raid?

Seems to be that what Turnbull told me and the Virginia-Pilot is a far more plausible explanation. The cops had an arrangement with these guys. The cops looked the other way while their informants illegally broke into homes to get probable cause. That would explain why the cops knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been burglarized three nights earlier (and were recorded saying as much).

Finally, we still don’t know if Turnbull and Wright been charged for burglarizing Ryan Frederick’s home. If not, why not?

Lots of interesting new information came out at a pre-trial hearing yesterday in Chesapeake, Virginia for Ryan Frederick, the man charged with capital murder for killing Det. Jarrod Shivers during a botched drug raid on Frederick’s home last January.

To briefly catch you up: Police were acting on an informant’s tip that Frederick was growing marijuana in his garage.  They found no plants, and only a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, which Frederick concedes was for personal use.  Both I and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper have since reported that the informant in the case, “Steven,” and another man who also says he was a police informant, Renaldo Turnbull, illegally broke into Frederick’s home three nights before the raid to look for probably cause, likely with the consent or at least the knowledge of the police.

Here’s what we learned yesterday:

• The State is now conceding that the police informant in the case illegally broke into Frederick’s home three nights before the raid.  Until now, they had either denied the connection or refused to comment.

• Frederick’s attorney released an audio recording taken in a police car shortly after the raid.  In it, Frederick tries to explain that he was confused and frightened because someone had broken into his home earlier in the week.  A police detective replies, “We know that.”  In a second recording, the detective says again, “First off, we know your house had been broken into. OK?”

• Yet according to the Virginian-Pilot, the State still insists that, “there is nothing whatsoever to suggest police knew at the time who broke in or who was involved. They said police learned months later that the parties involved included one of their informants.” (Emphasis mine.)

This doesn’t make any sense.  The affidavit the police filed to obtain the warrant notes that the police informant was in Frederick’s home three nights before the raid.  That’s exactly when the burglary happened.  The State is trying to argue that even though (a) the police knew their informant was in Frederick’s house three nights before the raid, and (b) the police knew someone had broken into Frederick’s home three nights before the raid, they apparently believed at the time that these two incidents were entirely coincidental, which is why they didn’t include on the search warrant affidavit the fact that their informant illegally broke into Frederick’s home to obtain probable cause.

There are two options here.  The Chesapeake police are either corrupt, or they’re naive to the point of incompetent.  The State apparently believes its case is better served by arguing the latter.

But there’s one other niggling detail that throws the State’s argument into a tailspin: Ryan Frederick never reported the break-in.  How, then, could the detective who questioned Frederick the night of the raid have known about it?

• Despite all of this, Judge Marjorie A.T. Arrington still denied a defense motion to suppress the warrant.  Which if nothing else I guess gives Frederick an early issue to put in his appeal should he be convicted.

• There’s now more than enough evidence to suggest that Chesapeake police had knowledge that the probable cause for the search warrant to Frederick’s home was obtained illegally.  Moreover, Turnbull’s interviews with me and with the Virginian-Pilot also raise the possibility that this wasn’t the first time a Chesapeake police informant burglarized a private residence to search for probable cause.  According to Turnbull, this was common practice.  And the police encouraged it.

It’s past time for an outside investigation, preferably from the Justice Department.

• Special Prosecutor Paul Ebert subpoenaed Virginian-Pilot reporter John Hopkins, the other journalist to speak to Turnbull. Ebert never called Hopkins to the stand. But the possibility that he could have caused Judge Arrington to bar Hopkins from the courtroom.  Hopkins—who has covered this case as well as I’ve seen any journalist cover one of these raids—now won’t be able to attend next month’s trial, either.

• The plants the informant Steven claimed to have found in Frederick’s home were never turned over to the police, and thus were never tested to confirm that they were actually marijuana. For all we know, they could still have been Japanese Maple saplings. Turnbull says Steven turned the plants over to the police.  The State is either arguing that the police didn’t know Turnbull and Steven removed the plants, or that they were aware, but never got around to asking Steven to turn them over.  Again, the choice here is corruption or incompetence.

That also means that this entire raid was conducted solely on the word of the informant Steven, a shady character who at the time was facing his own criminal charges for credit card fraud.  There were no controlled buys, and no significant surveillance.  The only corroborating investigation the police did were a few drive-bys of Frederick’s home. According to the affidavit, that should have lessened their suspicion, because they noted no unusual activity.

Prior posts on the Frederick case here.

UPDATE: Chesapeake-area blogger Rick Caldwell writes:

Ryan Frederick is being harassed by the city of Chesapeake, through code enforcement. His sister has recently moved back to the area, having lived overseas for several years. Since her arrival, she has received numerous notices from the city’s code enforcement division, regarding siding in disrepair, the condition of the pool in the back yard, and demanding the removal of two signs expressing support for Ryan from the front yard. The city has been sending these notices to Ryan at the jail as well, and is even threatening to sue over the pool.

Nice touch.

One of the reforms the city of Atlanta implemented in the wake of the 2006 botched drug raid in which narcotics officers shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was to set up a Citizen Review Board to look into allegations of police misconduct. Unlike other review boards across the country, the new law actually gave the one in Atlanta some teeth. The Board has immediate access to all police documents related to the cases it investigates, regardless of what internal police department investigations may be going on at the time.

Civilian review boards with enforcement and subpoena power are a good idea in general, but it was particularly important in Atlanta, where the federal investigation sparked by Johnston’s death revealed corruption, civil rights violations, and cover-ups so pervasive, the city eventually fired or reassigned its entire narcotics division.

But just two years after Johnston’s death, and just weeks after the last police officer involved in the case plead guilty on federal civil rights charges, Atlanta’s police department is already trying to neuter the Citizen Review Board:

The Atlanta Police Department, with the help of the city’s Law Department, introduced legislation Tuesday to amend city law regarding how the Citizen Review Board investigates complaints about Atlanta’s law enforcement officers.

The proposed change comes just as the review board has begun its work. Created in the wake of an illegal police shooting that left an elderly woman dead, the board was intended to restore the public’s trust in the police department.

The city law recently enacted to create the review board gives the board “full access” to police reports and documents. Police officials are asking the city to allow them to only turn over documents and information that are public record, which is minimal when an investigation is ongoing.

If the change is approved, it would essentially allow the police department to withhold most information from the Citizen Review Board until after the department conducts its own investigation.

In Lawrenceville, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta:

Gwinnett County police drug investigators on Wednesday served a “no-knock” search warrant and forced entry into a Lawrenceville house, but soon discovered they were at the wrong address.

In a news release, a Gwinnett police official said it was “a case of human error and not deliberate malfeasance on the part of the investigator.”

[...]

The front door was patched with a piece of wood Wednesday night, but splinters still littered the front hallway of the home of John Louis, 38, and his girlfriend Heather James, 37.

Louis said he was upstairs working from a home office when police used a battering ram to break through the door. James and their 3-month-old daughter were asleep in separate bedrooms.

“They came in here and put guns to us. The house was full of police,” Louis said. “I’ve never had a gun in my face before. I’ve never even held a gun.”

He said that he and James, who was in a nightgown, were ordered at gunpoint to lie on the floor. When he tried to ask what they wanted, Louis said, he was told to “shut up.”

After the officers roamed through the house for a few minutes, they spotted the baby and realized their mistake, Louis said. He said they apologized and told him they confused his home with that of a neighbor two doors down, a suspected methamphetamine distributor.

Louis said he still has questions for police about how such a mistake happened.

“If you had the house under surveillance for three months, why did you come here?” Louis said. “You broke in here and put all our lives in danger, and all you can say is you’re sorry?”

Seems like we’ve reached a troubling new comfortableness with wrong-door raids when the police department’s defense is, “well, at least it wasn’t deliberate.”  I’d hope that raiding the wrong house would never be deliberate.

Video of a local news report here.

This afternoon, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Marjorie A.T. Arrington denied Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert’s odd request to have Ryan Frederick’s trial moved out of the Chesapeake area.

I’ve never heard of a change of venue being granted to prosecutors over the objections of the defense.  None of the defense attorneys I’ve asked about the case could, either.

That Ebert even tried I think shows that he knows his case against Frederick is coming apart at the seams.

Cheye Calvo, you’ll remember, is the Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor whose home was mistakenly raided by Prince George’s County, Maryland police.  Calvo’s two black labs were shot and killed, and he and his mother-in-law were bound at gunpoint for hours, even after it was clear that the police had made a mistake.  The raid came after police intercepted a package of marijuana sent to Calvo’s address through a delivery service.  Police conducted no additional investigation before sweeping in with the SWAT team.

When asked about Calvo’s case in an interview a local newspaper last month, Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson offered up a truly bewildering response:

Johnson said he didn’t think an apology was necessary and said he has not spoken with Calvo about the incident.

“Well, I think in America that is the apology, when we’re cleared,” he said. “The authorities have to be able to follow evidence. Sometimes we realize that people are victimized. … At the end of the day, the investigation showed he was not involved. And that’s, you know, a pat on the back for everybody involved, I think.”

He expressed condolences for Calvo’s pets but said he understood the actions of law enforcement.

“I try putting myself in the situation of the sheriff who entered the house,” he said. “They had one set of information at the time. … The thing we have to do is make sure those incidents don’t happen again.”

I’m having a hard time comprehending what sort of mindset you’d need to have to come to the conclusion that Calvo’s innocence equates to “a pat on the back for everybody involved.”  As for making sure incidents like what happened to Calvo “don’t happen again,” the utter cluelessness of politicians like Jack Johnson is precisely why they do keep happening.  Over and over.  It also likely factors into why Johnson presides over the county with one of the worst police misconduct records in the country.

I last wrote about Calvo’s case in response to a Milwaukee police detective who had defended the raid in a letter to the editor of National Review.