-Caveat Lector-
~Amelia~
Subject: Acting on a bad tip, Cobb SWAT teambursts into home;
officer's gun goes off
What's wrong with this picture???
<<FBI spokesman Richard Kolco said such raids are routine, and he
believes the Cobb police acted appropriately in choosing to go
in>>.
~Amelia~
[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 9.6.2001]
Acting on a bad tip, Cobb SWAT team
bursts into home; officer's gun goes off
By CRAIG SCHNEIDER
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Ben Gray / AJC
John Bailey stands by the bullethole caused by a SWAT machine gun
that accidentally discharged.
Compare the faces below
The Cobb County police thought they had a killer cornered Sunday
and they didn't want to waste time. They didn't want to tip him
off. They didn't want to endanger themselves or the public. And
they didn't want him to get away.
But the 3 a.m. raid -- in which police targeted the wrong man, and
an officer fired his gun accidentally -- raises questions of how
far police should go before bursting into people's lives.
John Bailey was relaxing in his home Sunday when he suddenly found
himself handcuffed, with guns pointed at his head and police
combing through his apartment.
He had just come home from a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, and the
evening was winding down at 3 a.m. The 41-year-old computer
programmer was having some drinks with a friend when the knock on
the door came, bringing with it the "scariest moment of my life."
It had been a different evening for the Cobb County police. They
had received a tip from a manager of Bailey's apartment complex.
The woman said a man who rented an apartment matched a photo of a
fugitive shown that evening on TV's "America's Most Wanted."
Armed with a warrant, the police SWAT team descended on his red
front door. Bailey had just put some fish and chips in the oven
when the knock came. There were a handful of police officers, he
recalled, looking like a military unit. They had rifles,
night-vision goggles, helmets.
John Bailey, left, was mistaken by a TV viewer for James Detmer,
right. "They could have just looked at me through a pair of
binoculars and seen I wasn't him," says an angry Bailey.
The police barked orders at him. He was handcuffed and pushed
around, he said. They were talking about somebody killing his
father with a hammer. "And they were treating me like I was him,"
said Bailey.
Unfortunately, they had the wrong man.
Making matters worse, an officer's submachine gun went off
inadvertently. The bullet shot through a metal closet door, through
the bathroom wall, and put a hole in Bailey's deodorant stick
before landing in the bathtub.
"It freaked me out," he said.
No one was injured in Sunday's early morning raid on Bailey's
apartment near Vinings. Police are reviewing the incident, and it
is unknown whether any disciplinary action or procedural changes
will result, said police spokesman Dana Pierce.
When Cobb County police believe they know a fugitive's whereabouts,
they say they must balance the desire to move fast to protect the
public from a criminal, against the time needed to verify they've
got the right man. If they have the right man, every minute may be
critical. If they don't, they'll apologize.
Gerry Weber, a legal director with the American Civil Liberties
Union of Georgia, was critical of the raid. Police should have been
more suspicious of a tip received from the airing of a television
show, he said, and they should have taken greater pains to ensure
the man in question was the man they wanted.
Fugitive-chasing television shows create a furor to catch the
criminals they profile, he said. "People want to be famous. They
want to be the one who catches the guy on 'America's Most Wanted,'
" he said.
Bailey, who moved to the complex three months ago, said the police
should have taken more time to obtain his name from the apartment
manager. They could have checked his references on the lease. They
could have checked his car tag. They could have talked to his
neighbors or relatives.
"They could have just looked at me through a pair of binoculars and
seen I wasn't him," Bailey said.
However, Pierce said the SWAT team acted quickly but not
haphazardly. Stressing the fugitive was deemed armed and dangerous,
he said, "You want to get to him as quickly as possible. What if we
would have waited? A fugitive could then have injured or killed
somebody else."
The phone tip came to police Saturday night, shortly after the
program profiled James Detmer, a 44-year-old Kansas man who
allegedly killed his father with the claw end of a hammer in
Missouri. Days before, Detmer had fled after making bond on a
charge that he tried to set a woman on fire with gasoline.
By 2 a.m., the police had persuaded a judge to issue a warrant.
Police took a photo of the wanted man to the apartment manager, who
again said she recognized the fugitive. Both Detmer and Bailey are
about 40 years old, and both are about 5-foot-10 and 240 pounds.
Bailey was handcuffed, Pierce said, "to protect the officers and
himself" until it could be determined he was not the fugitive.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolco said such raids are routine, and he
believes the Cobb police acted appropriately in choosing to go in.
"Everybody was treated correctly with respect," he said. "If it
doesn't work out, you just tell them, 'Thank you for your time.'
It's worth it."
On Wednesday, Bailey said his hands were still shaking. Any knock
on his door drives up his blood pressure, he said. He is taking
medicine for that, as well as to help him sleep.
The bullets fired inside his home were especially unnerving.
"If anybody was in that bathroom, they would have been shot," he
said.
He has hired a lawyer. Attorney Stephen P. Berne of Atlanta is
demanding that an outside agency look into the raid. He noted that
this is not the first time the Cobb County SWAT team has come under
criticism. An independent report on a raid that resulted in the
deaths of two SWAT members, was critical of the team's tactics.
On Sunday, Berne said, police created a dangerous situation at
Bailey's apartment.
"He has a right to be safe in his own home."
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