There's more info about the two ATFU agents who were shot while invading a Georgia man's home in the middle of the night.
Details Emerging in ATF Shooting
"Police say it all started when ATF agents tried to serve Durden a warrant for a .45 caliber pistol.
Agents made their way to a Pine Woods apartment to find out what special agents believed began at a pawn shop in Conyers.
According to the warrant, Durden had illegally purchased two firearms from the pawn shop."
So this warrant was over a friggin' paperwork violation? A non-life threatening situation?
"But his lawyer, Tony Mathis, is not buying that, saying that the circumstances of the warrant were not valid.
'That’s the person who it had got stolen from,' Mathis said. 'For some reason, they come to this man’s house at 5:00 in the morning with a no-knock search warrant, looking for one gun. But there is nothing in this warrant that says why they would need a no-knock search, anyway.”
So there wasn't a hostage involved. There wasn't a device that could have leveled the neighborhood at the push of a button. They wanted a no knock warrant so a .45 couldn't be flushed down the toilet?
"In the warrant, an ATF agent says Durden instructed a second person to buy two guns, and then stole the guns from the legitimate owner, whom the ATF used as a confidential informant.
According to Mathis, the confidential informant mentioned in the warrant was another woman -- Sonia Reed."
Ah. The "confidential informant" enters the scene.
“I’m confused,' Reed said. 'They came to me out the blue, to my parents house, asking me questions about what was supposed to have happened with the gun, and I was frightened. I told the truth about what I knew, but I was scared into telling them.'
Reed says she told the ATF a different story than what they used to issue the warrant.
'No, I never told them that he stole the gun from me, because he stayed at the same house. They implied that someone had got killed with one of the guns, is what they said. They wouldn’t tell me which one, basically saying he stole the first one, trying to say he still had it.”
Hold on - the ATFU - that bastion of Truth & non-distortion of facts even if it would serve their own interests - is accused of intimidating a possible witness & then misrepresenting her testimony? Why this is so unheard of that I simply do not know what to believe. / pitiful attempt at feigning shock
& to make misuse of testimony even easier the ATFU has set up a confidential snitch line.
It seems the ATFU agents in Georgia lied to & intimidated a potential witness then lied about what that witness said in order to obtain a no knock warrant. For their trouble they got shot & as I said in my earlier post I don't feel a damn bit sorry for them.
It'll be interesting to see what happens next, as I think the ATFU will put on an almost comical show of covering their collective ass. I say almost comical as a man's freedom will hinge on a judge believing the ATFU's account of things.
To restate what is hopefully obvious, this is about government agents performing a "dynamic entry" in a man's house who is not a suspected violent criminal. They seem to have used less than honorable means of obtaining a warrant & now the man who was defending his home is locked up while the ATFU thugs roam freely.
If I find out more I'll let you know.
Posted by Publicola at December 16, 2006 04:47 PM | TrackBack