Pubdate: Sat, 07 Oct 2000
Source: WorldNetDaily (US Web)
Copyright: 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Contact:  PO Box 409, Cave Junction, OR 97523-0409
Fax: (541) 597-1700
Website: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/
Author: Joel Miller, Managing Editor, WorldNetDaily Publishing
Note: This is the second of an occasional series, "Death on Arrival,"
documenting lethal abuses in America's war on drugs.

DOA - TAKE A BITE OUT OF LIFE

Remember that crime prevention slogan, "Take a bite out of crime"? Well, in
Lebanon, Tenn., the police just took a bite out of an innocent man instead.

At 10 p.m., Wednesday evening, about the only thing 64-year-old John Adams
was interested in doing was relaxing in his easy chair and catching a bit
of TV; little did he know that a handful of Lebanon police officers were
standing outside his door getting ready to cancel his show.

The various accounts, as presented by the local CBS affiliate, NewsChannel
5, and the Nashville Tennessean, jive on the fatally short order of events:
After hearing knocking at the door, John's wife, Loriane, went to answer.
There was no reply when she asked for identification. As she stood there,
the door was kicked in and five officers stormed the house, immediately
cuffing Loriane.

John wasn't so lucky.

While there is some dispute as to whether John actually fired at police,
family members say he believed the raid to be a home-invasion robbery and
police claim that, as officers rounded the corner into the room where he
sat, John discharged a shotgun. Officers Kyle Shedran and Greg Day, both in
their mid-20s, were forced to fire back, according to police.

John didn't live through the night, dying in surgery at Vanderbilt
University Medical Center.

But, as tragic as the encounter was, it turns out to be much worse. Police
got the wrong house and shot the wrong man.

Despite Adams' address appearing on the search warrant, the description of
Adams' home and the warranted house did not match. "It was a severe, costly
mistake," said Lebanon Police Chief Billy Weeks after the incident. "They
were not the target of our investigation."

The police, plain and simple, buggered big time.

Officers were, apparently, looking for somebody at the house next door.
According to Weeks, the intended house was under surveillance and, as the
Tennessean reported, "a drug purchase had been made from one of the
residents. ... That was the basis for the warrant."

So, if police went to all the trouble to spy on the house and supply
probable cause that a crime had indeed been committed, as the Fourth
Amendment requires, what happened? How'd they raid the wrong house? How
hard and time-consuming would it have been to double check the address and
house description?

Police should be both embarrassed and ashamed that -- with only two houses
on the whole block, mind you -- they picked the wrong one. How? Worse
still, according to Weeks, one of the officers who had surveilled the
actual house where the drug purchase occurred also participated in the
raid. How did he miss it? He was at both houses, for Pete's sake! Couldn't
he tell the difference?

You'd think that -- knowing lethal force may have to be used, endangering
both officers and suspects -- police would adequately investigate before
hitting the start gate. The apparent negligence of officers in this case is
so egregious and obscene it's almost funny -- until you remember that John
Adams got KO'd with the punchline.

Adams' friend and former County Commissioner Natchel Palmer said it best:
"Why do you have to die because somebody doesn't know what they are doing?
... They killed him for nothing."

"They got the wrong damn house and killed my friend."

Doubtless, other friends will die. "I do know," said the director of the
Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, Timothy Lynch, about a
similar case, "that if these kinds of tactics are not checked in some way,
it will continue."

So the question is, whose friend will be next?
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