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Concerns On SWAT Aired Year Before Raid
Pubdate: Sun, 13 Apr 2003
Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
Copyright: 2003 Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas
Contact: http://www.star-telegram.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/162
Author: Mike Lee
CONCERNS ON SWAT AIRED YEAR BEFORE RAID
A year before the North Richland Hills SWAT team shot and killed Troy
Davis, two of the team's members told superiors they were concerned that
lax standards for the unit could leave it vulnerable to lawsuits.
Team leader Joe Walley asked his superiors to let him write standard
operating procedures. He would later testify that he was "very
uncomfortable going out on the street at night ... doing a tactical
operation without anything to go on."
Another officer returned from a national sniper school and warned that
almost everything the SWAT team did was wrong. The Police Department had no
objective criteria for choosing team members. No written exam. No
psychiatric profiles. Those on the team didn't have to shoot better or be
in better physical shape than other officers.
Those problems could come back to haunt the Police Department if the team
had to use deadly force and got sued, police Detective Greg Stilley warned
in a memo. Even if a shooting was justified, the department would look bad,
Stilley told his superiors.
Stilley, who was outside the Davis house when the SWAT team broke down the
door, would prove to be prophetic. Troy Davis' family has filed a wrongful
death lawsuit, raising many of the issues about standards and discipline
that Stilley had warned about.
Attorneys for the Police Department say it had cleaned up problems with
SWAT team operations before the December 1999 raid. Regardless, they
contend in court documents, officers had no other option but to shoot when
Troy Davis confronted them with a gun.
In his September 1998 memo to the team's commanders, Stilley cited court
rulings showing that other police departments had been found liable -- even
in situations where a shooting was justified -- because they couldn't
overcome accusations of negligent assignment, retention, training and
supervision of officers.
"I personally do not want to be the one to have to explain in court that
our tactical weapons proficiency standards were based on the state's
minimum requirements," he wrote.
Ultimately, a court may decide whether the North Richland Hills Police
Department bears any blame for Troy Davis' death. As more documents and
depositions become available through the Davis lawsuit, the clearest
portrait to date can be pieced together about what happened during the
raid, right up to what police say were Troy Davis' dying words.
Plans for the raid began after a tipster informed the narcotics squad that
marijuana was being grown in a closet at the house that Troy Davis, 25,
shared with his mother, Barbara Davis.
Andy Wallace, the sergeant in charge of both the SWAT team and the
narcotics squad, wanted to start the raid early and catch the suspects
sleeping. But Municipal Judge Ray Oujesky balked at granting a search
warrant based solely on the word of an untested, anonymous informer.
Wallace went to Fort Worth to get the search warrant approved by another
judge. By the time he got back, it was 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 15, 1999.
Greg Crane was teaching a class in the SWAT bunker, the team's home in an
industrial park near the police station, when Wallace told him to begin
assembling the team. Crane would be leading the raid since Walley, the
usual leader, was recovering from burns to his hand.
Depositions of police officers, a police videotape and other court
documents describe how the raid went down.
The informant said Troy Davis always answered the door with a gun in his
hand. The team would have to move fast -- break down the door and
immobilize people in the house before they could go for a gun.
"If this takes too long, I'm going to call 'Zulu' and bang the front room,"
Crane said, meaning that he would detonate a flash grenade.
When they broke down the door, the team would break up into pairs and sweep
through the rooms, using a diagram provided by the informant. Crane didn't
know it, but the diagram he was using was wrong. It showed the kitchen at
the back of the house, but the kitchen is actually at the front, with a
window that looks out at the front porch.
Some of the guys on the squad had just come back from their first round of
training, and it was officer Allen Hill's first time as point man. Hill
usually worked as the team's medic, but Crane and Wallace agreed to put him
in front because he was the best shot.
They parked their unmarked van a few houses away on Ulster Drive, and crept
toward the Davis house. Hill was first in line, armed with a .45-caliber
pistol.
He and Curtis "Rusty" Westbrook were to be the first team. The second team
was Rodney McCrory and William Anders. McCrory carried a pry bar known as a
"hooligan tool" to open the storm door. Anders carried a 40-pound steel ram
to bash in the front door.
As they approached the Davis house, Hill waved Anders and McCrory forward
with the breaching tools. They trotted past Troy Davis' bedroom window and
stopped in a knot in front of the door and the kitchen window.
McCrory jammed the hooligan tool in the storm door, which rattled and
flexed but didn't open.
McCrory jammed the tool back in the storm door, and it popped open.
Hill and Westbrook lunged into the house, guns leveled.
Less than 2 seconds later, Crane heard two gunshots.
The shots had flung Davis from the foyer door into the living room. Hill
shouted for him to put his hands up, and Davis, lying on his back with a
bullet through the chest and one through the stomach, complied. Westbrook
said he heard Davis gasp, "I didn't know. I didn't know."
Davis was declared dead at the scene. Police said his gun was on a couch
next to him, loaded and cocked.
Police found three marijuana plants, more marijuana in plastic bags, and
equipment used for growing plants indoors. They also found bottles of the
banned designer drug GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate. An autopsy found traces
of marijuana in Troy Davis' system.
Questions about the raid and the ensuing investigation have splintered the
North Richland Hills Police Department and have provided fodder for the
Davis family's attorneys.
As Stilley predicted, the Davis attorneys maintain that Police Chief Tom
Shockley failed to adequately train and supervise the SWAT team and the
special-investigations unit.
The attorneys, Jeff Kobs and Mark Haney, say the chief's decision to put
Wallace in command of both the narcotics squad and the SWAT team eliminated
vital checks and balances. They also point out that Wallace had been
suspended once for lying to a superior when questioned about using his
department truck for personal business.
The attorneys also say that the Police Department had a policy of
conducting no-knock raids for every narcotics search warrant, which they
say is unconstitutional.
What's more, they assert that there is circumstantial evidence that Troy
Davis was unarmed. They contend that Wallace and the SWAT team planted the gun.
The attorneys have gotten some of their most damning evidence from Hill and
Crane, and from their supporters in the Police Department.
Hill resigned five months after the shooting, saying he was being harassed
by his superiors. Crane and Stilley also quit.
Two other officers, Kevin Brown and Tim Gilpin, have been suspended for
providing information to the attorneys for the Davis family.
Crane and Hill said during depositions that they were set up to take the
fall for mistakes made by Wallace during his investigation of the
informant's tip.
Both men agree with the Davis attorneys that the raid was ill-conceived.
"We should never have been there," Crane said.
One mistake, they say, was basing a raid on a tip that may have resulted
from a family feud.
Wallace got the tip about Troy Davis' marijuana plants from Bob Davis, who
is Troy Davis' uncle and who had been involved in a long-running dispute
with his sister-in-law, Barbara Davis.
After Wallace got the tip, he did little other investigation. Court records
show he never tried to make an undercover buy or put the house under
surveillance.
The attorneys and the former officers have also latched onto Barbara Davis'
stature as a true-crime writer to assert that Wallace wanted to use the
case for publicity.
Barbara Davis had gained public attention after writing a book that
concluded that Rowlett homemaker Darlie Routier was guilty of stabbing her
two sons, then announcing that she was writing another book that would
prove Routier was innocent.
Police have said since the day of the raid at the Davis house that they did
not know Barbara Davis was a writer. But Bob Davis' tip repeatedly mentions
her books and the Routier case.
The Davis attorneys and the officers differ on a key point: whether Troy
Davis confronted the officers with gun in hand.
Haney said in court papers that the officers' versions of the shooting
doesn't match the physical evidence. Hill said Troy Davis was standing in
the foyer; the position of his body and some of the bullet fragments show
that he was standing in the adjacent living room, Haney said.
The attorneys also contend that the crime scene may have been tampered
with. Two sets of photographs, taken hours apart, show that objects were
moved in the living room and in Troy Davis' bedroom.
Crane and Hill steadfastly insist that Troy Davis had a gun, leaving Hill
no option but to shoot.
He also said that before the Davis raid, the Police Department had
addressed most of the issues that Stilley and Walley raised.
Staples declined to talk to the Star-Telegram and has instructed the Police
Department not to discuss the case.
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