Shooting of Kathryn Johnston

The officers, dressed in plainclothes, approached the house at about seven in the evening.[9] Officers Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier, and Arthur Tesler, who were wearing bulletproof vests and carrying riot shields when they entered the home,[10] announced themselves after opening the door but before entering the house, according to police.[11] Johnston fired a gun after police forced open the door.[9] It was later determined that Johnston fired one shot from an old pistol, and that none of the officers were hit by that bullet.[12] The police officers fired a total of 39 shots, five or six of which hit Johnston.[13] Police injuries sustained in the raid were from bullets not fired from Johnston's gun.[9] The officers were hit in the arm, thigh, and shoulder respectively; they were treated at a hospital.[9]

Prosecutors later said that Smith handcuffed Johnston as she was dying.[14] Johnston was pronounced dead at the scene.[15] Prosecutors accused one of the officers of planting three bags of marijuana in the house as an attempted cover-up after no drugs were found in the house.[4] Smith later admitted to having planted the drugs.[3][6] They had been found in an unrelated case earlier that day.[7] Prosecutors also accused Smith of calling Alex White (an informant) after the shooting and telling him to say he had bought crack cocaine at Johnston's house.[14] According to court filings, before talking to the homicide detective, the three officers involved in the shooting got together to get their stories straight.[7]

Johnston lived alone and had lived in that house for about 17 years.[9][16] Her house was in a crime-ridden neighborhood in west Atlanta.[14] People in the neighborhood speculated that the police had the wrong person, but police denied that they had the wrong house.[9] Neighbors and family said that Johnston kept a "rusty revolver" for self-defense; another elderly woman in her neighborhood had recently been raped, and drug dealing was common.[11] In the year before her death, Johnston had installed extra locks and burglar bars.[17]

As justification for the no-knock warrant, the Atlanta Police Department initially claimed that the police were searching for drug dealers after a police informant was said to have bought crack at Johnston's home.[18] However, the informant later denied having bought drugs at her house, and suspicion about the incident sparked a federal and state investigation.[18] In the affidavit police used to obtain a search warrant for Johnston's house, Atlanta narcotics officers alleged their informant bought drugs inside Johnston's home earlier in the day from a man named "Sam", and that the home had video surveillance equipment justifying the no-knock warrant. In an interview with Atlanta television station WAGA a few days after Johnston's shooting, the informant denied having gone to her house and said that after the shooting, police pressured him to lie and say that he had.[18][19] The informant denied that he had ever been to Johnston's house.[3] According to WSB-TV in Atlanta, Detective Junnier subsequently told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that some of the information used to obtain the search warrant on Johnston's home was false. Several experts said that even if the warrant information had been entirely legitimate, the informant's word would not have been enough to legally justify the no-knock warrant.[20]

On February 7, 2007, it was announced that the Fulton County District Attorney's office, under district attorney Paul L. Howard, Jr., would seek felony murder and burglary indictments against the three officers involved.[21] The Rev. Markel Hutchins, acting as spokesman for Johnston's family, said her family members were "stunned and disappointed" by the announcement of the indictments because they believed it will disrupt a larger federal investigation of civil rights violations by the Atlanta Police Department.

The federal probe into the police department revealed that Atlanta police routinely lied to obtain search warrants, including often falsifying affidavits.[7] The police sergeant in charge of the narcotics unit also pleaded guilty to charges surrounding the shooting, and another officer admitted to extortion.[3][6] Tesler's attorney, William McKenney, said that planting drugs and lying to obtain search warrants is routine in the police department.[22]

Changes were made to the police department and to the narcotics unit following Johnston's death.[27] The mayor also announced that APD training procedures would be reviewed and a new regulation would be instituted requiring APD officers to take drug tests.[28]

The shooting also brought under scrutiny the use of no-knock warrants, which exist to prevent drug offenders from having time to destroy evidence.[17][22][29] After the shooting, the state senate voted to tighten restrictions, making it more difficult to obtain the warrants.[14] The Atlanta Police Department was also forced to tighten its warrant requirements after an investigation sparked by the shooting.[14] The police department also said it would review its use of confidential informants after the shooting.[29] As a result of the shooting, the police chief placed Atlanta's eight-man narcotics team on administrative leave.[17] A civilian review board was created in the aftermath of the shooting in the context of the public outrage that resulted.[7] Eventually, the narcotics team was increased from eight to thirty officers, and all former members of the team were replaced.[8][28]

Allegations of widespread misconduct in the Atlanta Police Department came under state and federal investigation after Johnston's shooting.[30] The US attorney announced that prosecutors would investigate a "culture of misconduct" within the APD, including common practices of making false statements to get warrants and submitting falsified documentation in drug cases.[7] The DeKalb County district attorney announced on the day of Johnston's shooting that she would also ask for an investigation into 12 other fatal shootings by police since January 2006.[11]

The officers involved in the shooting testified that they had been under pressure to meet performance requirements of the APD, which led them to lie and falsify evidence, and that they had been inadequately trained.[28] Police Chief Pennington denied the existence of quotas in the APD, but acknowledged the existence of "performance measures because if we don't have them, the officers would come in every day with nothing on their sheets."[28]

Other arrests by the discredited officers which led to convictions have come under review.[31] The District Attorney for Fulton County announced that it was reviewing at least 100 cases in which the ex-officers had been involved earlier, as well as other cases with different officers who may have used similar tactics.[7] In June 2007, one man who was serving prison time on drug charges based on testimony from Junnier and Smith was the first of these cases to be released from prison.[31]

Johnston's shooting, along with several others, brought police use of deadly force under increased scrutiny.[19] A week after the shooting, over 200 people held a rally in Johnston's neighborhood to demand answers to questions surrounding the shooting.[19] The shooting was highlighted by civil rights activists as an example of the police department's poor treatment of people living in low-income neighborhoods.[14]

In reference to this case, Gregory Jones, the Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta FBI, said, "Few crimes are as reprehensible as those committed by police officers who violate the very laws they have sworn to uphold."[32]

In 2019, the Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, named in honor of Johnston, was opened in English Avenue, near where Johnston had lived.[33]

Ohio rappers Bone Thugs-n-Harmony featured audio footage from the scene of protests over the shooting in their song "My Street Blues".[39] Shawn Mullins, a singer/songwriter from Atlanta, wrote and dedicated a song to Kathryn Johnston called "The Ballad of Kathryn Johnston" on his album Honeydew.[40] Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike referenced the killing in his 2008 song "Pressure", rapping: "If another old lady die in this city/swear to god we'll burn down the fuckin' city".[41] He also cited again the incident alongside the Sean Bell shooting in his 2012 song "Anywhere But Here", rapping: "They raided a house, no drugs were ever found/But a black grandmother laid killed".[42] California rapper Daz Dillinger of Tha Dogg Pound mentioned the shooting in their song "No Mo Police Brutality". David Banner, a rapper and producer from Mississippi, discusses the shooting in his song, "So Long." "Ms. Kathryn Johnston was murdered by police / In Northwest Atlanta, but I don't hear it in the streets."[43] The full verse describes more details of the event.

• Obstruction of justice
• Police brutality
• Police corruption
• List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States