Rowan Native, Federal Agent Killed After Atlanta Courthouse Rampage

ATLANTA -- During a ceremony Thursday, federal authorities named an anti-drug task force in honor of Rowan County, N.C., native David Wilhelm, the Homeland Security agent killed in the aftermath of a 2005 courthouse shooting spree.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described Wilhelm's slaying as a "senseless and brutal act of murder."

The David G. Wilhelm OCDETF Strike Force-Atlanta will focus on regional, national and international drug investigations and will include local, state and federal law enforcement officers.

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ATLANTA -- The police chief announced a wave of policy changes Tuesday, including closer supervision of no-knock warrants, in response to the shooting death of an elderly woman in a drug raid last fall.

Narcotics operations and no-knock warrants will require the approval of a rank higher than sergeant, Chief Richard J. Pennington said.

The department also will increase the number of narcotics officers and rotate them off narcotics duty every few years to prevent complacency, he said.

Pennington said the changes were necessary to protect citizens and officers in cases in which police relied upon the word of a confidential informant.

In November, police said an informant told them he bought drugs at the home of Kathryn Johnston, 88. She was killed and three plainclothes officers who entered her home with a no-knock warrant were wounded, and only a small amount of marijuana was found.

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It seemed like a good idea at the time, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which allowed Californians to use marijuana with a doctor's permission to alleviate pain. The act was put on the ballot, and California voters passed it 56 to 44 percent.

The biggest bankroller of the referendum was George Soros, the secular-progressive billionaire who champions drug legalization. He pumped about $350,000 into pro-medpot ads, according to published reports.

Since the act was passed into law, thousands of pot "clinics" have opened across the Golden State. In San Francisco, things got so out of control that Mayor Gavin Newsom, a very liberal guy, had to close many of the "clinics" because drug addicts were clustering around them, causing fear among city residents.

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Police Say Legislation Doesn't Reach The Crux Of Problem

Atlanta City Council on Monday unanimously voted to repeal the controversial "DC-6" law that gave police broad powers to arrest people for disorderly conduct.

According to Atlanta police records, officers cited DC-6 more than 7,500 times last year – more than any other nontraffic offense. Under the law, police were free to arrest anyone who happened to walk through an area labeled as a known drug zone. That was problematic because there were no official drug areas. Police used it as a catch-all charge.

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IF SAVANNAH wants to reduce violent crime, it must do a better job of attacking the source of the violence.

That's illegal drugs.

On Thursday, Chatham County leaders took a step in that direction by naming a new commander to lead the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team. He's Roy Harris, a retired deputy director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and a law enforcement consultant with the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government.

Mr. Harris, who was identified as one of three finalists earlier this month, has a big job to do.

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During congressional debates over the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, and over its reauthorization five years later, much of the debate centered on a provision known by critics as "sneak-and-peek warrants."

Supporters of the expansive powers granted federal law enforcement in the post-911 legislation preferred the more bureaucratic and benign term, "delayed notification search." Both sides agreed that the power incorporated in the legislation --- to carry out a search of a person's home or business without being required simultaneously to let the homeowner or business owner know a search was being or had been conducted --- is an extremely powerful law enforcement tool.

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The Atlanta City Council voted Monday to repeal an ordinance on disorderly conduct that was widely condemned after the November shooting death of Kathryn Johnston by Atlanta narcotics officers serving a no-knock warrant.

In meetings following her death, residents raised a number of concerns related to police enforcement that were not directly connected to Johnston's case. Some contended that Atlanta police officers were using the ordinance to arrest people who were standing together but not causing any trouble. The ordinance that replaces it defines disorderly conduct as actions including those that are violent or impede passage, or constitute a gathering for the purpose of gambling or tricking people to get their money.

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President Mikheil Saakashvili has launched a large-scale anti-drug campaign, with efforts to tighten laws on drug dealers as well as drug users. During his annual address to parliament on March 15, Saakashvili proposed a legislative initiative that would envisage confiscating property not just of drug dealers, but of their close relatives as well.

"I propose that we adopt a law by which drug dealers not only are put in prison, but also have their property, acquired through ruining our people and our young people, confiscated," he sais, going on to state this would include the property of close relatives as well, if it was acquired through illegal activity.

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White County school officials heard opinions for and against instituting a policy of testing student-athletes for drugs March 7. About 15 people showed for the district's information session on the proposed drug screening program, including educators, two representatives from the the Northeast Georgia Medical Center toxicology laboratory in Gainesville, one student and a handful of parents.

Former White County High School principal and coach Billy Jenkins said he is opposed to drug testing students. Jenkins submitted a position paper to the school board outlining his objections to the proposed policy.

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She used them to stay awake longer, to study harder, to lose weight, to lose herself. The pills were too easy to get.

"I didn't have to call a dealer. All of my friends were using," said Sara Johnson, 17, a Michigan student who will speak to pharmacists and parents today about prescription drug abuse by teens. "We would raid our medicine cabinets. We would steal them from the pharmacy. They were right in my classroom everyday."

Johnson and a metro Atlanta teen recovering from prescription drug abuse will lend their voices of experience to a discussion at the American Pharmacists Association conference about how to keep the drugs out of the hands of kids looking for an easy high.

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ALBANY -- Elvy Musikka, a widely known advocate of medical marijuana use, credits pot with restoring her vision.

Musikka said Thursday during a visit to Albany State University that the drug should be used as a medical treatment for illnesses because it helps to make the body function better and, in her case, restored lost eyesight.

"My left eye was messed up by a surgery when I was 14, and I never thought I would get it back," Musikka said. "At my last checkup, it was 20/100 (improved from 20/400), and I was totally thrilled because I never expected that as I got older, my sight would be getting better. But if you eat/ smoke marijuana, your whole system gets so much better."

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A state Senate panel voted Thursday to tighten rules on how police in Georgia can obtain "no-knock" warrants, approving a measure that was prompted by a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes officers stormed her home unannounced.

The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved changes that require police officers to meet a stiffer standard to get the special warrants, which are intended to prevent suspects from getting rid of evidence and to protect officers from potentially violent suspects.

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Officials Have Seized 52,000 Plants In Raids

As a statewide marijuana trafficking probe widens with almost daily raids on indoor "grow houses," federal authorities have agreed to step in.

The U.S. Attorney's Office will prosecute the bulk of the cases that have resulted in raids on 55 houses in 13 Georgia counties since mid-February, including two in Hall, an official with the Drug Enforcement Administration's Atlanta office said Thursday.

The DEA's Ruth Porter-Whipple referred all questions to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. Patrick Crosby, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, would not confirm or deny the office's involvement.

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ATLANTA - A bipartisan group of lawmakers called for tighter restrictions Wednesday on how police use "no-knock" warrants in the wake of a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes officers stormed her home unannounced.

A measure by state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, would allow judges to grant the warrants only if police officers can prove a "significant and imminent danger to human life."

The measure, which was co-sponsored by Republican state Sen. Jeff Mullis, was prompted by a Nov. 21 shootout between Kathryn Johnston and three Atlanta Police officers during a no-knock search for drugs in her northwest Atlanta home. Johnston, who was 92, was killed and three officers were wounded.

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A Lawrenceville home was the latest "grow house" for indoor marijuana cultivation discovered by authorities this week in an ongoing investigation that has stretched into 13 counties, including Hall.

Gwinnett County Police spokesman Darren Moloney said when drug investigators came to the house at Friars Gate Drive with a search warrant Monday night, three men ran away. They were quickly captured.

Inside the home, investigators found what has become a familiar sight in recent weeks: a basement marijuana-growing operation complete with ultraviolet lighting, irrigation, ventilation and mylar-coated walls and ceilings.

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Police are busting marijuana "grow houses" in a wide-ranging sweep targeting a ring of million-dollar pot producers, police said Wednesday.

Sheriff's deputies raided a suburban home on Michelle Lee Drive near Dacula on Wednesday night, said sheriff's department spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais. She wasn't certain initially of how much pot was growing in the basement of the house as she walked through it around 7:30 p.m. There were too many plants to count easily, she said.

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The land of the free is a nation of prisons. A recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts has sounded the alarm on the high rate of prison growth in this country. By 2011, one out of every 178 U.S. residents will live in prison if current policies do not change, according to the study titled "Public Safety, Public Spending: Forecasting America's Prison Population 2007-2011."

By that time, America will have more than 1.7 million men and women behind bars in federal and state prisons, an increase of nearly 200,000 from 2006. That increase could cost American taxpayers as much as $27.5 billion more - $15 billion for prison operations and $12.5 billion for beds - than they now are spending on prisons over the next five years, according to the report.

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It was an elaborate setup, authorities say. Whoever had been cultivating marijuana plants in the basement of the home in southern Hall County knew what they were doing.

The operation came to a halt Monday when authorities raided the 4217 Benefield Road home, said Lt. Scott Ware with the Hall County Multi-Agency Narcotics Squad.

Ware said some 115 marijuana plants, with an estimated value of about $230,000, were removed from the home off Tanners Mill Road.

"Essentially, the whole basement of this house was dedicated ... to grow the marijuana," Ware said.

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COUNTY -- Striving to decrease drug use in local schools, Walton County Public Schools has added a new weapon to its arsenal in fighting back against drug use.

Thanks to a federal grant, the school system has acquired new drug-testing kits that allow school officials to determine not only whether a student has used or handled drugs, but the particular drug in question in each case.

"The kit has two aerosol sprays," said Capt. Darren Vinson of the Walton County Sheriff's Office. "One detects marijuana and the other detects cocaine, crack and meth and that sort of thing."

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Major kudos to John Sugg for his outstanding column (Metropolis, "Kathryn Johnston's real killer," Feb. 15). Imagine if we had no "drug-related crime." Imagine if our overall crime rate was a small fraction of our current crime rate.

We once had such a situation here in the United States. Prior to the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, the term "drug-related crime" didn't exist. And drug lords, drug cartels or even drug dealers as we know them today didn't exist either.

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