By Rhonda Cook and Bill Torpy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — A federal investigation into corruption has spread from the Atlanta Police Department’s narcotics unit into at least one zone and the multijurisdictional drug task force, officials confirmed.
Atlanta police Chief Richard J. Pennington announced he suspended three more officers Thursday after the FBI told him they are part of the continuing criminal investigation. They are: Holly Buchanan, who was a member of the narcotics unit that killed an elderly woman during a botched drug raid (she was off duty that night); investigator Paul Vignola, who was on the joint federal-state-local High Intensity Drug Trafficking task force; and Officer Brad Burchfield, a patrolman assigned to a zone in southwest Atlanta.
Spokesmen for the FBI and the U.S. attorney declined to confirm the investigation.
The expanding investigation into the department started shortly after the Nov. 22 fatal shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a raid at her Neal Street home.
Buchanan declined to comment, and Vignola’s attorney could not be reached for comment. Page Pate, Burchfield’s lawyer, said the officer was surprised he was being investigated.
“He had nothing to do with what happened at Neal Street,” Pate said. “I don’t know what they are looking at.”
So far, federal investigators have zeroed in on four of eight members of the Team 1 narcotics unit involved in the botched raid. Two former narcotics officers — Gregg Junnier and Jason R. Smith — later pleaded guilty to state charges of voluntary manslaughter and related federal charges and promised to cooperate with the continuing investigation. A third drug officer, Arthur Tesler, faces state charges of violating his oath as an officer, making false statements and false imprisonment of the confidential informant.
“It is important that every avenue of the Neal Street incident is fully and thoroughly explored,” Pennington said. “We have made significant changes to our policies and procedures since November, but it is also crucial that we cooperate fully with the federal authorities’ investigations to ensure all appropriate action is taken.”
Earlier this year, Pennington replaced all members of the narcotics unit, transferred 140 officers departmentwide and made the obtaining of search warrants have stiffer supervisory review.
District Attorney Paul Howard said his office would peruse its files for cases that have been based on the work of the three newest officers connected to the corruption investigation.
“We are pulling all of the cases involving these officers — pending as well as those that have been closed — holding them in abeyance until the federal investigation is completed,” Howard said in a statement.
Last month, Howard filed court records seeking the releases of four men already in prison because of cases brought by Junnier, Tesler or Smith. He also has dropped 41 others that were pending.
The trouble began when members of Team 1 got a “no knock” warrant into Johnston’s home claiming a “confidential reliable informant” had bought drugs there from a man named “Sam.” Officers broke through her burglar bar door and fatally shot her when the terrified woman shot at them.
Junnier and Smith later admitted in court they lied to get the warrant and they tried to persuade an informant to help them with their cover story. The informant, Alex White, refused and then told the media and federal agents.
None of the three officers suspended Thursday was at Johnston’s house the night of the shooting, but they are connected indirectly to the Neal Street shooting.
Two months before the Johnston raid, Buchanan, 32, an 11-year police veteran with two years on the drug squad, wrote an affidavit for a search warrant that almost led to another elderly woman’s death.
In that raid, Frances Thompson, an 80-year-old widow, was startled by masked narcotics agents bursting through her door, causing her to pull a toy pistol. There were no drugs in the home. At least five of the officers at the fatal November raid were on the earlier raid, Garland said.
Buchanan gave two different accounts of the raid. In an affidavit to get a search warrant, she wrote that an informant went to the apartment, spoke with a man named “Hollywood " and handed him $40. The man went inside, left the door slightly ajar, returned “7-10 seconds” later and handed him a small bag of cocaine. The narrative is written as if the officer witnessed the transaction.
But in the police report written later, she said she did not see the informant go to the door. “As the [informant] walked up to [the] building I could not see the CRI briefly while the purchase was made. About one (1) minute passed and the CRI walked back to the car.”
Attorney Pate said Burchfield, 30, a five-year member of the APD, had used White as an informant even though he was a patrol officer in Zone 1.
“Perhaps that’s why they decided to name him as a subject,” Pate said. “They’re putting way too much credibility on this informant. He was a drug informant, he was setting people up for money.”
Vignola, 41, worked in the narcotics unit with Junnier before he was assigned to the high intensity task force. Vignola, who has worked for the department since 1989, was not part of the drug unit at the time of the Neal Street shooting, but he did participate in another purported drug raid that came to the FBI’s attention in the course of investigating the Johnston shooting.
Vignola was one of six officers investigated for inappropriate conduct in the search of a southwest Atlanta home but cleared by an internal probe. Alphonso Howard, a plumber, claimed the officers broke down his door without presenting a search warrant, held his wife and three sobbing children at gunpoint and ransacked his home for nearly four hours.
Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution