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Sat. Mar 12, 2005

Killer Finally Captured

I suppose you could say I’m not a happy Atlantan right now, though I am thankful the death toll has ended. There’s lots of breaking developments today in the case of yesterday’s courthouse shootings. The body of the US customs agent that led to Nichols was found about a mile and a half northwest of my home. Nichols is now being held about two miles southeast of my home (nope, a phalanx of four news helicopters just flew over my home tracking the convoy moving him from the FBI office to City Hall East).

But I’m not going to try and “live blog” this or anything else ridiculous. I mean, Geez Louise, Geraldo was reporting live over a cell phone from Gwinnett County this morning (I would note, while local stations with helicopters high above the scene opted not to breach operational security, Geraldo was yacking … sound familiar?). The circus is quite loud, so I’m sure you can tune in to it yourself. But the good news is that Nichols is in custody. Federal custody.

While this is one localized tragedy, it has larger repercussions, despite statements like this from Bill Howard, spokesman for the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau: “This was a random act by a person who is pretty desperate.”

As was the random act by a defendant two weeks ago that left three dead in Tyler, Texas. And the random act of another defendant that left two members of a judge’s family murdered last week.

When three events in two weeks leave nine dead, are we still talking about random acts? Or a violent trend that needs addressing?

I saw Gov. Perdue at the first press conference at Grady Hospital. I can’t help but wonder if the Governor will make sure that Georgia’s courthouses have adequate numbers of security personnel, as this is a state-wide safety issue. Some counties have far higher volumes and risk levels. Some counties do a far better job at security than others … and that simply can’t be allowed. Lives depend on it.

I’ve seen a small anecdotal slice of it myself. I served jury duty in DeKalb County, and saw no slack in their security at all. They were on the ball and attentive to each person who passed through security. Conversely, a trip to the downtown courthouse because some fool got a ticket for not renewing his tag (note, not the same courthouse, but protected by the same department) left me distinctly unimpressed.

I wear/carry a waist pack that is big enough to hold an Uzi, extra clips, and a few hand grenades. It in fact only holds a digital SLR and a couple of big lenses, but you get my point. On my trip downtown, I passed the waist pack through the x-ray machine, and walked through the metal detector. As is the case most every time I pass it through an x-ray machine, I prepared to open it and visually show its contents, and even that they functioned. But the deputy sitting in the chair at the end of the conveyor merely sneered at me with disgust, and dismissively waved me by.

Like I said, just one anecdote. Here’s another: “But by last summer, when Nichols was charged with the rape of his former girlfriend, he was, in the eyes of police, a dangerous criminal who might be carrying a machine gun. That was why about 25 SWAT officers descended on his Sandy Springs condominium complex to arrest him.”

They used a 25 member SWAT team to arrest the 6’1” 210-pound former college football player, but to transfer the 33 year old to court, he was left in the hands of one officer, a 51-year-old grandmother who is about 5 feet tall. Don’t misunderstand me, I place no blame on Deputy Cynthia Hall, who has “more than 1,300 hours of training over the past 16 years.” I’m sure she fought valiantly, and I pray for her speedy recovery. But she should never have been placed in that situation. Not because she was a grandmother, or a foot shorter than the suspect. But because no solo officer with a gun should be placed in that situation, not in a courthouse.

Because it didn’t happen once … it happened twice (emphasis mine): “Courthouse officials said that Nichols entered Barnes’ private chambers demanding to see the judge shortly after 9 a.m. A staff member pushed a ‘panic’ button, triggering a light in the courtroom. Nichols overpowered and handcuffed a deputy who responded to the alarm. He took his gun, and armed with two weapons, Nichols stormed into the courtroom and opened fire.”

And here’s more anecdotal evidence, from someone far more familiar with the various courthouses in the metro Atlanta area:

Criminal defense attorney Dennis Scheib was trying a murder case on the eighth floor when “deputies came running in with their guns drawn and said a judge was shot.”

Scheib, who was a police officer for 13 years, said the deputies were too lax with their guns around inmates and defendants. In DeKalb County, he said any time deputies approach a prisoner, they take their guns off and 10 or 15 other armed deputies are present.

“They’re just so undermanned over here.”

AJC: Shooting reported at courthouse

You may have seen Scheib on CNN over the past day or so. He’s the one who revealed that last week during Nichol’s first trial he tried to get a knife into court in his shoe. He told an anecdote of going to see one of his clients in holding, and watching an armed officer start to step into a holding cell containing eight or nine inmates in order to wake his client. He said he grabbed her by the back of the shirt, pulled her out, and said “you can’t do that.” It seems clear there are some serious training and/or procedural issues, as well as being undermanned.

Scheib said security was so bad “it was bound to happen, and that though he told many judges as much, it fell of deaf ears. I heard a judge make a very carefully parsed statement when asked if he felt security was adequate. He said that he was comfortable with the level of security that the Fulton County Sherif’s Department could afford to provide.

They’re going to have to afford to provide more.

But in my opinion, the follies didn’t stop there. After Nichols somehow managed to obtain two weapons and shoot three people, he then descended a stairwell to freedom. Eight floors. After alarms had sounded and shots had been fired. And once out on the streets, the Atlanta Police Department got involved.

Nichols proceeded to become a serial carjacker (he even briefly stole a tow truck), but all day long we heard the story of AJC staff writer Don O’Briant. O’Briant barely escaped with his life, and the police told us that Nichols escaped with his car. All day long, and into the night, the world looked for a green Honda Accord.

Except … the green Honda Accord had never left the parking deck:

Nichols remained at large Saturday, even as police were acknowledging that the car they earlier believed he had used for his escape was found in the downtown Atlanta parking lot where it had been reported stolen in the morning.

Law enforcement put out a nationwide alert searching for O’Briant’s car, listing the license plate. Late Friday night, however, a Journal-Constitution employee found O’Briant’s car parked in the same garage where the carjacking had occurred more than 12 hours earlier.

Police refused to discuss why the car had not been discovered in earlier sweeps of the deck.

Well, Chief Pennington of the APD was on CNN this morning, and tried to explain it. First off, you may recall that the deputy chief gave the press conference yesterday when things were actually happening. When Chief Pennington called one for last night at 9:30pm, you might have thought there was some new information on the case. No, no news all. The only new information was that Chief Pennington had arrived back in town from some trip, and wanted to put his stamp on things. As he continues to do today.

But this morning Chief Pennington said that the police had been “told the car left garage” ... so they “never searched the garage.” They never locked it down and walked it, looking under cars for the suspect, looking in cars for other possible victims … never mind the car itself.

So all day long, people are looking for a car that hadn’t moved 100 yards. All day long, Nichols had the advantage. It was 11 o’clock last night when the car was finally found. Not by the police, but by an AJC employee on his way home. If Nichols had been smarter and/or luckier, he could have been in Texas by then.

In two of the three known carjacking attempts Nichols made yesterday, he attempted to take the car owner with him. Each time that he failed, he went for another vehicle. It seemed clear he wanted to gain a gap, a period of time when no one would know what kind of vehicle he was in. I told Susan, “somewhere in town, someone is missing that hasn’t been reported yet, and Nichols is in their car.”

Though we don’t know for sure yet, this morning it appears we found that the missing person was the US customs agent whose body was found not far from my home.

I know the above comes down pretty hard on certain parts of the law enforcement community, especially at a time they are in mourning for their losses. I would also emphasize (and congratulate) the bloodless efficiency used by Gwinnett County law enforcement in capturing Nichols alive (I was certain that would not happen).

But there were some very serious breaches, up front, and downtown, in both custodial security and the immediate investigation. And people are dead.

For the third time in two weeks.