PhotoDude.com

Mon. Mar 14, 2005

Cooperative Incompetence

It’s not hard to find citizens with lots of questions about the courthouse shooting in Atlanta and the following investigation. And not just those pesky but easy-to-ignore bloggers. Like me. Or the sensationalist media coverage drawn to this story. Like Geraldork. But important people who face serious risks daily.

A senior judge blamed the triple killing at the Fulton County courthouse Friday on sloppy security provided by the sheriff’s department.

Senior Superior Court Judge Philip Etheridge said it was “absolutely ludicrous” that the sheriff’s office would allow an armed deputy to be alone in a holding cell with a prisoner known to be a high security risk.

“This whole thing just makes me so angry because Rowland didn’t need to die and Julie didn’t need to die,” said Etheridge.

Barnes had requested additional security for Nichols’ trial on rape and other charges after deputies found two crude weapons in the defendant’s socks earlier in the week. Sheriff Myron Freeman on Saturday could not say whether Hall was aware of the increased threat or whether extra precautions had been put into place.

Etheridge said the deaths were “absolutely preventable.”

“There is no way that anyone could have thought Cynthia Hall would have been able to handle a situation with Brian Nichols. No bloody way.”

Deputy Sgt. Charles Rambo said current policy guidelines allow a single deputy to escort as many as four prisoners at a time, and allows a solitary deputy to enter a holding cell with a prisoner.

He said the office needs to develop physical fitness standards because some deputies aren’t in good enough shape or are too small in stature to safely handle prisoners in a fight. Rambo said deputies transporting prisoners should go in pairs and be armed only with Tasers, mace and batons, not loaded firearms.

AJC: “Judge faults security procedures”

And Judge Etheridge made his charges before we got this little tidbit: “A surveillance camera captured Brian G. Nichols’ surprise attack on a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy, but no one in the control center noticed the assault and sent help, said a law enforcement official who viewed the security tape.” That report gives details about just how Nichols got Hall’s gun, and the fact that camera “is supposed to be monitored by two guards in a command post.”

Have Mercy, just how many fault points do we have here? A defendant is caught with improvised knives in his socks, and the judge requests added security the next time the defendant comes to court. In apparent response, the Fulton County Sheriff’s department assigns a single deputy nearly half the size and almost twice the age of Nichols to escort him. When that mistake blows up, it is compounded by the fact that not one, but two other deputies responsible for monitoring that camera fail to do so. For a relatively extended period of time, perhaps five minutes.

When Nichols busts into the judge’s chambers, some kind of “alarm bar” was tripped that flashed a light in the courtroom. And apparently, the entire security force in that courtroom responded … one deputy who the newspaper earlier described as “60 years old and overweight.” He is subdued, handcuffed, and disarmed by Nichols as well.

At this point, only the four hostages in the judge’s chambers know that anything is wrong (emphasis mine): “Witnesses say Nichols entered the courtroom from a door behind Barnes’ bench and fatally shot him and Brandau. It was only then that the first distress call went out. White, who was handcuffed, stumbled out of a closet in Barnes’ office and used his radio to broadcast a ‘Signal 63,’ indicating that an officer needed backup. No deputies knew Hall was critically injured.”

Over about an eight to ten minute span, two deputies have been beaten and disarmed, one of them on camera, and three others taken hostage. No one knows. Only the murder of two people brings a real security response.

And it is sadly comical (emphasis mine): “In the detention center of the Justice Center Tower, at least eight deputies took the elevator to the eighth floor on their way to Barnes’ court.” Meanwhile, Nichols was galloping down the stairs. Eight floors of them. Apparently, none of the deputies took the stairs, or thought they might need guarding, nor was there a stock plan in place to lock them down, as Nichols was not accosted again until he was out on the streets of Atlanta.

Now, I count four major fault points there, and if any one of them had been “blocked,” Nichols would have never gotten outdoors (and two lives would have been saved). If any one of the first three had been “blocked,” four families wouldn’t be planning funerals for their loved ones.

But let’s parse this properly. Reports indicate that Deputy Hall struggled with Nichols for a full three minutes. If you’ve ever been in a fight, in her case, a struggle for her life, that’s an eternity. And it belies the impressions left by reports of a five foot tall 51 year old grandmother. She fought long and hard. And Deputy Hoyt Teasley gave his life attempting to stop Nichols from killing anyone else. Both individual deputies did all that you could ask, and more. But they were placed in fatally untenable circumstances by the budget priorities, training, policies, and procedures of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department. This was not a couple of rotten apples, or a case of individual error, this is systemic.

Once Nichols left the courthouse, he fell into the web of the Atlanta Police Department. And hard as it may be to believe, that’s when it got worse:

Atlanta police failed to search a downtown parking garage where Brian G. Nichols allegedly commandeered a car Friday, inadvertently helping extend the accused killer’s violent rampage.

For several critical hours Friday, police spread an alert for a green Honda Accord. Finding the car, they thought, was the key to capturing the suspect in a triple homicide at the Fulton County Courthouse.

The car, however, apparently never left the parking garage.

The confusion over Nichols’ getaway vehicle was one in a series of missteps as authorities responded to the courthouse shootings. Police lost track of Nichols in a small section of downtown during the chaotic minutes after the shootings. A series of carjackings and assaults were reported within blocks of the courthouse before Nichols’ trail suddenly went cold.

Officers chased Nichols into one parking garage, but they didn’t block the exit and he escaped. Police didn’t set up checkpoints in the two MARTA stations within four blocks of where Nichols was last spotted. And they didn’t immediately concentrate on searching for him in the Buckhead area, even after a couple said they thought it was Nichols who had assaulted them.

The police response recalled the disorganized reaction to a 1999 killing spree at two Buckhead day trading offices.

AJC: “Mistakes may have delayed capture”

Sheesh, it’s like one set of Keystone Cops passing the baton to another set of Keystone Cops … like some kind of union gig defined over many years of cooperative incompetence (which is about how it’s appeared to me over the past decade or more).

OK, I’ll give them not blocking the exit to that first parking lot, just based on the short response time, since that was the scene of the first of what appears to be three successive carjackings. And he quickly moved on from there (when the cops went into the deck to find him, he drove out of it and carjacked the tow truck just outside the parking deck).

But I simply can’t understand why they didn’t lock down and search the second parking deck. The last place he’d been seen.

Pennington said officers had no reason to search the entire garage where Nichols allegedly took the Honda from Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Don O’Briant.

“The information we had from witnesses and sources indicated the vehicle had left the scene,” Pennington said during a news conference at Atlanta City Hall.

During an interview on CNN, Pennington elaborated: “We didn’t have a reason to believe that the car was still in the garage. And so when the information went out that the car had exited the garage, then we put an all-points bulletin out throughout the state of Georgia looking for the automobile, because we had reason to believe that the automobile was not there. . . . And so that’s why we did not go in and start searching the other floors, because of the information that we received.”

It was unclear Saturday what led officers to believe Nichols had driven out of the garage. O’Briant, who ran from the garage after his assailant took his keys and struck him in the head, told police he didn’t see where the assailant went. Neither Pennington nor Deputy Chief Alan Dreher would identify sources who told officers that Nichols drove out of the garage, and no witnesses have come forward publicly. Early Saturday, CNN aired video from a surveillance camera showing Nichols, shirtless but wearing a sport coat, walking down a stairwell that leads to a garage exit.

Frankly, it sounds like a cover story for incompetence, to me. But let’s assume they did indeed have witnesses saying “he went thataway,” even though none can be found today. We all should know from watching the news (and detectives know from interviewing witnesses on the scene) ... the first information you get is often partial and/or inaccurate. You shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket based on it. And it is clear now that no witness actually saw Nichols drive that Honda out of the deck.

But let’s assume you’ve accepted 110% without a doubt that Nichols has driven away from that parking deck. My first thought would be, “gee, this guy has been a serial carjacker … do you think there’s maybe another victim sitting in a car bleeding to death somewhere in this parking deck? Maybe we should look.” And then, since I’d stupidly assumed he drove that Honda out of there, I’d wonder where he was taking it … since we were certain he had it, and all…

Pennington said officers did not search or set up checkpoints at either of the two MARTA rail stations near the parking garage. Nor did they interrupt train service, even though Nichols was known to be in the area.

“We still thought he was in the car,” Pennington said. “We had no reason to close down MARTA.”

Of course. And the fact he’d gone from an SUV to a tow truck to a Honda in mere minutes meant he would never ever switch transportation modes again. There’s no need to worry that he stole that car, knowing it would be “hot,” and knowing he only needed it to quickly cover the four blocks to the Five Points or Georgia Dome MARTA stations. And, of course, there was no need to worry that a desperate killer loose in downtown might actually carjack a MARTA bus full of passengers.

Nope, no worries about MARTA at all. Shut down over 20 schools within a few miles of the scene … but not the two MARTA stations. That might cause panic.

So while the whole world spent the day and night looking for Nichols in a green Honda, that car was sitting undisturbed a couple of levels from the last “crime scene.” And Nichols went from about 9:40am until 10:40pm … 13 hours … completed undetected. Even at 10:40pm, when he assaulted a couple at their home near Lenox Mall, the police later told the newspaper it was unrelated. Meaning, the police wrote it off, too.

An hour or two later, Nichols murdered customs agent David Wilhelm, just another couple of blocks down Lenox Road from where the couple was assaulted. Stranger on stranger, and Nichols had to see the bad cloud of karma hanging over him when he discovered that, by pure chance, he’d chosen to kill another law enforcement official. This time a Fed.

Sometime between midnight and 2am, Nichols drove Wilhelm’s pickup truck within about a half mile of our home as he headed from the Lenox area to Duluth, about nine miles up I-85 North, on his way to another stranger on stranger encounter.

The next morning, Chief Pennington was apparently talking with a reporter about the possibility that Nichols had left the state by now … when the report came in the Gwinnett SWAT team had Nichols surrounded just up the highway. The chief was completely clueless, right up to the very end.

But By Gum, when it came time for the post-capture crowing in front of the cameras, they dragged Nichols from FBI holding down to City Hall East, where Chief Pennington headed up the press conference. He huffed and puffed about the fine job done … as if he or the Atlanta Police Department had done anything other than the lengthen of amount of time Nichols was on the loose.

It continues a not-so-fine law enforcement tradition we have here in Atlanta. You see, though the Fulton County Sheriffs Department is taking tons of heat today, it’s hard to place much blame on the man at the top, Myron Freeman. Because he’s only had the job three months, elected to clean up the nasty mess made by his predecessor, Jackie Barrett. Under her tenure, the department lost $2 million in shady transactions, had six inmates escape from jail including one because deputies were apparently distracted by the rap video being filmed in the jail ... a long series of farces that all resulting in her being suspended by the Governor. So Freeman was elected in November, and took office in January. He’s not going anywhere as a result of fallout over this.

It may be hard to see behind all the slickness and puffery he seems to contain within that big uniform, but Chief Pennington took over the job to clean up after the much beloved Beverly Harvard, protege of former Mayor Bill Campbell. There are a lot of people who will tell you that during Campbell’s two terms, Atlanta rotted from the head down, that Harvard and her department were a prime example, and that we’ll be paying for it for years. In fact, my wife will probably be sitting on our porch in her 70’s, blaming Bill Campbell for the teen thugs running people off the Atlanta sidewalks with their new-fangled anti-grav skateboards.

And she may be right.

Many are now calling for heads to roll. But the point is, these are systemic failures within the Atlanta Police Department and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, yet there are really no heads left to lop off. And the things that need to be changed won’t be fixed overnight.

Not even over a weekend. Nichols’ rape trial where the trouble began on Friday has been declared a mistrial. District Attorney Paul Howard says other ongoing trials shouldn’t be halted today, but I saw a report on CNN that 400 potential jurors were sent home this morning, and at least some courts weren’t open: “At 9:30 a.m. the door to Judge Alford J. Dempsey’s courtroom remained locked. The courtroom normally would have been opened at 9 a.m. Lawyers and their clients wondered why they couldn’t enter. ‘I think it is going to be quiet today,’ said Roswell attorney Birdia Greer, standing in the hallway with her arms crossed.”

In the end, I’m thankful the sign that says “Atlanta City Limits” is 3/4 of a mile west of my home. Because it appears that after the APD released Nichols’ photo and description Friday morning, no one did much of anything right. Not until a citizen found the green Honda still sitting in the parking deck 13 hours after police said it left, the very brave Ashley Smith talked Nichols down (if she doesn’t get the $60,000 reward for “information leading to Nichols arrest,” there is no justice), and law enforcement authorities in Gwinnett County took him into custody with bloodless efficiency.

We’ll likely never know for sure, but while I was looking at this diagram, it came to me that Nichols probably did this purely due to fear of his coming judgment, plus sudden opportunity. And once it started with the beating of the deputy, it rolled out of control.

But a courthouse is about control. And now people are saying the blood of four people is on the hands of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department and the Atlanta Police Department. One can never forget it was Brian Nichols who pulled the trigger, but in my opinion, his opportunities came via their incompetence.

And it won’t be changing overnight. It’s been this way a long time.