 From Radley Balko:
"...this same task force has a history. In February, I posted about a settlement in the death of Jonathan Ayers, an innocent pastor that this same drug task force killed in a drug operation in 2009.In September 2009, the young pastor Ayers was ministering to a young woman whom a Georgia drug task force was investigating on drug charges. (She had allegedly sold an undercover officer $50 worth of cocaine.) When task force members saw Ayers alone in the car with the woman, they switched their focus to him. According to Ayers's lawsuit, the woman was about to be evicted from the motel at which she was staying. Ayers gave her the $23 in his pocket to help cover her rent.
The task force followed Ayers to a convenience store, where he went in to get money from an ATM. When he returned and got into his car they pounced. They pulled up behind him in an unmarked black SUV. Armed agents dressed in street clothes then rushed Ayers's car. He put his car in reverse and attempted to escape. In the process, he nicked one agent. Another then opened fire, killing him. Ayers told hospital staff was that he thought he was being robbed. His reported last words were, "Who shot me?"
Ayers had no drugs in his car or in his system, and there was no evidence he was using or distributing anything illegal. Still, local law enforcement officials tried to smear him. They first said he was part of their drug investigation all along, then retracted. The woman the police were following initially said in an interview that Ayers was counseling her and helping her kick her drug habit. Later, while facing criminal charges for a separate incident, she changed her story and claimed that Ayers had been paying her for sex. In the end, Ayers was innocent, and a federal jury awarded his widow a $2 million settlement.
In the burned toddler raid, Terrell told the paper that District Attorney Brian Rickman had already cleared the task force of any wrongdoing. That’s a remarkably fast investigation given that the raid happened less than two days ago. Rickman also cleared the cops in the Ayers case. So did the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Rickman would tell a local paper that the investigations went “to extraordinary lengths,” and, "I do not see how anybody could say the process was unfair based on the lengths that they went to."
*UPDATE: Correction From Radley:
"The copy below is slightly incorrect. The same Mountain Judicial Circuit Narcotics Criminal Investigation and Suppression Team involved in the death of Jonathan Ayers did conduct the alleged drug buy and investigation before last week’s raid. But the raid itself was conducted by the Habersham County Special Response Team. Both units serve Habersham County and are under the jurisdiction of Sheriff Joey Terrel and DA Brian Rickman. But the task force also serves two other counties, and so is also overseen by the sheriffs of those counties. The headline of this post has been changed to reflect the distinction."
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