Posted on Fri, Jun. 19, 2009
Ex-cop sentenced to prison for break-in
By GREG BLUESTEIN
ATLANTA

A former Atlanta police sergeant was sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison for breaking into and searching an apartment without a warrant in a case that grew out of the federal probe of the fatal police shooting of a 92-year-old woman.

Wilbert Stallings, 45, also was sentenced to two years of supervised release after pleading guilty last year to a federal charge of conspiracy to violate civil rights.

Stallings and other officers used a warrant to raid an apartment in October 2005. Then, after finding drugs in nearby bushes, they decided to break down the door of an adjoining apartment they did not have a warrant to search, prosecutors said.

When they found no drugs in the adjoining apartment either, Stallings told the officers to shut the apartment's door in hopes that the resident would assume it was a break-in, according to court documents.

"Today's sentence should send a message that police officers are sworn not just to enforce the law but, like all citizens, to obey it," said U.S. Attorney David Nahmias.

Prosecutors say the crime was part of a larger pattern of misconduct by Stallings and his team that was uncovered during the investigation into the shooting of Kathryn Johnston during a 2006 botched raid at her home.

After receiving an incorrect tip from a known drug dealer, police used a "no-knock" warrant to enter Johnston's house to look for drugs. As they tried to break in, Johnston fired a single shot through the door with a rusty revolver and the officers fired 39 bullets in return.

The shooting prompted an investigation of the Atlanta Police Department and closer scrutiny on no-knock warrants, which are usually used to search for drugs and weapons. The department tightened its warrant requirements and shook up its narcotics unit.

Federal prosecutors say the misconduct didn't stop at the illegal break-in. They say Stallings allowed his team to get paid on the side by working "extra jobs" and they were allowed to pad payment vouchers.

The officers also used unregistered drug informants as "confidential and reliable" sources to sway judges to give them search warrants, according to court documents.

The investigation has yielded federal prison sentences for three other former Atlanta police officers - Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler. The three, who were involved in the Johnston raid, received sentences ranging from five years to 10 years in February.

Nahmias said, "Sergeant Stallings should feel fortunate that the resident in this case was not home and not armed, or this civil-rights conspiracy could have had the same tragic end as the one that took the life of Kathryn Johnston the following year."

Shaking it up just helps them snow us.