Friday, Sep 5, 2008
In a outrageous example of police incompetence, cops burst into the wrong home during a drug raid and kill an elderly African-American man.
Oct 19, 2000 | John Adams had just settled in to watch a little TV one night earlier this month.
It was a new routine for the 64-year-old man. He'd spent more than 30 years coming home exhausted from working shifts at the local rubber plant. He told a friend that his arthritis was hurting him that day, but he wasn't really the complaining type. Life was beginning to slow down for a change.
With his retirement savings, he and his 61-year-old wife, Loraine, had just fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying a new Cadillac and a double-wide trailer. That night, with his cane leaning against the side of his tan recliner, Adams was content to just flip through the channels and maybe fall asleep.
But outside their home on a sleepy, dead-end street stood seven armed police officers. Some wore riot gear and they were armed with clear shields and helmets. Leading the pack at the front door were officers Kyle Shedran, 25, and Greg Day, 24.
For weeks, they and other members of the narcotics unit of the Lebanon Police Department had eyed this house -- one of only two on Joseph Street, a short pathway one might overlook driving through nearby streets. They thought they had seen a drug dealer frequent the place. They had a warrant to search the house and authorization to react if they encountered resistance.
Unfortunately, they did meet resistance -- because Day and Shedran were knocking on the wrong door.
According to Lebanon police chief Bill Weeks, officers started yelling, "Cops, police, open up!" all at once. Loraine Adams heard the commotion first, but didn't understand what was happening. She and her husband refused to open the door. The cops burst through the door. Loraine says that officers manhandled her, pushing her against a wall and handcuffing her.
Seconds later, cops rounded a corner and found Adams, whom they claim fired at them with a sawed-off shotgun. Officers say they returned fire, and shot him several times.
Adams was taken by helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, 14 miles away. The elderly African-American man died in surgery at about 1:30 a.m.
Before Weeks answers any questions about his officers' mistaken house raid, he says exasperatedly, "It's totally ridiculous to call this a racial incident. The media is making it into that, and it's not that. What happened was awful and a terrible screw-up on our part, that's it."
The officers who opened fire on Adams are white.
The image is grim: Young white officers fatally shooting an innocent black man in a botched attempt at a drug bust. The picture evokes all the emotions -- outrage and heartbreak -- conjured by the tragic shooting of Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African immigrant shot 41 times in the doorway of his building by white New York police officers.
But a closer look at the circumstances of this case suggests that what happened to Adams is probably the result not of racism, but of sad, simple incompetence.
Day and Shedran are on paid administrative leave as the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations complete a probe into the killing. Their personnel files show that, on more than one occasion, they have been lauded as "exemplary."
Get Salon in your mailbox!