He Was Lying on Couch When Police Burst In, Shot Him Dead

[Demovictory9]

Johnny Lorenzo Bolton was lying with his eyes closed on a couch in his apartment near Atlanta when police serving a narcotics search warrant burst through the front door with guns drawn and no warning. Bolton stood up and at least one of the officers fired, sending two bullets into Bolton's chest. The 49-year-old Black man died from his injuries.

Details of the pre-dawn encounter in December—most of which come from a lawyer representing Bolton’s family—resemble a case that is well known nationwide: the killing nine months earlier of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.

Bolton’s relatives and their lawyers wanted to try to get information about the shooting from law enforcement before drawing attention to his killing, they said. Frustrated in those efforts, the attorneys sent a draft of a lawsuit to Cobb County officials in mid-April along with a letter threatening litigation if county officials didn’t provide more information and address accountability and compensation for Bolton's death.

“For almost six months, we gave them quiet,” Bolton's sister Daphne Bolton said in a recent interview with the AP. “That lets me know that’s not what gets a response.” Now, Bolton says, “I want my brother’s name to ring beside Breonna Taylor’s. When they say Breonna Taylor, I want them to say Breonna Taylor and Johnny Lorenzo Bolton. I want them to be simultaneous.” She also wants an end to "no-knock" warrants.

https://www.newser.com/story/307398/he-was-lying-on-couch-when-police-burst-in-shot-him-dead.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

[Roy Rolling]

1. Johnny Bolton

They want to eliminate slavery from textbooks, maybe the pushback should be requiring a history textbook of murders by those hiding under the cover of legal authority.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. Kicked for views

[Marcuse]

3. Death Squads.

[magicarpet]

5. Fascist Fucking Death Squads !!!!!!

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Central America had nothing on these guys

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. FTP. K&R.

[Mustellus]

6. But but but... Home Invasions are the NRA's wet dream....

Oh yeah. They don't do No-Knock Warrants on white people....

[hunter]

20. I got the No-Knock treatment as a young white guy...

... but the cops didn't shoot us.

My girlfriend, her girlfriend, and myself were sleeping in a motel, two double beds. I was alone in the bed away from the door.

I woke up to my girlfriend's girlfriend screaming bloody murder, dancing around on the bed, a pillow clutched to her naked chest, strangers holding guns in our room.

If the cops were looking for something they didn't find it.

Mostly I think it was their message to get out of town.

Which we did.

That wasn't the first or last time I've walked away from that kind of trouble. I've always had some awareness of my white privilege but it's very clear to me now that I might not have survived my troubled youth if I'd been black.

[NJCher]

25. it doesn't have to be troubled

And I do not wish to detract from the point of this thread, so I'll keep this brief.

I might not have survived my troubled youth if I'd been black.

A white friend now in his mid-thirties, never had a crime or any other incident, tells me of such stories. He is now an attorney with two Master's degrees. I don't know what the problem of some cops is, other than that I think some of them are drunk with power to start with.

[Mr. Evil]

28. Adrenaline junkies.

[niyad]

7. KNR

[bermudat]

9. Blue Gestapo

Everything Hitler did in Germany was deemed legal by German judges.
With all these unqualified Trump judges in place, including those
on the Supreme Court and the Blue SS having qualified immunity
giving them a license to kill, how are they different?

[malaise]

10. I knew Johnny Bolton was black after reading the headline

One more victim of cold blooded racist murder

[secondwind]

12. Bingo. Same here. This is truly despicable on so many levels.....

we should never get used to this!!! Not EVER

[Marrah_Goodman]

13. Yup

[ShazzieB]

14. Me, too.

It was a foregone conclusion.

[Jon King]

11. This man's life shows why the 'war on drugs' was worst policy ever...

https://www.publicpolicerecord.com/georgia/doc-prisoner/BOLTON_JOHNNY/0000984152

So the system spends all this money and effort arresting him over and over again for pot and coke....you know, what every fraternity, sorority, and most wall street executives call a party.

Then they execute a no knock warrant to look for even more 'drugs'....with guns drawn....and kill him.

What a disaster the war on drugs has always been. All that money could have been spent to improve the community and offer state of the art addiction services to those who needed them.

[malaise]

15. It also speaks to why the US is in no position to preach about human rights

Black lives do not matter

[Calculating]

21. Plenty of white people are killed in these raids too

This isn't about race, so much as the war on drugs being an utter disaster.

[oldsoftie]

22. Yes, I know one of them. Cops STILL stonewalling

No knock warrants have to go

[malaise]

24. That is true but it is also true that you don't hear about police raids

on the rich dug users.
I agree that poor whites are also victims

[BobTheSubgenius]

16. I'm betting we won't see an end to no-knock warrants.

I think they will become closer to SOP, and they will announce their presence by kicking in the door. Unless the house is nice.

[DallasNE]

17. This Shows That Jim Crow Is Alive And Well In America

Still mainly in the south too.

[Warpy]

18. First, end the War on Drugs.

Just end it, it didn't work, the drugs won. Take the main excuse cops give for shooting people in their own homes away from them.

Second, codify rules of engagement against people suspected of crimes. Cops are acting like a military force in an enemy country. It has to stop. Ending the drug war will help. They also need a few things written down and the old guys need retraining.

Third, join CO and NM in ending qualified immunity, let them know there will be oversight and consequences.

Fourth, make a real effort toward bad guys off the force. Replace some of them with qualified psych workers. That will cut down on the carnage against the disabled and mentally ill.

Cops were turned into Nixon's occupying army 50 years ago so he could get around Posse Comitatus. He's dead and misusing police in this manner should finally be allowed to die with him.

[NJCher]

26. American exceptionalism

We couldn't possibly learn from other countries, now could we?



Note: there may be more. Graphic is from 2015.

[Warpy]

27. It's just completely insane

and not even effective as a control over the population. It was a fucking stupid idea from a paranoid megalomaniac who hated blacks, Mexicans, hippies and college kids.

The data are in, decriminalizing drugs results in lower crime, lower HIV transmission, and oddly enough, lower drug use.

Prohibition of any substance does not work, has never worked, will never work.

[OldBaldy1701E]

34. Very true

But this is not about prohibition. It is about authority and the fact that, as non-wealthy individuals, we are supposed to do whatever they say, whenever they say it. The 'war on drugs' was just another way to allow the police to do whatever they wanted without consequence. (Usually at the behest of Big Business, but that is another story for another time.) Until there is real accountability and real transparency, and most of all real reform, get used to this happening more and more and more. (BTW, if you want to lower drug use, give people some options of hope, not just one game that is completely rigged. But, yet another story....)

[Solomon]

32. I beg to differ. The war on drugs DID work. It was a war on black people.

[Warpy]

36. It worked like Nixon wanted

but not for its stated purpose. Every president has added more nasty stuff too it, even Jimmy Carter.

[llashram]

19. trumpiss told

these pissants for four long years. Kill as many as you can. And they ain't stopping for nobody. RWDS are a fact of life in Amerikkka and I'm sure alumni of the School of the Americas are training these and a lot of the trumpets Insurrectionists.

[oldsoftie]

23. We must insist that "no knock" warrants stop.

THAT is the problem. Your door gets kicked in your first response is to jump up!! And if you have a gun, you have less than a second to NOT raise it. Which is unreasonable
These MUST stop. And the only way is to hurt the pockets of those involved

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

29. Sadly kicked.

[Blue Owl]

30. K&R for visibility

[cstanleytech]

31. No knock warrants are and continue to be a bad idea in general. The only time I could potentially

see allowing them would be in the case of to save someone's life but otherwise the police should be required to knock first at the very least.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

33. I think it was William Blackstone who sad:

It is better that 10 innocent civilians are gunned down than a guilty baggie of pot get flushed down the toilet.

Or something like that.

[Demovictory9]

35. yeah,.. it's amazing how much energy is poured into seeking out illegal drugs