http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/met...0columbus.html
>
>
> The last thing Kenneth Walker probably heard were shouted commands from
> submachine gun-toting deputies in the night.
>
> The 39-year-old black insurance manager from Columbus was either exiting
an
> SUV that had been pulled over on I-185 or was getting set to lie on the
> ground. A bullet, one of two shots fired from an MP5 9 mm submachine gun,
> ripped into Walker's brain. Six hours later, the husband and father of a
> 3-year-old girl was dead.
>
> What happened depends on whom you ask in Columbus.
>
> Some residents see it as the war on drugs gone mad. Many in the black
> community see racial profiling. Other people, including the sheriff, see a
> horrible mistake.
>
> The Dec. 10 incident grew from a drug investigation. But none of the four
> men in the GMC Yukon - longtime friends who went out each week for dinner
> at Applebee's - had drugs or weapons on them.
>
> "This was not a racially profiled random traffic stop," Muscogee County
> Sheriff Ralph Johnson said in a statement. He said deputies saw the men in
> the SUV visit an apartment twice that was under surveillance and where
> cocaine was later found.
>
> The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is expected to turn over a
seven-volume
> investigation today to Muscogee County District Attorney Gray Conger, who
> will decide whether he should bring the case to a grand jury to seek
> charges.
>
> Deputy David Glisson, who shot Walker, was fired Thursday because of the
> "totality of facts revealed in the [in-house] administrative
> investigation," said sheriff's spokesman Capt. Joe McCrea. Glisson, a
> deputy for 20 years and a member of the department's Special Response
Team,
> did not speak with GBI investigators, said Special Agent Chris Hosey.
>
> The FBI has started a civil rights investigation and will turn over the
> results to federal prosecutors, said FBI spokesman Steve Lazarus.
>
> The incident has drawn national attention, with numerous news stories,
> Internet Web postings and chain e-mails. There have been memorials, public
> hearings alleging police brutality, charges of cover-ups and racial
> insensitivity, and calls for city boycotts and the sheriff's resignation.
> Democratic presidential hopeful Al Sharpton even stopped in town in
> December to expound on the case.
>
> Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, one of the Walker family's attorneys,
> said the case has drawn so much anger and outrage because Walker "is not a
> drug dealer. He's not a thug. He's a guy like any other guy, enjoying
life.
> People imagine themselves in this situation.
>
> "This is the nightmare of every African-American parent," said Campbell,
> who now works for the Florida-based law firm of Willie Gary, who has won
> hundreds of millions of dollars in civil rights suits.
>
> "If Kenneth Walker can be killed without cause, then no African-American
> male is safe on the streets," said Campbell, who pointed out that the
> driver of the vehicle, Warren Beaulah, is a Columbus high school
basketball
> coach and another passenger is a probation officer.
>
> Campbell called the sheriff's statement that the SUV occupants visited an
> alleged drug dealer's apartment "an ugly, reprehensible effort to justify
> the murder of Kenneth Walker, to paint him as involved with drugs."
>
> Campbell says autopsy results show Walker had no drugs in his system.
>
> The incident has brought to the forefront the oft-tenuous relationship
> between the black community and police departments nationwide. At least a
> dozen black residents at a Columbus NAACP forum last month alleged
> mistreatment by law enforcement. One speaker was Walker's pastor, the Rev.
> Douglas Force, the pastor of St. Mary's Road United Methodist Church.
>
> Preacher stopped
>
> Force said a deputy a few months ago shone a spotlight on him as he got
> ready for his morning walk at a Columbus park. The 6-foot-4, 59-year-old
> black preacher said the deputy called for backup and repeatedly told him
to
> get off the walking trail. He said the deputy grew agitated and the
> situation was defused only when some of Force's elderly white friends
> arrived.
>
> Force added that racial insensitivity, coupled with hard-nosed drug
> enforcement, is bound to end in tragedy: "We have turned loose a SWAT
squad
> mentality that has run roughshod over people, usually minorities."
>
> Beaulah, the SUV driver, could not be reached for comment and has retained
> Birmingham lawyer Dwayne L. Brown, who said he plans on filing a
> "seven-figure" civil rights lawsuit against the sheriff's department and
> the combined Columbus-Muscogee County government.
>
> Days after the shooting, Beaulah talked with a local radio station,
telling
> the host, "I felt like an animal.
>
> "The way they had guns in the faces, not saying anything, you basically
> didn't know what to do and you felt like if you even tried to turn your
> face from one side to the other, they'd shoot you," Beaulah said. "It was
> that scary."
>
> Sheriff Johnson, in his statement, said a confidential informant told
> investigators that an alleged drug dealer was about to receive a shipment
> of cocaine from Miami dealers, who were said to be driving a vehicle like
> Beaulah's Yukon. While deputies waited outside the apartment, Beaulah's
> vehicle parked outside the building and the four occupants went inside
> twice, McCrea said Thursday.
>
> Beaulah's Yukon was stopped on I-185 shortly afterward. Authorities
> initially said the deputies had difficulty seeing Walker's right hand as
> the occupants were ordered from the vehicle.
>
> McCrea would not discuss matters concerning the shooting.
>
> Several local black leaders and organizations have accused the sheriff's
> department of stonewalling.
>
> "Where is the video and why is it being kept quiet for so long?" said
> Edward DuBose, president of the Columbus NAACP. "The African-American
> community is tense."
>
> State Rep. Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus) said he's been in political life for
> 30 years "and I have never seen anything that has captivated or put a
cloud
> over Columbus like this."
>
> He said the length of the investigation has allowed "a growing suspicion."
>
> Robert Poydasheff, mayor of Columbus, which is 50 percent white, 44
percent
> black, has called for patience. He said the public hearings looking at
> alleged law enforcement abuses are "cathartic."
>
> He said that Walker's mother, Emily, "has said that maybe Kenny was chosen
> as a catalyst to right wrongs and bring the community together."
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