Unarmed
Boy
Shot
in
Drug
Raid
4/16/99
An unarmed fifteen year-old boy was shot from behind, just below the hip on Tuesday (4/13) as police entered a Concord, North Carolina home at approximately 5:00pm to search for drugs. The boy, Thomas Edwards Jr., is a neighbor who was visiting the home to play video games. Edwards told reporters that he obeyed the officer's order to get on his hands and knees, as did the other five children, all aged 13-17, who were in the home. It was while he was in that position, Edwards said, that he was shot just below the hip by officer Lennie Rivera. The bullet traveled straight through his buttock, and his injuries are not life-threatening. Edwards, a ninth grader at Concord High School, where he plays varsity football, is at the house nearly every day, playing video games with friends. The police search netted small amounts of marijuana and cocaine, none of which, apparently, belonged to any of the children. The Charlotte Observer reported that Thomas Edwards Sr. claimed that police told him the shooting was accidental. Concord Chief of Police Robert E. Cansler told The Week Online that he believes that as well. "The State Bureau of Investigation is still investigating the case, but at this point I can say that the shooting was most likely accidental. Officer Rivera is 33 years old with a degree in education. He's been with us for five years, and before that he was a sergeant on the campus police force at Gardner-Webb University. He likes kids, he relates well to them. This has been a real tragedy for everyone involved. Thankfully, the young man appears to be all right. He was treated and released and we are told that he should recover fully." Chief Cansler continued, "Standard procedure in any case of a shooting by an officer is that an SBI investigation is required. At the time of the shooting, the officers who had entered the house immediately secured the area, meaning that they attended to the injured young man, got everyone out of the house, including themselves, secured the perimeter of the property, and waited for the SBI unit to show up to commence with that. It wasn't until the SBI had made their investigation of the scene that a new group of Concord officers re-entered the house -- none of these officers was a part of the group that went in originally -- and conducted the search as indicated by the warrant." What the officers found were small amounts of what appeared to be cocaine and marijuana and packaging materials for what police believe to be distribution. As to the precautions that were taken to avoid a situation where police unintentionally encounter a large number of young people when entering a house to search for drugs, Chief Cansler said that his officers had surveilled the home "within an hour or two of their entry. At that time there were no indications of a group of children present." Rob Stewart of the Drug Policy Foundation told The Week Online that the fact that the shooting was most likely an accident argues forcefully for a rethinking of the Drug War. "Under current policy, the police are put in an untenable position," said Stewart. "They can take all precautions, they can do their jobs well, but the very fact that they are sent into people's homes to ferret out contraband, or evidence of its trade, places the lives of citizens, and the police themselves, at risk." Stewart added that even at their most successful, such tactics have done little to ameliorate the availability of drugs. Among the residents of the house were Deborah Grissom-Scott, who has a previous charge pending for distribution of cocaine, and her two sons, 21 and 18 years-old, both of whom have prior arrests for drug distribution charges on their records. The officers, who had a warrant to conduct the search, entered the home and called out "Search warrant. Everybody down on the floor," as is required under North Carolina law, except in situations where such an announcement is nearly certain to result in injury to an officer. "To tell you the truth," Chief Cansler said, "I would require that of my officers even if the law didn't." Chief Cansler, a 27-year veteran of law enforcement and immediate past-president of the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police, is aware of the problems caused by an over-reliance on law enforcement in dealing with the problem of substance abuse. "Drugs are a tremendous social problem," he said. "And addressing that problem is going to take a profound social change that will have to include a lot more than just the criminal justice system."
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