The War on Drugs

Rev. Accleyne Williams

The Rev. Accleyne Williams, a 75-year-old retired minister, died of a heart attack on March 25, 1994, after struggling with 13 members of a masked, heavily armed Boston SWAT team that stormed his apartment. The police later revealed that an informant had given them incorrect information.

According to the Boston Herald, "a warrant authorizing the raid was approved by Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Mary Lou Moran, even though the application supporting the warrant did not specify which apartment on the building's second floor was to be targeted. It also failed to provide corroboration of the confidential informant's tip that a Jamaican drug posse operated out of the building."

Another police source told the Herald: "You'd be surprised at how easily this can happen. An informant can tell you it is the apartment on the left at the top of the stairs and there could be two apartments on the left at the top of the stairs . . . You are supposed to verify it, and I'm not making excuses, but mistakes can be made."

Another Boston Herald investigation later discovered that three of the officers involved in the Williams raid had been accused in a 1989 civil rights suit of using nonexistent informants to secure drug warrants. The city had in fact just settled a suit stemming from a mistaken raid five years earlier. According to witnesses, one of the officers in that raid apologized as he left, telling the home's terrified occupants, "This happens all the time."