Posted on 01/01/2002 5:55:13 PM PST by expose
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
Police chief defends use of paid informant in fake drugs case
The Associated Press
DALLAS (AP) - Police officials admitted Monday they paid a confidential informant $200,000 for information leading to dozens of drug busts, only to find out later that some of the confiscated substances were fake.
Dallas Police Chief Terrell Bolton said the unidentified informant still works for the department and passed a polygraph test after saying he did not know the drugs weren't real. The department will not ask to have any of the $200,000 returned, Bolton said.
The department is reviewing its narcotics operation, but Bolton said he has no preliminary evidence of departmental wrongdoing.
"If there are any improprieties we will deal with it," he said during a news conference Monday afternoon.
The informant, whose name was withheld by police, assisted in 78 drug buys over the past two years, leading to 35 arrests. He was the department's most frequently used informant, said deputy police chief John Martinez.
Of those arrests, charges against four people were dropped after it was revealed the drugs were fake. Charges against five others have been downgraded to allegations of distributing simulated drugs.
The disclosure came after a drug suspect contacted local media with complaints that he had been framed by police and that the substance he initially was charged with dealing was pulverized sheet rock.
Houston-AP -- For students in the Houston area, loose lips could be pretty lucrative.
Students in 21 school districts are being offered money for tipping off police about school crimes ranging from weapons to vandalism.
Safe Schools is an offshoot of the Crime Stoppers program. Student tipsters can call in their information and don't have to identify themselves.
If the information leads to an arrest, the caller can receive between 50 and five-thousand dollars -- depending on the severity of the crime.
The head of Crime Stoppers in Houston says support for the program grew after the Columbine attack.
She says tips to their hotline have solved more than 100 school crimes since 1997 -- most of them drug-related.
What do they get for turning in family and friends?
Is Texas going to the dogs like Arkansas?
Those people are always raising their own taxes to pay for ever-worsening government administered by some of the sleaziest thieves in the nation.
Nah. John Cornyn will wipe the floor with Dan Morales.
Ron Kirk will finish third in the Democrat primary.
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