Here one instance for you regarding the drug war, from the Dallas police department's narcotics unit.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/braden...46.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Inquiry continues into Dallas police fake-drugs controversy
BY ROBERT THARP
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS - (KRT) - Fired Dallas narcotics Detective Mark Delapaz walked out of a federal courtroom Tuesday vowing to regain his police badge after jurors in his federal civil-rights trial found him not guilty of lying about bogus drug arrests that sent innocent people to jail.
Jurors deliberated for more than five hours before reaching a unanimous not-guilty verdict on six federal charges that could have sent him to prison for 10 years.
The jury's verdict is a mile marker in a nearly two-year federal investigation that leaves several major questions unanswered, ranging from the quality of oversight within the Dallas police narcotics division to the practice of employing illegal immigrants to aid in the war on drugs.
City Attorney Madeleine Johnson said Tuesday night that she would offer Delapaz his job back Wednesday.
She said Delapaz had been on paid leave until he was indicted, at which time he was fired.
But she emphasized that he faces further scrutiny.
The FBI had asked the city not to conduct an administrative investigation of Delapaz until its criminal investigation was complete.
"The next step will be an internal or administrative investigation. ... Obviously, there are questions that still need to be answered, and it's vital that we get to the bottom of this whole issue," she said.
Johnson said that because Delapaz was fired based on his indictment, his acquittal meant that the basis for termination was no longer valid.
She declined to say whether Delapaz could face dismissal again, and she would not speculate on when he might be back on the job.
FBI officials said they're continuing their fake-drugs investigation. Delapaz's former partner, Eddie Herrera, remains on paid leave pending the investigation.
At least three federal lawsuits brought by those wrongfully arrested are proceeding against the city and other individuals involved.
FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey, a department spokeswoman in Dallas, said investigators would meet with Justice Department attorneys before deciding how to proceed.
"We realize the exigency of the situation," she said. "There's a lot of issues of concern and a lot of parties involved. We expect to make that decision as soon as we can."
Civil-rights charges often are difficult to prosecute, but FBI investigators stand by their work in this case, Agent Bailey said.
"We put our best foot forward," she said. "We're satisfied with the effort that we put forth. The justice system has done what it's intended to do."
The panel of nine women and three men began deliberations Monday afternoon with three on the panel believing that Delapaz was guilty of lying in arrest warrants, according to jurors.
The three holdouts changed their votes to not guilty after deciding that the specific charge - that Delapaz had acted with "bad purpose and evil intent" - made it seem as if he had intended to put innocent people in jail, one of the original holdout jurors said after the trial.
Delapaz might have lied to make the allegations "stick," said the juror, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding, "If he did lie at that moment, it wasn't with some big evil intent to keep some innocent guy in jail."
Jurors pored over the trial testimony and highlighted discrepancies among various witnesses' accounts, as well as the witnesses' previous grand jury testimony, said the juror. Panel members generally thought that the four confidential informants - themselves former drug dealers - had little credibility in their testimony against the detective, she said.
"There were holes; there were questions; there were things we wanted to know that the prosecution did not tell us," the juror said.
Some jurors smiled as they affirmed their verdict one by one while Delapaz clasped his hands together in what looked like prayer. After verdicts for the six criminal charges were read, his wife, Dallas police Officer Catherine Delapaz, gasped and hugged him.
Jury forewoman Lashona Dunigan said most of the 5 1/2 hours of deliberations were spent reviewing the case to support those opinions.
"Basically, the facts that the prosecution presented to us had a lot of loopholes in them, per se," she said. "I believe that ... (Delapaz) didn't lie, and I definitely believe that the prosecution should have presented more evidence."
Delapaz faced misdemeanor charges of lying in police reports about witnessing drug transactions arranged by his confidential informants. His false statements generated enough probable cause to lead judges to approve arrest warrants against the innocent people, prosecutors charged. In each of the four arrests, the seized substances turned out to be almost entirely billiards chalk. Delapaz, 36, was also charged with one felony count of lying to a prosecutor and an FBI agent about the cases.
Four informants have admitted to fabricating fake drugs and arranging for innocent people to be arrested. Their motivation: the Police Department's practice of paying informants $1,000 cash for every kilogram of seized narcotics.
Police Department records show that the now-discredited informants were paid more than $275,000 in 2001. But at least one informant has said through his attorney that he did not receive many of the payments and that his signature was forged.
Three guilty pleas
Three informants each pleaded guilty to a single civil-rights charge in exchange for their cooperation in the FBI investigation. They remain in custody and are awaiting sentencing. A fourth informant has not been charged.
At least two dozen narcotics arrests between April and October 2001 involved fake drugs, records show. Prosecutors ultimately dismissed more than 80 felony cases because they were tainted by the involvement of Delapaz and the informants.
Government prosecutors did not allege that Delapaz was part of the informants' conspiracy to entrap innocent people, but they said the scheme would not have worked without his written reports that said the drug transactions occurred.
Prosecutors suggested that Delapaz lied in the reports because he was motivated by the glory of making what he thought were large seizures of cocaine.
The informants, the innocent victims and independent witnesses to the arrests all testified in the trial that transactions that Delapaz described in his reports never occurred.
But lead defense attorney Paul Coggins, a former U.S. attorney, said he realized that prosecutors had not conclusively proved their case last week. Because of that, he said, he chose to present only one defense character witness before resting his case.
"Everything that happened in this trial let me know even more forcefully that this is a good man and an honest cop," Coggins said.
He said Delapaz deserved to be reinstated in the Dallas Police Department, where he had worked for 13 years before being fired in April when he was indicted on the federal charges.
"He did his job well. It was the only job he ever had, the only job he ever loved," Coggins said.
Interim Police Chief Randy Hampton could not be reached for comment.
Prosecutors declined to comment as they left the courthouse. U.S. Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., issued a brief statement, saying only that they were disappointed by the verdict but that they respect the jury's decision.
The juror who initially thought Delapaz was guilty, a schoolteacher, said panel members thought that Delapaz was the "fall guy" for a scheme devised by the informants.
She also said that jurors wanted to hear from police officials about any internal department procedures that might have been violated and the roles of other officers in the busts.
The informants "were the ones who set it up and lied and schemed and made it all happen," she said.
Delapaz declined to comment other than to thank his attorneys and family members. As he and his wife left the courthouse, she described those who testified against her husband as liars.
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Staff writers Michael Grabell and Gretel C. Kovach and Al Dia reporter Isabel Rojas contributed to this report.
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