Officer Jeffrey Haywood and the fake-drug scandal

[WaTcHeR]

No 'fake' remarks in drug trial

Dallas: Judge rules out references to scandal in officer's lying case

Testimony begins today in the trial of a former Dallas police officer accused of lying in what became known as the fake-drug scandal, in which more than two dozen innocent people were arrested.

But jurors will never hear attorneys say "fake drugs."

State District Judge Susan Hawk ruled that attorneys can't use the phrase because small amounts of real drugs were mixed in with pool chalk. In the first fake-drug trial against another officer, defense attorneys and prosecutors frequently referred to the scandal in such a way.

Tom D'Amore, the original prosecutor in the case who is now a defense attorney, said keeping the words out of the courtroom won't prevent jurors from knowing that the trial of former narcotics Officer Jeffrey Haywood is about the fake-drug scandal.

"I still think the jury is going to figure out what the cases are," he said.

Dallas prosecutors say Mr. Haywood lied in a police report by stating that he performed field tests on seizures that contained little or no drugs.

Mr. D'Amore said the case against Mr. Haywood is important because if he had tested the seized substances, the fake-drug scandal might not have happened.

"If he had done what he said he had done, then he would have known, and the Dallas Police Department would have known, that these drugs were fake," Mr. D'Amore said. "The fake-drug scandal would have never happened, and these innocent people never would have gone to jail. ... It might have stopped the whole thing."

He needs to be held accountable, Mr. D'Amore said.

Mr. D'Amore said he believes Mr. Haywood did not know the drugs were fake.

"He just got caught up in the seizures because they thought they were cocaine," he said. "I don't think it was done because he knew it was going to come back negative."

One of Mr. Haywood's attorneys, George Milner III, said Monday that Mr. Haywood is eager for jurors to hear his side.

"We know the evidence will clearly show he did nothing wrong, and we're grateful, after a long wait, to have our day in front of a jury," Mr. Milner said.

Dallas prosecutors Heath Harris and David Alex declined to comment until the trial concludes.

Mr. Haywood faces two to 10 years in prison if convicted of tampering with physical evidence. He was indicted on two other pending charges of tampering with physical evidence.

An investigation into the fake-drug scandal determined that paid police informants planted the mostly fake drugs on innocent people and blamed poor supervision within the police department.

Many of the people falsely arrested spent time in jail. Most were Hispanic immigrants.

Former Dallas narcotics Officer Mark Delapaz was convicted in 2005 of lying to a judge while obtaining a search warrant in the fake-drug scandal. He was also convicted of stealing money while working as a narcotics officer.

Prosecutors charged that Mr. Delapaz was motivated to steal because he had $60,000 in credit-card debt and presented evidence that he forged paperwork and skimmed some of the more than $400,000 in police money that passed through his hands in 2001.

Two other officers were indicted and their cases have not been resolved.

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said the department would be monitoring the trial in case new information is revealed.

"We hope that this is the final chapter of the fake-drug scandal," he said. "It's a terrible black mark on the department. I think it took a little bit of time to understand what the nature of the misconduct was and who was involved and the best ways to deal with it.

"I know we now manage the narcotics division around what happened in the fake-drugs scandal, which I think is a good thing."

A 2006 independent audit of the Dallas Police Department showed the department fixed many problems with accountability and oversight that led to the 2001 scandal. The report was a follow-up to a scathing 2004 audit.

Many of the panel's recommendations were implemented, including keeping fingerprints of all confidential informants, checking on the their legal status, doing a better job documenting signatures, keeping track of payments to informants, conducting regular audits of paperwork and taping conversations with informants whenever possible.

The follow-up audit still found some paperwork inconsistencies, but most were clerical errors.

The city had also paid millions to settle lawsuits filed by the victims of the fake-drug scandal.

Although Chief Kunkle couldn't say a fake-drug scandal couldn't happen today, he said he believes the controls now in place would catch any wrongdoing much faster.

"We have better tracking of our informants and how much each of them are being paid," he said. "Every time we get a false positive on a drug test, we research to see what happened and generally retrain the people who did the test."


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 06dfd.html

[WaTcHeR]

DALLAS, TEXAS - A former Dallas police officer accused in the department's fake drug scandal has been found guilty of tampering with evidence.

Jeffrey Haywood was sentenced to two years' probation following the guilty verdict Friday night.

Prosecutors say Haywood lied in a police report by saying he field-tested a substance believed to be cocaine when it was seized in May 2001. The substance turned out to be pool chalk mixed with a tiny amount of cocaine.

Defense attorneys told jurors that even a small amount of cocaine would show a positive result.

Haywood left the Dallas Police Department to become an air marshal when he was indicted.

He is the second officer convicted in the scandal, in which more than two-dozen people were falsely arrested after paid Dallas police informants planted what was said to be drugs. Many of those arrested were Hispanic immigrants and were sentenced to jail.

Former officer Mark Delapaz was convicted in connection with the scandal. Delapaz was convicted of lying to a judge while obtaining a search warrant and of stealing money while working as a narcotics officer. Cases are pending against two other officers.

An investigation blamed poor supervision for the fake-drug scandal. Numerous policies have been changed since then.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?secti ... id=5320095

[KC]

Officer Mark Delapaz

An appeals court has reversed two convictions of a former Dallas police officer embroiled in a fake-drug scandal because, the court ruled, evidence that the officer lied in other investigations should not have been introduced at his trial.

But the ruling released Friday doesn't automatically mean that Mark Delapaz will get a new trial.

The Dallas County district attorney's office can appeal the order by the Fifth District of Texas at Dallas to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The DA's office had not decided Friday whether to appeal.

"We cannot say with any assurance that the error had only a 'slight' effect on the jury," the appellate court's ruling states. "We are thus left with 'grave doubt' whether the error has a substantial influence on the jury's verdict," the ruling says.

"Under these circumstances, we cannot disregard the error as harmless."

More than two dozen people were falsely arrested when paid Dallas police informants planted what turned out to be fake drugs on them.

Many of those arrested were Hispanic immigrants. The scandal, which came to light in 2001, forced the city to pay millions in settlements and led to negative publicity and personnel changes in the Police Department.

In those cases, Mr. Delapaz was sentenced to two concurrent five-year prison terms for tampering with physical evidence and aggravated perjury.

The same appeals court in March upheld a third conviction of Mr. Delapaz, for lying to a judge to obtain a search warrant. Mr. Delapaz was sentenced to five years in that case as well – to be served before the concurrent sentences – but he is appealing that decision to the Court of Criminal Appeals and remains free on bond pending its outcome.

In the cases the Fifth District reversed this week, the court ruled that visiting trial Judge Webb Baird should not have allowed testimony that Mr. Delapaz "had falsified evidence in other cases" in which informants placed fake drugs on two other men.

Judge Baird allowed the evidence when Mr. Delapaz testified that another officer, Eddie Herrera, who is also charged in the scandal, lied on the witness stand.

But the appeals court said in its ruling that Mr. Delapaz's testimony that he was telling the truth – and not Mr. Herrera – was not sufficient to allow the jury to hear about the other cases.

Mr. Delapaz, 40, could not be reached for comment. But David Pire, who represented Mr. Delapaz at trial, said Friday that he believes the jury would have returned a not guilty verdict had the other evidence against his client not been presented.

"If you're going to try someone for a crime, try them for the crime you say they committed, not for other offenses," Mr. Pire said.

"The state spent more time putting those other offenses in front of the jury than the cases he was on trial for."

Toby Shook, who prosecuted the case and is now a Dallas defense attorney, said the evidence showed that Mr. Delapaz had a history of lying in "very similar" circumstances.

"We felt confident that it was admissible and still do," he said.

Mr. Shook said the court's ruling does not cast doubt on Mr. Delapaz's guilt, only about whether the evidence should have been introduced.

Mr. Delapaz was charged following the wrongful arrest of Jose Vega in August 2001. Prosecutors said that the day before Mr. Vega's arrest, a paid Dallas police informant, Daniel Alonso, and his friend Roberto Gonzalez planted fake cocaine in a car at a service station where Mr. Vega worked.

The next day, video surveillance was set up there. Mr. Delapaz then met with Mr. Alonso, but in violation of a police procedure intended to ensure that an informant is not already carrying drugs, he did not search him or his car. After the supposed buy from Mr. Vega, Mr. Alonso met Mr. Delapaz at a convenience store and gave him two kilos of what appeared to be cocaine. Police found about 20 more kilos of the substance at the service station.

After Mr. Vega's arrest, Mr. Delapaz said in a police report and at a trial that he saw Mr. Alonso meet Mr. Vega outside the garage.

But video surveillance did not show any such contact.

Mr. Herrera testified at Mr. Delapaz's trial that he did not see Mr. Vega and Mr. Alonso meet and that Mr. Delapaz asked him to lie. Mr. Alonso testified that Mr. Vega was actually working under a van and they did not meet face to face.

Mr. Vega sued the city for his wrongful arrest and three-month incarceration. He settled for $460,000.

Two of the men caught up in the scandal because they were falsely accused of selling drugs said Friday that they are angry that the convictions were reversed.

Erubiel Cruz, who spent three months in jail, called the court's decision a cachetada, or "slap in the face."

Lorenzo Escamilla said he believes the cases against Mr. Delapaz will continue to be dragged out. He said he spent six months behind bars.

"We are really bothered by this," he said. "I think they're waiting for people to forget about this, for people to return to Mexico, for us not to have the same support."

Police Chief David Kunkle offered only a brief comment Friday about the ruling and Mr. Delapaz.

"We just need to review the decision in relationship to any discipline we imposed and his standing as a member of the department," Chief Kunkle said.

Another former Dallas officer, Jeffrey Haywood, was found guilty in May of lying in a police report when he said he field-tested a substance believed to be cocaine. He was sentenced to two years' probation.

Charges are still pending against Mr. Herrera and former Officer David Larsen for what prosecutors say were their roles in the scandal.



http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 709b8.html

[WaTcHeR]

One of the four Dallas officers criminally charged in what became known as the fake-drug scandal pleaded guilty today to attempted tampering with physical evidence in exchange for probation.

David Larsen, who is no longer a Dallas police officer, was sentenced to 365 days in jail but his sentence was probated for two years, court records show.

The fake-drug scandal came to light in 2001 after more than two dozen people were falsely arrested when paid Dallas police informants planted fake drugs on them. Many of those arrested were Hispanic immigrants. The scandal forced the city to pay millions of dollars in settlements and led to negative publicity and personnel changes at the Dallas Police Department.

Larsen's attorney, Christie Williams, said that Larsen pleaded guilty because he wanted to put an end to his legal troubles. Larsen was originally charged with two counts of forgery and tampering with physical evidence.

"David really wanted to go to trial. That was his intention," she said. "But he doesn't have unlimited resources like the state."

Dallas County prosecutor David Alex could not be reached for comment this afternoon.

Two other officers involved in the scandal have already been sentenced. Mark Delapaz is serving a five-year prison sentence and Jeffrey Haywood was given two years' probation.

Charges are still pending for Eddie Herrera for what prosecutors say was his role in the scandal. Herrera testified against Haywood and Delapaz at their trials.



http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/archive ... lty-i.html

[WaTcHeR]

All the police informants in Dallas I think, should be shot in the head. The police officers that know their informants are planting drugs on innocent people I say fuck them, keep them alive and kill off their families.