CHIEF DEFENDS USE OF PAID INFORMANT IN FAKE DRUGS CASE

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. Bolton said
he did not know exactly what the substance was but the fake drugs, a white
substance packaged in plastic bricks to look like cocaine, could have been
deadly if inhaled or ingested. It would cause serious illness, damage to
their lungs and even death, he said. It turned out to be poison rather than
drugs. A crackdown on U.S. border traffic since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks has made illegal drugs harder to obtain, increasing the likelihood
of fake substances, Bolton said.