EXPERTS EXAMINE QUESTIONABLE DECISIONS THAT LEFT RACHEL HOFFMAN DEAD

Leon County grand jurors said it loud and clear: Rachel Hoffman should
never have been used by Tallahassee police as a confidential
informant. Advertisement

She blabbed to her friends about working for the Tallahassee police
right after she left the station. She was desperate to satisfy police
with a big bust so the pot they'd found at her apartment in April
wouldn't ruin her life. She lacked the experience to understand the
grave danger police put her in when they let her go out alone with
$13,000 to buy drugs and a handgun from people she barely knew.

National experts interviewed by the Tallahassee Democrat before
Friday's blistering grand-jury presentment cited the same concerns
about the botched May 7 drug deal that ended with finding Hoffman's
body in Taylor County woods.

Novice informants such as Hoffman typically aren't used for such big
buys, especially their first time out, the experts said. Controlling
informants is difficult because they're untrained and eager to please
and underestimate the potential jeopardy. Officers are supposed to
plan for problems, be able to see and hear them at all times and be
close enough to jump in if something goes wrong.

"You put a person out there who is that inexperienced or naA-ve and
you run a good chance of getting them hurt or killed," said William T.
Gaut, a retired captain of detectives for the Birmingham, Ala., Police
Department and expert witness in criminal-justice cases. "That's just
asking for trouble."

Big Job for a Rookie

Experts say police more commonly use people such as Hoffman to provide
names, offer corroborating evidence or introduce undercover officers
to drug dealers. As a white, middle-class FSU graduate who sold
marijuana to college students, Hoffman, 23, was an unusual choice to
perform a drug sting on her own.

"I would say it is atypical, to say the least, to use someone like
that in such a hands-on, high-risk situation," said Fred Shenkman,
emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Florida.

When confidential informants make drug buys for police, they typically
proceed incrementally, starting with, say, $50 worth of drugs, then
moving up to bigger deals over time.

"If there is anybody who knows the only way you get good at something
is doing it for a long time, it's the police," Shenkman said.

That Hoffman might have disobeyed orders is not surprising.

"Under a great deal of stress, without a lot of training, you are
probably not going to do the right thing," he said.

Seeking Fast Results

Confidential informants, particularly novices, are tough to manage,
experts said.

"Sometimes they think they know better than you, and sometimes they
don't think at all," said George R. Dekle, a UF law professor and
former prosecutor.

Said Gregory D. Lee, a retired supervisory special agent for the Drug
Enforcement Administration and former instructor at the FBI Academy:
"The most important thing is you can never trust the informant, ever.
They are going to tell you what you want to hear or what they think you
want to hear."

Lee said he prefers to avoid such control problems by using an
informant to introduce an undercover agent to a dealer. It takes
longer, though, for an agent to become trusted, and law-enforcement
officials often want swift action.

"Everyone wants to do the deal, give each other high-fives and go on
and do another," he said.

Sometimes, however, using undercover officers isn't practical, Dekle
said.

"It's impossible to always use undercover police officers for these
types of operations because some people can smell a cop," he said.

Still, Lee said, if he had used Hoffman to help make the buy, he
wouldn't have sent her with the cash.

"I'd have her go there and say, 'You aren't going to see the money
until I see the dope,'" he said. "And then the guy who shows up with
the money is the police."

Grand jurors reported that Hoffman vetoed the idea of an undercover
officer going with her on the sting. Police agreed to go along with
the first-time informant.

Know When to Abort

Instructing Hoffman to make such a large buy from dealers she'd known
for less than three weeks likely aroused suspicion.

"She's saying, 'I just met you two weeks ago and now I've got $13,000
and want to buy a whole lot of drugs,'" Gaut said. "It's like red-flag
city."

The dealers' decision to change locations from Forestmeadows Park to
Royalty Plant Nursery, then to Gardner Road about two miles away from
the park, was a clear sign they didn't trust her, the experts said.

"That's when you shut everything down, right now," Gaut said. "If they
don't have her stopped in one minute, they have a real big problem."

That's what Tallahassee police said they tried to do, but they weren't
close enough to stop her. In fact, the grand jurors said only one of
15 officers involved in the bust even knew where Gardner Road was, and
a DEA plane couldn't track her because of the area's heavy tree cover.

"If you are going to put someone in a situation where visual contact
is lost, you have to have all the backup there," Gaut said.

Police lost audio contact, too.

According to the armed-robbery arrest affidavit for Andrea Green and
Deneilo Bradshaw, who are now charged in her murder, Hoffman's call to
police ended and her cell phone went dead after she agreed to follow
the dealers down Gardner. The wire in Hoffman's purse also failed.

Such listening devices are notorious for quitting at just the wrong
time, experts say.

"They work fine in the office, but once you get out on the street they
always stop working," Lee said.

Gaut said bluntly: "Cities are frugal and they buy cheap
crap."

'Too Far, Too Fast'

Lee said officers and supervisors need to be well trained in the use
of informants but often are not.

"It takes an officer or an agent some time to develop an understanding
of CIs," he said. "You really need to know what you are doing."

In this case, the grand jurors said, Tallahassee police had no idea
what they were doing. The Operational and Raid Plan was incorrect and
lacking in key details, such as the planned purchase of the gun.
Supervision, they said, was practically nonexistent. In violation of
its own policy, officers let the suspects set the location of the deal.

"This operation violated practically every provision of the policy,"
the grand jurors concluded.

What incensed jurors and confounded experts was the police decision to
have Hoffman buy the gun. It's believed the .25-caliber she was
supposed to buy was used to kill her at the dead end of Gardner Road.

"You don't put them out there buying guns," Gaut said. "That's jumping
too far too fast. You are going to get this kid killed."