EX-DETECTIVE VIOLATED PROCEDURES, WITNESS SAYS

Informant In Fake-Drug Case Should Have Met Supervisor, He Testifies

Former narcotics detective Mark Delapaz violated Dallas police procedures
when he enlisted a drug dealer to work as a confidential informant without
introducing the man to a police supervisor, a witness in Mr. Delapaz's
corruption trial testified Tuesday.

That informant Enrique Alonso received $135,000 in police funds from
Mr. Delapaz for supplying information in four cases that led to seizures
amounting to more than 300 pounds of purported drugs, jurors were told. Lab
tests later revealed it to be little more than crushed billiards chalk.

"It's roughly 150 pounds of pool chalk nothing no controlled
substance," the witness, Department of Public Safety Sgt. Jeoff Williams,
said about one of the seizures.

Sgt. Williams said Mr. Delapaz knew that the drugs seized with Mr. Alonso's
help were fake by Oct. 23, 2001, when he sought a search warrant from a
judge for another drug bust by swearing that his confidential informant was
always reliable.

Although prosecutors do not allege that Mr. Delapaz was part of his
informants' scheme to plant fake drugs on innocent people, they charge that
the veteran detective knew his informant was not trustworthy and that he
broke the law when he lied to the judge.

After two days of testimony, jurors have heard from three witnesses, and
two of those witnesses have not completed their testimony. Jurors were kept
out of the courtroom much of the day Tuesday as attorneys and prosecutors
debated the admissibility of phone records documenting calls between Mr.
Delapaz and informants and police reports dictated by Mr. Delapaz, among
other things.

In cross-examinations and in arguments outside the jury's presence, Mr.
Delapaz's attorneys sought to reinforce their argument that a different
informant Jose Ruiz was the man Mr. Delapaz referred to when he sought
the search warrant.

The two informants worked together, and both supplied information to Mr.
Delapaz about drug activity at a west Oak Cliff house that led to the Oct.
23 request for a search warrant. Mr. Ruiz was the informant who erroneously
claimed to Mr. Delapaz that he had purchased drugs inside the house, but
Mr. Delapaz wrote in police reports that he paid Mr. Alonso $500 for help
obtaining the search warrant.

If convicted of the third-degree felony charge of fabricating/tampering
with physical evidence, Mr. Delapaz faces punishment ranging from probation
to 10 years in prison.