PANEL LACKED TOOLS TO STUDY DRUG SCANDAL

How do you prevent a watchdog from biting the wrong people? You remove its
teeth.That's what Dallas officials did to the Independent Investigative
Panel charged with examining the 2001 fake drug scandal.

That was the travesty of justice where over 30 people - most of them
Mexican immigrants - were arrested by the Dallas Police Department and
prosecuted by the Dallas County district attorney's office for allegedly
selling drugs. By the time it was discovered that what the authorities
thought was powder cocaine was really billiard chalk planted on the
defendants, there was enough egg on enough faces to serve huevos rancheros
to half the city.

The panel - made up of local attorneys Terence Hart and Lena Levario - was
supposed to find out who was responsible. City officials promised a
thorough and independent investigation and said the whole shebang would
wrap up in 120 days.

Sure. It took 10 months. And it was neither thorough nor independent - at
least not if you count jockeying by a competing investigative entity, the
county-appointed special prosecutor.

Now that the panel has issued its final report - 96 pages worth - there are
still more questions than answers. Did narcotics officers profit from the
scam by pocketing "snitch fees" owed informants? When did prosecutors learn
they were putting innocent people in jail, and why did they - in the words
of the report - continue to "pursue prosecutions against many of the
arrested individuals" even after lab reports indicated an avalanche of fake
drugs?

The investigation got off to a slow start. The panel originally included
the head of the police department's internal affairs division, and it was
told to investigate both administrative and criminal issues. Before long,
the internal affairs officer was dismissed and the panel focused on
administrative issues, steering clear of criminal matters.

That was in line with the wishes of Special Prosecutor Dan Hagood, who met
regularly with the panel. Handpicked by District Attorney Bill Hill to
conduct a separate inquiry into the scandal, Mr. Hagood worried that the
panel's digging might compromise his investigation. So Mr. Hagood simply
asked the city to curtail its investigation.

After almost a year, the county's investigation has produced indictments
against three former narcotics officers and several confidential informants
but it has said nary a word about the role that prosecutors may have played
in the scandal.

With their wings clipped, Mr. Hart and Ms. Levario kept flying into
mountains. They had no access to information from federal and state grand
juries that looked at the scandal. They got no information from the special
prosecutor - though the panel gave him information to facilitate his
investigation. And, while the panel did examine a lot of documents, it had
no access to financial records, beyond those provided by the Police Department.

Also voluntary was the testimony the panel got from individuals, just 17 of
them in 10 months. And it's no wonder why. Individuals were sent a letter
asking them to voluntarily consent to be interviewed but told that they
would not be offered immunity or even receive Garrity warnings - an
admonition that prevents officers' statements from being used against them
in criminal proceedings. Of the more than 80 current or former narcotics
officers contacted by the panel, only one agreed to be interviewed - and
then, anonymously.

Why did the panel waive Garrity? On the advice of Mr. Hagood, who worried
that - with Garrity in place - he would have to meet the legal requirement
of proving that any evidence he used was collected independently of any
testimony given to the panel.

The failure of city officials - especially City Attorney Madeleine Johnson
- - to take a more aggressive stance was a mistake that only made it easier
for the city's inquiry to be manhandled by the special prosecutor. Little
wonder that the inquiry barely touched on what went wrong at the district
attorney's office.

In unraveling this scandal, you can't look at the police and not look at
prosecutors.

At least the panel was honest about its impotence. It listed the roadblocks
right up in the preface before declaring: "Due to [these] limitations,
other individuals may be in possession of information that the panel does
not know. ... "

No doubt.