FAKED OUT: NO WONDER DALLAS ENDED UP WITH A SCANDAL

If the Dallas Police Department had set out to design a mechanism for
putting innocent people in jail on phony drug charges, it couldn't have
done much better. The city report issued Wednesday describes Police
Department procedures riddled with holes and supervision so lax that there
might as well have been no procedures at all.

Detectives in the narcotics "street squads" paid informants as much as they
chose on a sliding scale determined by the amount of drugs seized. In many
instances, evidence suggests that the officers failed to perform field
tests on the confiscated "drugs" to make sure they were real. The district
attorney's office then sought indictments on the suspects without testing
the evidence in a lab. Police supervisors didn't even keep track of the
money that was flowing out - as much as $200,000 to a single informant in a
single year.

Is it any surprise that crooked informants (a redundancy in itself) figured
out that they could make easy money by planting large amounts of fake drugs
on the very people who were least able to defend themselves: Mexican
immigrants? Would it be any surprise if the detectives who used those
informants were in on the scam, which they could use to further their
careers and even line their own pockets?

City Council members swore up and down Wednesday that they would see that
the procedural mess is fixed. That's a promise they must keep - unlike the
city officials who undoubtedly said the same 12 years ago when similar
problems came to light. Nothing is so damaging to a government's legitimacy
as the misuse of government power against innocent people.

The report, produced by a private lawyer and a former judge, is clear and
detailed, but it is also very limited. The council neglected to give the
investigators subpoena power or allow them to compel city employees to be
interviewed. Only 17 people agreed to talk.

Predictably, what resulted is a detailed look at a limited slice of the
problem. For instance, the sergeant who supervised the detectives and his
two supervisors came in for lots of scrutiny. But higher-ups such as former
Assistant Chief Dora Saucedo-Falls and former Chief Terrell Bolton got far
less attention. The probe's narrow focus also threw little light on what
role prosecutors and courts may have played in exacerbating the problems.

The city report is a step in the right direction. But given the weight of
the scandal, this narrow a response feels puny. Those who hunger for
justice are still hungry.