BLAME STRETCHES FAR AND WIDE FOR DRUG SCANDAL

Most Americans probably can't calculate what their freedom is worth.
Not so the Mexican immigrants and legal residents who, despite their
innocence, were locked up for weeks and even months in the Dallas
Police Department's infamous fake-drug scandal. For them, their
freedom was worth exactly $1,000 per kilogram.

Think of it as a finder's fee. The Police Department was so eager for
Enrique Alonzo, a former drug dealer who had turned informant, to help
narcotics officers find big-time drug dealers that it was willing to
pay him a fee of $1,000 per kilo of confiscated drugs.

Finding drug lords was no problem for the 46-year-old native of
Laredo, Mexico. Mr. Alonzo testified this week that he knew real drug
dealers. Of course, he also knew that such people wouldn't hesitate to
arrange a slow and painful death for anyone they suspected of working
with police to deprive them of their freedom.

What Mr. Alonzo, who pleaded guilty to civil rights violations and
then agreed to cooperate with federal authorities, needed to launch
the enterprise was harmless patsies on whom he could plant drugs for
police to find.

Oh, and real drugs being so expensive and all, and Dallas narcotics
officers being so sloppy in testing evidence, Mr. Alonzo figured he
could make more money with less risk by passing off as cocaine a
substance as common as billiard chalk.

That's what came out this week during the initial round of arguments
in the first - and probably the last - criminal trial in this case.

Sitting at the defendant's table is ex-Dallas police Detective Mark
Delapaz, a former overachiever in the department's narcotics division.

Think of Mr. Delapaz as a fall guy for an embarrassed criminal justice
system in North Texas that won't admit that responsibility for the
scandal - or at least for allowing it to continue as long as it did -
stretches far and wide.

Thanks to a hopelessly interminable FBI investigation, Mr. Delapaz is
the only law enforcement official facing federal charges of violating
people's civil rights and lying - on arrest warrants, to prosecutors
and to a federal agent investigating the scandal.

But behind the dozens of fake-drug cases there is the brass at the
Dallas Police Department who either didn't do a good enough job of
supervising their officers or - worse - tried to bury the scandal once
it came into view. There also are prosecutors, judges, juries and even
defense attorneys who were willing to go along with the idea that the
Mexican defendants were guilty in light of scant evidence.

Let's not forget that last year, after more than 80 drug cases were
dismissed, Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill went on ABC News'
Nightline and arrogantly insisted that many of those released were in
fact guilty.

Now, that wouldn't have anything to do with popular stereotypes about
what drug dealers look like, would it?

You have to hand it to Mr. Alonzo. The undocumented immigrant with a
fifth-grade education devised a brilliant scheme fueled by greed and
glory. He and the rest of his five-man crew would get their finder's
fees. The drug cops would get the headlines, pay raises and promotions
that came with racking up drug busts. And prosecutors would get to put
away bad guys to show taxpayers that they were tough on crime, which
would pave the way for more pay raises and promotions.

The only downside - dozens of innocents wrongfully imprisoned in a
country whose founders staged a revolution and conceived a Bill of
Rights to prevent such things from happening.

Note that the main reason it happened in this case was not, as Latino
activists like to think, because Mexican immigrants were abused by an
Anglo power structure or forgotten by city officials reluctant to hold
accountable an incompetent police department.

This was a case of Mexican immigrants savagely preying on other
Mexican immigrants. From there, the scandal took on a life of its own.
But regrettably, that's how it started.

How it ends will speak volumes about the integrity of our justice
system and our thirst for fair play.

In a federal courthouse in downtown Dallas, a lowly ex-cop is the one
on the hot seat. But for everyone watching - especially the handful of
victims who are taking time off from work to monitor proceedings
unfolding in a language they barely understand - we all are on trial.