The Sheetrock Scandal Deepens -

OFFICER INDICTED IN FAKE-DRUG CASE

Federal Grand Jury Action Is 1st Criminal Charge In Investigation

A federal grand jury has indicted a Dallas police narcotics officer on six
counts of providing false information in drug cases in which paid
informants planted bogus evidence on innocent people.

The indictment unsealed Friday against Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz comes after
a 15-month FBI investigation and marks the first criminal charges against
police in the fake-drug scandal. The ongoing investigation has centered on
whether police conspired with the informants, who have pleaded guilty to
felony civil-rights violations.

Cpl. Delapaz, through his wife who also is a Dallas police officer,
declined to comment. Neither he nor his attorney, Bob Baskett, returned
repeated phone calls Friday. Cpl. Delapaz has asserted in court filings
that he had no knowledge of the fraud and exercised reasonable judgment in
trusting informants who had previously proven credible.

An attorney for Officer Eddie Herrera, Cpl. Delapaz's partner in many of
the tainted cases, could not be reached for comment. It was unclear whether
federal authorities planned to ask the grand jury to indict him. The three
informants pleaded guilty to creating an assembly line to package large
volumes of billiards chalk that ultimately ended up tagged as cocaine or
methamphetamine in the department's evidence storage rooms. The FBI has
been seeking to learn from the convicted informants whether their police
handlers profited from the operation or suspected it existed.

More than 80 drug cases have been dismissed in connection with the
fake-drug scandal. Of those, about 24 involved phony drugs or a sprinkling
of real drugs. The rest, authorities have said, were considered tainted by
the involvement of the two police officers or their discredited informants
and were dismissed in the "interest of justice."

Paid Leave

Cpl. Delapaz, who has been on paid leave since January 2002, faces up to 10
years in prison if convicted. He appeared in federal court Friday and is
free on a personal recognizance bond.

He is accused in five misdemeanor counts of depriving four people of their
civil rights by filing false statements in arrest warrant affidavits and to
state prosecutors between April and November 2001.

A sixth felony count charges that he made false statements to the FBI. Cpl.
Delapaz is accused of telling FBI agents that he had observed four people
"transfer packages purportedly containing narcotic substances to DPD
informants, when in truth and fact no such transfers took place."

The seven-page indictment filed Thursday and unsealed Friday offered scant
new detail about the scandal, prompting much speculation about the findings
in the investigation and others under scrutiny by the FBI.

Jaime Siguenza was one of four people whose rights were violated, according
to the indictment. He expressed a mixture of dismay and relief on Friday.
He compared Cpl. Delapaz's 10-year possible sentence to the 50 years Mr.
Siguenza faced in prison before the false drug evidence became known.

Timeline 2000 Feb. 21 - Enrique Alonso becomes a paid police informant.
2001 August - Mr. Alonso's brother, Luis, purchases large quantities of
ground gypsum from a billiards supply store. Aug. 7 - Senior Cpl. Mark
Delapaz and Officer Eddie Herrera, with help from Mr. Alonso, arrest two
men after discovering 76 kilograms of a white powder. A field test is
positive for cocaine. Sept. 12 - Dallas County prosecutors receive a lab
report that a record-setting cocaine bust in August did not actually
contain cocaine. Police are told of the results. Late September - Dallas
County prosecutors say they are seeing the bad drug cases multiply. Oct. 12
- - Mr. Alonso passes a lie-detector test in connection with the fake drugs.
An unidentified police supervisor orders narcotics officers to resume using
Mr. Alonso as an informant. Mid-October - Prosecutors begin dismissing and
downgrading first-degree felony drug charges. Oct. 26 - A prosecutor
informs a lieutenant in the police narcotics division about six lab tests
that had found little or no drugs. November - Payments to Mr. Alonso are
suspended. Nov. 20 - Prosecutors tell police of nine drug cases with
positive field tests that showed no drugs in subsequent testing.
Prosecutors and police meet with officials at the Southwestern Institute of
Forensic Sciences to discuss field tests. Nov. 28 - Prosecutors send a fax
to the Police Department asking for details in fake-drug cases. Nov. 30 -
Police launch an internal affairs investigation. Dec. 3 - Internal affairs
forwards the investigation to the department's public integrity unit. Dec.
31 - Chief Bolton holds a news conference to announce public integrity
investigation and praise narcotics officers and an informant for taking off
the streets fake drugs that could have poisoned people.

2002 Jan 7 - The district attorney's office reports suspending prosecution
of pending cases involving fake drugs. Jan. 11 - Police department provides
files that allow prosecutors to identify 59 affected drug cases. Jan 15 -
Police department asks the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the
district attorney's office to join the department's fake-drugs
investigation. Cpl. Delapaz and Officer Herrera were placed on paid
administrative leave. Jan. 18 - District Attorney Bill Hill requests the
FBI to investigate. Jan. 25 - Chief Bolton suspends department's public
integrity investigation as the FBI expands its inquiry. Jan. 25 - A federal
civil-rights lawsuit is filed, alleging that the police department failed
to take corrective action, despite knowing as early as September 2001 that
innocent people were jailed. February - Police department's narcotics
division officers attends training on procedural changes. Feb. 1 - The
district attorney's office dismisses seven more pending Dallas police
narcotics cases, going back five years to a case linked to one of two
suspended undercover officers. March 20 - Chief Bolton tells City Council
members that new police procedures spurred by dozens of questionable
narcotics cases will cost police department an additional $1 million a
year. Week of April 29: U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis agrees to delay any
action on the federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city and the two
officers for 90 days or until the FBI completed its investigation. May 10 -
Plaintiffs in the federal civil-rights lawsuit added Chief Bolton, Deputy
Chief Bill Turnage and Deputy Chief John Martinez to the list of
defendants. The complaint, filed on behalf of nine people whose drug cases
were dismissed, cites lax supervision of the officers by the department.
July 10 - Mr. Alonso was indicted on suspicion of violating the civil
rights of 13 people arrested in drug cases. Jose Ruiz-Serrano and Reyes
Roberto Rodriguez each accepted a deal under which they plead guilty to a
single civil-rights charge in exchange for cooperating with the FBI
investigation. Sept. 5 - Mr. Alonso accepted a deal to plead guilty to one
civil-rights violation in exchange for cooperating with the FBI
investigation. Nov. 5 - Mr. Hill won second term as district attorney.
December - Federal grand jury began hearing from witnesses as part of
federal investigation.

2003 April 24 - Federal grand jury issued sealed indictment. April 25 -
Indictment unsealed. Cpl. Delapaz is indicted on five counts of deprivation
of rights and one count of making false statements to federal officials. If
convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. FBI said investigation is
ongoing.

"It's kind of hard to believe that someone who put so many people in jail
may only serve about two or three [years] when it's all over," he said.
"It's just not right. But I guess he's still going to get that feeling that
some of us did. It's going to feel like what we all felt." Dallas Mayor
Laura Miller, who is campaigning for re-election, expressed dismay at the
lack of new information offered in the indictment and said she was
intensifying an effort for the city to mount its own investigation of the
police department.

"The criminal indictments are only one piece of this; the FBI's focus is
very narrow," she said. "Our focus is going to be much broader. How was
this allowed to happen and why, when it was brought to light, wasn't it
immediately stopped?"

Sgt. Thomas Glover, president of the predominantly black Texas Peace
Officers Association, said an indictment doesn't mean the officer is guilty.

"You can't judge the entire department based on one alleged incident," he
said. "We have to continue to trust our police officers, because, I think,
by and large the majority of us are professionals."

FBI Inquiry

Former FBI Special Agent Danny Defenbaugh, who ordered the investigation
before retiring, said the indictment should reflect "that law enforcement
as a whole will not tolerate indiscriminate police corruption or a
violation of anyone's civil liberties."

FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey, a spokeswoman for the bureau's Dallas field
division, said the investigation will continue but declined to provide
details, citing standard government rules that prohibit discussion about
pending investigations.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has been overseeing
the FBI inquiry in place of the Dallas-based U.S. attorney's office. The
Washington, D.C., based prosecutors did not return calls for comment.

William Nellis, a Dallas attorney representing one of the convicted
informants, said he believes prosecutors probably view the indictment
against Cpl. Delapaz is "a starting point" from which they can later add or
subtract charges to force the officer to talk.

"So, the other individuals involved in this thing aren't necessarily out of
the woods yet simply because an indictment is being returned for a
misdemeanor on one individual," Mr. Nellis said. "Nor is the individual
charged with the misdemeanor out of the woods with respect to a more
serious civil-rights violation case."

Informants Plead Guilty

The indictment follows felony civil rights violations against three former
police informants who have been cooperating with investigators. All three
pleaded guilty last year to earning thousands of dollars from police by
planting ground billiards chalk on innocent people who were then arrested,
charged and often jailed.

The primary informant, Enrique Alonso, earned more than $200,000 - a police
department record - for the volume of narcotics that police seized as a
result of his undercover work.

Police reports and court records have shown that as many as eight other
narcotics officers participated in the tainted cases. And, one informant
has told investigators that police forged department pay vouchers for at
least $24,000 he never saw.

Before the scandal came to light, Cpl. Delapaz was lauded as an
accomplished narcotics investigator. He was singled out by his supervisor
for several sizeable drug seizures in 2001 that ultimately led to the scandal.

In an Aug. 13, 2001, nomination letter to Chief Terrell Bolton for a
coveted Police Commendation Bar, narcotics unit Lt. Bill Turnage sung the
officer's praises for his handling of confidential informants.

"Detective Delapaz has an innate ability to develop a rapport with and gain
the trust of cooperating individuals," Lt. Turnage wrote. "He has been
extremely successful in transforming an initially hostile and uncooperative
suspect into a highly productive cooperating individual."

The letter goes on to list a number of drug busts that later turned out to
be based on faked evidence.

The first indication of a problem came in September 2001, when lab tests
showed that a record cocaine bust the previous month contained no real
drugs. More cases were soon discovered. Questions about the main
confidential informant in those cases prompted police to issue a polygraph
exam on Oct. 12, 2001. The informant, Mr. Alonso, passed, according to
police, and supervisors ordered the undercover narcotics officers to
continue using him.

In a Dec. 31, 2001, news conference, Chief Bolton said he didn't think the
problem was with the informant.

He said he believed drug dealers were selling large amounts of fake drugs,
and that it's "a blessing" that authorities discovered it.

A statement by the police department said the internal affairs division
would proceed with an administrative investigation into specific
allegations against Cpl. Delapaz.

Staff Writers Tanya Eiserer and Holly Becka contributed to this report.