IF DEA AGENT MADE MISTAKE, AGENCY MUST ACKNOWLEDGE IT

Finally a law enforcement official said the most important thing that
needs to be said about the death of 14-year-old Ashley Villarreal at
the hands of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

"This should not have happened," District Attorney Susan Reed said
Friday. "I can tell you that. A 14-year-old girl should not have
gotten shot."

That's the premise from which everyone - including the DEA - should be
starting.

On one side you have an unarmed girl walking out of her house to move
her mother's car around to the back. Though her father is a suspected
drug dealer, no one suggests she was in on his enterprise.

On the other side you have a group of adults, armed and, we hope,
highly trained.

One of the agents shoots the girl in the head.

The obvious presumption is that the highly trained and armed adults
bear considerably more responsibility than the unarmed 14-year-old
girl who was, apparently, guilty of only two things:

Attempted driving without a license for a few hundred yards with her
lights off.

Panicking in her response to the situation set up by the highly
trained men.

Police officers say they should not be judged harshly when they have
to make split-second responses to threatening situations.

But these were officers staking out the girl's house. How did her
coming out to move the car become a situation that required a
split-second decision?

Two investigations are under way to answer this and other questions.
Unfortunately, neither is likely to result in public confidence.

One is by the San Antonio Police Department's "shooting team." A
hand-picked squad of homicide detectives, its job is to investigate
whether any officer involved in a death committed a crime.

The squad was created in the mid-1980s by now-Police Chief Albert
Ortiz, who promises a thorough, independent investigation.

"The DEA agent-in-charge, Javier PeA a, actually requested at the
beginning that we do the investigation," Ortiz said. "They've
cooperated 100 percent."

Ortiz added, however, that some DEA policies have affected the way the
investigation is done. Asked for an example, he said DEA policy is
that an agent involved in a shooting is not allowed to answer
questions in the immediate aftermath of the event.

Ortiz said he prefers that the officer be questioned as soon as
possible, partly because "the perception in the community might be
that he needed time to concoct a story, even if that isn't what happened."

SAPD policy is that officers involved in a shooting have an
opportunity to consult with a psychologist, who might say he or she is
so pumped up on adrenaline or otherwise affected that his or her
memory is impaired. The psychologist may recommend the officer be
given time to wind down.

"But usually, the officer gives a statement right away," Ortiz
said.

District Attorney Reed says she expects to get a thorough and
independent account from the Police Department. And, she says, she
will prosecute if the facts warrant it.

"You know me," she said. "If something needs to be done, I'm going to
do it."

Reed's record gives her credibility, but the reality is that the facts
are unlikely to support criminal prosecution. The law, appropriately,
gives police officers the benefit of the doubt in such matters. Given
the da ngerousness of their jobs, we don't want to subject law
enforcement officials to easy criminal prosecution.

But if no criminal charges are warranted, the details of the
investigation are not usually made public, at least in a timely
manner. So the SAPD investigation is not likely to address basic
public concerns.

The other probe is the DEA's own administrative investigation,
conducted not for potential prosecution but to determine if its
policies were followed. History does not offer hope that the DEA's
investigation of itself is likely to improve public confidence.

The venue in which we're most likely to learn much of the truth is in
the inevitable lawsuit by the family. But in that adversarial
proceeding, the DEA's lawyers will defend its actions and try to lay
blame on the deceased girl.

My prediction: The girl's family will win a substantial amount of
money, and those of us who pay it will have no reason to believe the
DEA learned from the mistakes it didn't admit making.