BAD BUSTS COST DALLAS POLICE $100,000

Informants Paid Just Before Tests Came Back Negative

Narcotics detectives paid out more than $100,000 to criminal informants
during a three-day period in September for work that resulted in arrests
and seizures of substances that were later found not to be drugs, according
to police records obtained Friday.

The large transactions ended Sept. 7 with an arranged meeting between two
detectives and an informant in the 300 block of South Hall Street. The
unidentified man was given $50,000 for his work the previous month that
netted 76,512 grams of what was thought to be cocaine but later found to
contain ground gypsum and only traces of cocaine.

Five days later, prosecutors learned the drugs were fake and told police
the following month.

On the date of the last large payment, an officer wrote, "Total paid is
final payment due to analysis of drugs seized."

Police officials refused to comment on the payment disclosures, saying the
matter has been under review by FBI investigators since January. The
release-of-payment information blacked out the names of the informants and
the arresting officer.

FBI officials said they could not comment on a pending investigation.

Prosecutors also declined to comment in detail about the payment
information Friday. Steve Tokoly, felony trial bureau chief for the Dallas
County district attorney's office, said that his office stood by its
timeline of events, made public Feb. 5.

In that timeline, prosecutors said they received the first fake-drug lab
report in a multi-kilo cocaine case Sept. 12. Prosecutors said they told
police Oct. 26 after other lab tests revealed more fake-drug cases.

Two officers who made the drug arrests now under review, Senior Cpl. Mark
Delapaz and Officer Eddie Herrera, are on leave with pay.

Lab tests from at least two dozen major felony drug seizures logged by the
two detectives working with at least three informants later found that the
seized substances were not illegal drugs or contained only drug residue.

Prosecutors have since dismissed more than 70 cases linked to the two
detectives after attorneys raised questions about their credibility in
light of the conflicting lab results.

Those arrested were mostly undocumented workers and recent immigrants from
Mexico with limited money to hire attorneys. They spent as long as five
months in jail before their cases were thrown out. Some pleaded guilty to
lesser charges and were released from jail based on the time they had
already served and were deported upon their release.

Three informants, all undocumented immigrants from Mexico, are in federal
custody on charges unrelated to the drug investigations.

An attorney for one of the informants said his client is working with FBI
investigators to unravel the conspiracy between three informants to
manufacture fake drugs.

The FBI has confiscated chalk cones from the home of one of the jailed
informants and collected receipts for large quantities of the substance
from a supply house based on the man's statements, said attorney Karl Rupp,
a federal assistant public defender. Billiards chalk contains gypsum, which
was the substance identified in about two dozen cases that were later
dismissed.

A review of financial forms filed by the detectives to document payments to
informants also found:

. Narcotics division supervisors signed off on the transactions. As
required by police procedures, Deputy Chief John Martinez, whose duties
include the narcotics division, approved all payments above $5,000.

. Former Lt. William Turnage approved all payments above $2,000. Lt.
Turnage was promoted to deputy chief in October and oversees the Northeast
Dallas patrol division.

. The bulk of the payments by the two detectives to informants last year
ranged between $20 and $100, but eight payments ranged from $17,000 to
$50,000 each.

. Officer Herrera was listed in the documents as the officer who witnessed
the Sept. 7 payment to the informant.

The pace and frequency of the large payments picked up in the summer.
Between June 18 and Sept. 7, the two paid $227,000 in 10 transactions with
informants, 39 percent of the $576,000 paid out by the entire narcotics
division in 2001.

One informant, identified in documents as #2253 received three payments
totaling $95,000 within a five-week period in August and September. All of
the cases linked to the man have proven bogus.

One of the $50,000 payments to an informant stemmed from the Aug. 7 arrest
of two day-laborers, Denny L. Ramirez and Daniel R. Licea, who were
allegedly hired to drive a 1992 Chevrolet van to a fast-food restaurant in
the 400 Block of West Illinois Avenue in Oak Cliff.

The two men were arrested that day, charged with first-degree felonies and
their bonds were set at $1 million each. Neither man had a criminal record.

Court dockets show that the two men's first case setting came on Sept. 11,
four days after police made the payments. And for almost another three
months, no notation of the lab test results was entered until Dec. 5, when
an entry by Assistant District Attorney Gregg Long approved the men for a
personal-recognizance bond.

An addendum to that entry stated, "Lab Test - Gypsum."

The cases against the two men were dismissed in mid-January.