PHONY DRUGS

Police Still Need To Use Informants

People who deal drugs in Dallas are not the folks you likely run into at a
Sunday school class. They usually are hardened criminals who willingly
cheat others to make a profit and eliminate those who might turn them into
the police.

As a result, Dallas Police Chief Terrell Bolton says his department must
pay significant amounts of cash to informants to break local drug rings.
Chief Bolton says the nature of the drug trade also explains why some
purchases an informant made in recent months have turned out to be fake drugs.

That turn of events has produced serious consequences. Prosecutors had to
dismiss or reduce charges in at least a dozen area drug cases because
supposed cocaine purchases turned out to be ground gypsum.

To their credit, police officials already have launched an internal
investigation. Dallas police must make certain that informants are not
selling false information for large payoffs. The department also must probe
whether area drug dealers have figured out how the police are learning
about their operations and whether they have foiled the department with the
sale of other fake drugs.

That said, this latest disappointment in the war on drugs should not force
the Dallas Police Department to reduce or eliminate payments to informants.
In some cases, there is no other way for investigators to get the
information they need to make arrests.

The informant now under investigation for his involvement in the fake drug
cases has been paid more than $200,000 over the last two years. Chief
Bolton says the individual has passed a polygraph that indicates he didn't
know the drugs were fake. He also points out that the informant has been
responsible for numerous other successful cases.

The jeopardized arrests, however, should prompt Chief Bolton and narcotics
officers to take more precautionary steps. While the police chief
speculates dealers may have more trouble getting drug supplies because of
tighter border security after the Sept. 11 attacks, the department should
not assume the fake drug purchases were just the result of declining
supplies. Instead, they must redouble their efforts to ensure they can
depend upon the information they are buying on the streets. That
information is vital to securing more victories in this long battle.