POLICE LYING IS INTOLERABLE

Florida Highway Patrol troopers assigned to drug investigations routinely
file false information -- a nice way of saying they lie -- on sworn arrest
affidavits that become the basis of criminal charges.

Does that sound like a pretty serious charge? It should. If police officers,
with all the powers they exercise on behalf of the state, can routinely lie
under oath, the contract of trust between police and public is breached.

But it's not this newspaper that is making that charge. And it's not
dope-dealer-defending lawyers, or even prosecutors.

No, the charge is made by a member of the Highway Patrol itself. And it
comes under oath, as an admission that the trooper has done it himself and
is aware that ``quite a number of troopers" have done the same.

The testimony of Trooper Doug Strickland, a member of an FHP
drug-interdiction team, came Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Tampa. The
occasion was a hearing before Magistrate Elizabeth Jenkins on a motion to
dismiss cocaine-trafficking charges against three men, one of whom had been
stopped by the FHP on Interstate 4 in Polk County in May 1998. A search of
the vehicle turned up 220 pounds of cocaine.

Strickland admitted the vehicle stop -- it was disabled by a remote- control
kill switch activated by law enforcement -- was a ``ruse stop" orchestrated
by the FBI. The trooper's subsequent report of the arrest contained false
information and omitted any mention of the FBI's role.

The case blew up when the Polk State Attorney's Office dismissed the state
charges filed by Strickland because of the false information. A couple of
days later, the State Attorney's Office issued a statement that seemed to
back off from earlier accusations of outright lying, but actually left that
issue open. The charges were subsequently refiled in federal court in Tampa.

The role of police in a free society is based on trust. They are entrusted
with awesome powers, but they must follow the rules to ensure that those
powers aren't abused. Staging phony arrests and lying to judges is an
egregious breach of that trust.

Some lawyers are saying that Strickland's admissions may reopen the cases of
hundreds or even thousands of drug defendants prosecuted on evidence
gathered by the Highway Patrol. Others say the duplicity has been concealed
so well that many unjustly convicted persons may have no recourse.

The Highway Patrol isn't an autonomous agency. It is part of the Florida
Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which is run by a career
administrator named Fred Dickinson III but, is ultimately responsible to
Gov. Jeb Bush and the six-member state Cabinet. The responsibility thus
falls directly on Bush and the Cabinet to see that this issue is fully
investigated and corrective steps taken.

This investigation should, of course, take into account the need for secrecy
and confidentiality in investigating organized crime. It's serious business,
and the bad guys play for keeps. Politicians talk about a ``war" on drugs,
but constitutional protections remain in place and must be observed.

The state of Florida needs to make a clear statement, through its top
elected officials, that its law-enforcement officers are required to play by
the rules and what they say under oath can be believed. Absent those
assurances, the public's confidence in its police agencies will be seriously
undermined.