REPORT: FEDS SET UP DRUG SUSPECTS

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Florida troopers concealed that they were tipped off to
suspected drug smugglers by undercover FBI agents who had supplied the very
drugs the suspects were charged with possessing, an officer testified.

The FBI also rigged suspects' cars so agents could immobilize the vehicles
by remote - giving the troopers an excuse to question the drivers, Trooper
Douglas Strickland testified Tuesday.

In light of the testimony, defense lawyers in at least three counties say
they might ask a court to reopen cases involving drug convictions.

``It didn't smell right from the beginning,'' said Jack Edmund, who
represented a Baltimore man arrested on cocaine charges after being pulled
over by two troopers in 1995.

Representatives of the FBI, the Highway Patrol and the U.S. attorney's
office declined to comment.

The issue arose Tuesday during a federal cocaine trial for three men. Their
lawyers are trying to have the charges dismissed because of the practice of
``ruse stops.''

Strickland testified that a ruse stop is when a highway patrol trooper
pulls over suspected criminals, fully knowing that their car is loaded with
drugs and has been tampered with by FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration
agents.

Strickland testified that troopers who made ruse stops routinely falsified
information on sworn arrest affidavits to protect FBI informants and avoid
letting suspects know they were targets of federal investigations.

In 1998, Strickland and another trooper arrested Michael Flynn, Norman
Dupont and Dewey Davis. The troopers had watched undercover agents load 220
pounds of cocaine into Flynn's trunk earlier that day. Strickland said the
troopers also knew that FBI agents had rigged Flynn's engine so that it
could be shut down by a remote-control kill switch.

When the troopers encountered Flynn's stopped Lincoln Town Car on a
highway, they had to find independent probable cause other than what they
already knew from the FBI to search the trunk.

Strickland told Flynn there was an emergency fuel turnoff switch in the
trunk of the Lincoln Town Car that had probably tripped by accident.

But Flynn did not want to open the trunk, and the arrest report said that
made the troopers suspicious. The FBI was left out of the arrest report.

Lawyers for the three defendants asked the judge, Elizabeth Jenkins, to
order an investigation and said there could be hundreds of wrongly
convicted people in prison. She did not indicate when she will rule.