FRESNO DRUG COPS UNDER SCRUTINY

A year after the Fresno Police Department disbanded its major
narcotics squad, a criminal case under way in federal court is
shedding light on what may have gone wrong.

The case involves Theresa Martinez, who is on trial in U.S. District
Court in Fresno, accused of selling drugs to a police informant.

Martinez's defense lawyers say the charges are bogus because she was
working as a Fresno police informant when she was arrested in March
2008. They say narcotics officers set her up.

But prosecutors say she wasn't an informant at all by that time and is
just looking for a way to get off the hook.

"When the muck settles, it will be crystal clear that Ms. Martinez is
guilty," Assistant U.S. Attorney Elana Landau said.

Her allegations, meanwhile, have sparked a flurry of testimony about
the credibility of Fresno's narcotics investigators -- and so far it
paints a picture of cozy relationships between drug informants and
police officers. For example:

A sergeant testified that he and other officers let an informant get
away with the armed robbery of drug dealers. The informant was not
arrested, and no police reports were made.

An officer testified that he gave informants cell phones that police
had confiscated from drug dealers. The cell phones were never booked
into evidence.

Two officers related by marriage were disciplined for renting a
relative's house to an informant, one of the officers testified.

Police Chief Jerry Dyer disbanded the drug unit in February 2009 after
two of its officers were charged with stealing a drug suspect's van.
One officer was found not guilty, and charges against the other were
dismissed, but questions about the drug unit lingered.

Dyer never has fully explained why he shut the unit down, other than
to say it relied too heavily on informants.

Dyer resurrected the drug unit in August. He made some reforms
recommended by an auditor, such as limiting the term of narcotics
officers to five years.

Testimony in the Martinez case will continue the rest of this week,
and Judge Oliver W. Wanger has said that jurors will hear evidence of
alleged police misconduct -- as long as it's relevant to the theory
posed by defense lawyers Marc Days and Charles Lee. They say officers
used Martinez to retaliate against her friend, another informant who
filed a complaint against police.

"The evidence will show that Theresa Martinez was a criminal betrayed
by even bigger criminals -- people who wear a badge and gun," Lee said
Thursday in opening statements.

Working for the police

Martinez, a Mexican national, began working as an informant for the
Fresno Police Department soon after her arrest in November 2006 for
possessing three pounds of meth, Lee said. In exchange for leniency,
she signed a contract with the Fresno Police Department to work as an
informant.

Informants can be paid up to $10,000 per bust, but Martinez was
working under a provision that required her to help police confiscate
three times as much in drugs as the amount she was caught with. She
did that and more.

Martinez helped police make two big busts resulting in the seizure of
more than 45 pounds of drugs, $30,000 in cash and a gun, Lee said.

One police officer -- Manuel Robles -- was so impressed with her work
that in 2007 he applied to get a "public benefit parole status" for
Martinez so she could stay legally in the United States, Lee said.

After that, Martinez's relationship with the Police Department becomes
murky. On April 30, 2007, U.S. immigration officials picked up
Martinez when she showed up in Fresno County Superior Court for her
sentencing on the 2006 drug charges. They deported her.