Dallas PD snitch reforms don't do enough

Talk about too little, too late. The "reforms" to confidential informant practices at Dallas PD after the Dallas fake drug scandal strike me as a half-assed response to one of the worst drug war scandals in Texas history.

Last year auditors said the Dallas PD narcotics division hadn't fixed problems with handling confidential informants identified after the infamous 2001 fake drug scandal. They now say some but not all of their recommendations have been implemented, reported the Dallas Morning News ("DPD makes strides," March 4), but the details in the article don't inspire confidence. The paper said:

In its original report, the city panel criticized police supervisors for failing to oversee sloppy work performed by narcotics detectives and "glaring absences" in paperwork.

The panel also found that documents in the fake-drug cases were so incomplete or illegible that there are still questions about what happened to more than $400,000 in cash payments that fired narcotics Detective Mark Delapaz said he paid to his informants in late 2001.

In the follow-up audit, the panel found some inconsistencies in paperwork, and the majority of those proved to be "merely clerical errors." Still, the panel recommended that supervisors be required to read all investigative reports, including arrest reports, to ensure that they are consistent with one another.

Many of the panel's recommendations had been implemented, the report found, including keeping a set of fingerprints for each confidential informant, checking the legal status of informants, keeping a running tab on payments to informants, doing a better job of documenting signatures, conducting regular audits of paperwork and ensuring that conversations with confidential informants are taped when possible.

In some cases, the department implemented an alternative version of the panel's recommendations. The panel, for example, had called for issuing debit cards and personal identification numbers to informants to help improve oversight. Money would be transferred into the informant's account when a drug buy was made.

The department instead implemented a policy mandating that informants receiving $1,000 or more for a drug buy be paid at the narcotics division office with a supervisor present.

Those are minimalist fixes that might keep officers from stealing large amounts of money like Officer Mark Delapaz allegedly did, but do nothing to stop lying informants from falsely accusing innocent people. Recording conversations with snitches "when possible," for example, means inevitably when something improper is discussed those conversations won't be recorded. It's a loophole you could drive a truck through. What's more, the department failed to implement all the recommendations, and continues to use officers who helped convict innocent people in the first place:

The panel did not agree with how the department implemented a new rotation policy for the narcotics division. The panel had recommended that the department rotate officers below the rank of sergeant out of street squads after five years and that they not be allowed to return for at least two years.

The department instituted the five-year rotation but allowed officers to return after one year. The panel also warned the department not to circumvent its own policy by allowing officers to be on special assignment in the narcotics division.

The panel also criticized Chief Kunkle for allowing a detective who had been connected to the fake-drug cases to transfer back into the narcotics division on special assignment.

That detective had been investigated for possibly making inconsistent or misleading statements in court testimony. Chief Kunkle allowed the detective to transfer back after finding that the allegations could not be proved.

The panel, however, concluded that "strong evidence exists to support the allegation that [the officer] gave conflicting or misleading testimony," the report said.

Unbelievable - eight DPD narcotics officers signed documents claiming field tests were postive for drugs when they turned out later to be fake, but only two of them were ever fired and indicted. Now they're apparently cycling those guys back into the city's narcotics unit. That's an outrageous breach of trust to allow officers who were involved in the fake drug scandal to continue to work narcotics. It's evidence that the Dallas PD isn't serious about cleaning up narcotics enforcement despite these minimalist reforms.