Undercover cops

Pubdate: Sat, 03 Feb 2007
Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)Copyright: 2007 The Florida Times-Union
Contact: http://www.jacksonville.com/aboutus/letters_to_editor.shtml
Website: http://www.times-union.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155
Author: Charles Patton

GROUP ASKS SHERIFF TO SHELVE UNDERCOVER STINGS
A local citizens group called on Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherfordon Friday to immediately suspend all undercover sting operationspending a review of policies and procedures by an independent board.
That request was included in a letter to Rutherford that the groupdistributed to reporters during a news conference at the PoliceMemorial Building.
The group, led by a mayoral candidate and two City Council hopefuls,calls itself the Coalition of Concerned Citizens.The letter requested a meeting with the sheriff to "discuss the recentmurders by the Jacksonville Sheriff Office."
That was a reference to two recent incidents in which Jacksonvilleundercover police posing as drug dealers shot and killed 18-year-oldDouglas Woods on Jan 20 and 80-year-old Isaac Singletary on Jan. 27.Authorities said Woods pointed a gun at an officer and fired at leastthree times in a robbery attempt. Singletary was shot after heconfused the officers for drug dealers.
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Drug sales, prostitution, gambling, and bribery are often called "victimless crimes" because all of the parties to the transaction are willing participants and, unlike rapes, assaults, or robberies, there is no injured party to complain to the police.

As a consequence, police provide their own "victims" by posing as would-be participants: an undercover cop, for instance, may pose as someone trying to buy a substantial amount of drugs.

How can anything that starts with a sham -- is based on a lie -- turn out other than badly?

The quoted story involves a shoot-out between drug dealers and undercover police; an occurrance that happens many times a year in Houston where I live; sometimes with the criminals injured or killed, but often with the police or innocent bystanders victims of the flying bullets. Don't we know ahead of time that even the most routine illegal drug transaction has a high potential for violence? Why invent artificial bombs on purpose and then set them off in public?

The police also become confused about legitimate lying and illegal abuse of process. A few years ago in Tulia, Texas, we had a stiuation in which an undercover cop not only lied about who he was, he also lied about his drug purchases. As a result, about forty people were wrongfully convicted of felonies, most of them AFTER the sheriff, employer of the undercover rogue, and the District Attorney knew of the untruthful bases of his arrests. It took the entire Texas judicial system, the state legislature, and the governor to undo these wrongful convictions.

The sad part of the story is that the State would have left these people in prison had it not been for the determination of a handful of citizens, and the media which they got involved, to see justice done.

Because of the affairs in Tulia, and others just as bad with Drug Task forces in Hearne, San Antonio, and Liberty County, Texas finally quit funding drug task forces.

Look around: the high social costs of enforcing crimes through inherently corrupting undercover police work is so high that we would probably be better off if the activities those untruthful activites are directed against were made legal and subject to above-the-board regulation instead.