Young Woman Busted for Pot Gets Killed Acting as Police Informant

Backwoods Bud said:

That sucks. I'm kind of torn here. I feel bad for the victims family. On the other hand, I feel that it should be the fate of anyone who cooperates with LEO in such a way. I'm sure the pigs pressured the hell out of her with a bunch of threats of stiff sentences and all. Fucking bullshit.

Click to expand...

olddrifter66 said:

This seems to be their new tactic......use a minnow to catch a piranah......either way the minnow gets eaten.

Click to expand...

Kinderfeld said:

Yup. Best way to put it.

Also, for those saying it was her decision, an ultimatum is not the same as a CHOICE, hence the distinction.

Click to expand...

ItsGrowTime said:

Its always a choice. She could have said no and taken her charge like any other non-snitching person.

Click to expand...

National media interest 'intense' over Hoffman case

If things had gone according to plan, you never would have heard of 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman. She would have just been another confidential informant, one of more than an estimated 100,000 in the United States who work with police to send someone else to jail.

But after a botched sting operation May 7 and her slaying, Hoffman's life is anything but confidential. Her name has been thrust directly into the national spotlight.

"'60 Minutes' has called, 'Dateline' has called, '20/20' has already been here and filmed," said Lance Block, the attorney for the Hoffman family. " Rolling Stone was here to do a story. I can't tell you how many media representatives have called me. Agents, people that want to do books — I don't have enough time in the day for it all."

"The media interest has just been so intense."

So much so that Block is utilizing the services of Ron Sachs Communications, a public relations firm in Tallahassee, to deal with the flood of media requests. Or in some cases, demands.

"'60 Minutes' wanted exclusivity," said Marsha Koppe, Vice President of Sachs Communications.

Block and the Hoffman family weren't willing to grant it, so instead "20/20" will be the first national magazine show to deal with the death of Hoffman.

"Right now, and things can always change if a national story breaks or something like that, but it looks like it will air on the evening of July 25," Koppe said. "And it's going to be a package piece with 'Good Morning America.'"

Alexandra Natapoff is hoping Hoffman's "tragic story" wakes the nation up to the controversial use of confidential informants.

Natapoff is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and one of the nation's leading experts on confidential informants. She has written a book titled "Snitching: Using Criminals to Manage Crime" that will be released by New York University Press, and she testified before Congress last year about a notorious case in Atlanta in which a confidential informant's lead wound up with the police raiding the wrong house and eventually killing an innocent 92-year-old woman named Kathryn Johnston.

Natapoff said Hoffman's case might create a similar fire storm throughout the nation because of who she was. Or more to the point, who she wasn't.

Hoffman wasn't facing serious jail time. She wasn't male. She wasn't uneducated, and she wasn't a minority.

"It's not just that she was merely white, she was also represented with counsel," Natapoff said. "And she had a family that did not think they needed to take this lying down."

One of the many questions raised by the Hoffman case is exactly how much danger confidential informants are in when they work with police?

The answers come from all over the country.

# In 1984, a South Florida confidential informant was shot and killed at a bar in Palm Beach County.

# In August 1989, an informer in New York City was shot and killed so he wouldn't give information to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

# In 1998, a California teenager who had worn a wire during one undercover drug bust was later shot and murdered.

# In 2004, a 20-year-old father of two was gunned down in Brooklyn after leading police to an apartment where a loaded gun and crack were found.

# In 2006, a Pennsylvania man was stabbed more than 20 times and killed during a botched undercover drug buy after police officers lost sight of him.

"It's a routine risk and threat," Natapoff said. "It's no surprise to anyone in the criminal system that something like this would happen. But when the Hoffman family got mad they started asking, 'How could this happen?'"

And almost as importantly, how can it be stopped from happening again?

Block and the Hoffman family are hoping the media attention will spark a reform in how confidential informants are used. As it stands now, police agencies have free reign — especially when it comes to drug crimes — to make dangerous, secretive deals with users and dealers.

"There are no checks and balances," Block said.

And that's a problem, according to Natapoff.

While she readily admits confidential informants play a vital role in bringing criminals to justice, she is concerned about the lack of supervision and regulation involved in such a pressurized environment.

"The criminal system tells police officers you need to make drug busts," she said. "And here's a tool that will enable you to do that. We won't make you write it down. There are not any rules. We'll just leave it to your discretion."

Hoffman's case, with the national attention it has brought and will continue to bring, may be a catalyst for change.

"When any incident like this occurs in law enforcement, the command structure has to take a close look at how this happened and why this happened," said former Maryland police officer Rich Roberts, who now serves as the public information officer for the International Union of Police Associations. "Other officers around the country that see this story when '20/20' runs it — as well as the jurisdictions around Tallahassee that have seen the coverage already — are going to see what happened there and ask why.

"No one is going to ignore this. I can promise you that."

Natapoff argues there should be more accountability, more documentation and more transparency when it comes to confidential informants. She thinks cases like Hoffman's and Johnston's will help shine a light on this secretive and largely unknown aspect of police work.

"Inch by inch, story by story, you're going to start seeing the ramifications of these actions," she said. "But reform in the criminal justice system is usually one piece of the puzzle at a time."

Click to expand...

Elizabeth Vargas Reports said:

Are cops to blame for the controversial death of a recent Florida State University graduate who was acting as a confidential informant for the Tallahassee Police Department? After police issued a search warrant and found a "baggie" of marijuana and a couple of pills of ecstasy and valium inside 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman's apartment, Rachel told friends the officers offered her a deal of leniency instead of jail in exchange for her working an undercover drug bust. But the State Attorney's office was never told of the arrangement and Rachel never received any training from police as a drug informant before being sent alone to an undercover meeting in May with two men to buy 1,500 hits of ecstasy, cocaine and a gun with the $13,000 in cash she was carrying. She would never return from that meeting. Officers were staked-out to monitor the buy but lost contact with Rachel. Her body was found two days later. How could this have happened? Brian Ross' in-depth investigation includes exclusive, extensive interviews with Rachel's parents, friends, the police chief and the state attorney. The report airs on "20/20," FRIDAY, JULY 25 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.

Click to expand...

ItsGrowTime said:

Did anybody watch the 20/20 show? I totally forgot about it. Just curious what yalls thoughts were.

Here's a "webcast". I dont think its the full segment but I could be wrong.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=5452477

Click to expand...

ItsGrowTime said:

Did anybody watch the 20/20 show? I totally forgot about it. Just curious what yalls thoughts were.

Here's a "webcast". I dont think its the full segment but I could be wrong.
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=5452477

Click to expand...

kmk420kali said:

I hate cops, and I hate snitches--But it sounds to me more like this girl was trying to rip off the cops...and something went wrong--
Keep in mind...they don't say, "Here is the deal, you are going to buy from these guys..." These were HER ppl...my guess is she was a scandalous person to begin with...decided to rat...but then just couldn't resist the $13,000....but the ppl she was ratting out must have gotten a tad upset by it all--
Ratting causes more deaths than cigarettes (unverified Stat!!)

Click to expand...

Rachel Hoffman is dead. Rachel Hoffman, like many young adults, occasionally smoked marijuana.

But Rachel Hoffman is not dead as a result of smoking marijuana; she is dead as a result of marijuana prohibition.

Under prohibition, Rachel faced up to five years in a Florida prison for possessing a small amount of marijuana. (Under state law, violators face up to a $5,000 fine and five years in prison for possession of more than 20 grams of pot.)

Under prohibition, the police in Rachel's community viewed the 23-year-old recent college graduate as nothing more than a criminal and threatened her with jail time unless she cooperated with them as an untrained, unsupervised confidential informant. Her assignment: Meet with two men she'd never met and purchase a large quantity of cocaine, ecstasy and a handgun. Rachel rendezvoused with the two men; they shot and killed her.

Under prohibition, the law enforcement officers responsible for brazenly and arrogantly placing Rachel in harm's way have failed to publicly express any remorse -- because, after all, under prohibition Rachel Hoffman was no longer a human being deserving of such sympathies.

Speaking on camera to ABC News' "20/20" last week, Tallahassee Police Chief Dennis Jones attempted to justify his department's callous and irresponsible behavior, stating, "My job as a police chief is to find these criminals in our community and to take them off the streets (and) to make the proper arrest."

But in Rachel Hoffman's case, she was not taken "off the streets," and police made no such arrest -- probably because, deep down, even they know that people like Rachel pose no imminent threat to the public. Instead, the officers on the scene secretly cut a deal with Rachel: They told her that they would not file charges if she agreed to go undercover.

Rachel became the bait; the Tallahassee police force went trolling for sharks.

In the weeks preceding Rachel's murder, police told her to remain tight-lipped about their backroom agreement -- and with good reason. The cops' on-the-spot deal with Rachel flagrantly violated Tallahassee Police Department protocol, which mandated that such an arrangement must first gain formal approval from the state prosecutor's office. Knowing that the office would likely not sign off on their deal -- Rachel was already enrolled in a drug court program from a prior pot possession charge, and cooperating with the TPD as a drug informant would be in violation of her probation -- the police simply decided to move forward with their informal arrangement and not tell anybody.

"(In) hindsight, would it have been a good idea to let the state attorney know? Yes," Jones feebly told "20/20." Damn right it would have been; Rachel Hoffman would still be alive.

But don't expect Jones or any of the other officers who violated the department's code of conduct -- violations that resulted in the death of another human being -- to face repercussions for their actions. Obeying the rules is merely "a good idea" for those assigned with enforcing them. On the other hand, for people like Rachel, violating those rules can be a death sentence.

Of course, to those of us who work in marijuana law reform, we witness firsthand every day the adverse consequences wrought by marijuana prohibition -- a policy that has led to the arrest of nearly 10 million young people since 1990. To us, the sad tale of Rachel Hoffman marks neither the beginning nor the end of our ongoing efforts to bring needed "reefer sanity" to America's criminal justice system. It is simply another chapter in the ongoing and tragic saga that is marijuana prohibition.

Click to expand...

SomeGuy said:

Puhleeze. ..

Click to expand...