Young Woman Busted for Pot Gets Killed Acting as Police Informant

kmk420kali said:

You don't think that happens?? Damn dude, ppl pull that shit on the cops all the time-- It isn't smart...and they are basically caught before they do it...but hand a dope-fiend a large amount of $$ and see how "Reasonable" they act--
Of course this is just a guess...but it kinda sounds like it to me-- I mean she straight out ditched them--
It really doesn't matter tho-- She is a fucking rat...if the cops "Coerced" her...then she is a "Stupid" rat--
That bitch would separate any one of us here from our families and freedom...just to save her own pathetic ass--
Fuck that Ho--

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kmk420kali said:

Sorry if ppl that have a different opinion than you make you sick...but she is dead because she tried to get other ppl put in jail in her place--
The argument that they (ppl selling drugs and guns) are getting what they deserve...can go both ways--
There isn't one person here that would feel sorry for her if it was them she was ratting on--
Would there be all this hubbub if she was a middle-aged guy...instead of a cutish young girl??

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SomeGuy said:

I've been snitched on by a middle-aged guy that I had known since my teens. Calls me up one day, not sounding like himself and asking for something that was totally out of character for him. I picked up on the vibe, told him I didn't know what he was talking about, and immediately packed up and left town. Found out what really happened a few days later and chalked it up to being a professional. I knew it was bound to happen and was prepared for it to happen. For me it was a not a matter of "if it was going to happen" but rather "when it was going to happen."


A few years later I ran into him and he explained that the cops were aware of me anyway (probably from watching him) and specifically asked him to call me. They were threatening him with arresting his wife, who had nothing to do with any of it, placing his kids in foster care and seizing everything he owned. He admitted that none of that had actually happened, but at that time he felt it was a real threat.

Point is, they offered him a choice between me and his family and the guy chose his family and I can hardly blame him for that. Not like we became BFF, but I don't hate the guy.

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binaryfission said:

you are a better man than most, but your buddies behavior is unacceptable. Yes i understand it but i would not do it or condone someone else doing it. Are u saying u would do the same thing if u were in his shoes? If not, then how can u "forgive" him. Getting over the hate and anger sure. I would want to do that as well. But forgiveness or understanding for this time of action is not something i would have. If you can take the risk to make the money, then take what comes with it. sometimes thats jail.
PEACE.

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"Negligent conduct" on the part of the Tallahassee Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration contributed to the May shooting death of 23-year-old police informant Rachel Hoffman, according to a Leon County grand jury.
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The 15 members of the grand jury issued a scathing report, called a "presentment," on Friday after three days of testimony from witnesses and law-enforcement officers. The grand jury also indicted Andrea Green, 25, and Deneilo Bradshaw, 23, in connection with Hoffman's death.

Hoffman was to buy ecstasy, cocaine and a gun from the men with $13,000 in recorded bills May 7 near Forestmeadows Park, but Tallahassee police lost track of her when she followed the men down Gardner Road. Green and Bradshaw, who were later arrested in Orlando, led investigators to Hoffman's body in rural Taylor County, police said.

The grand jurors said TPD failed to ensure Hoffman's safety from the beginning.

"Less than 15 minutes after she drove away from the offices of TPD, she drove out of the sight of the officers who assured her they would be right on top of her watching and listening the whole time," the grand jurors wrote. "She cried out for help as she was shot and killed, and nobody was there to hear her."

Grand jury critiques of public officials or public institutions are not unusual.

"It is not an unheard of situation when a grand jury would hear a case and then be critical of the way some public official conducted him or herself," said University of Florida law school professor George R. Dekle.

He said the report holds moral, not legal force.

"Because it says in a report people were negligent doesn't settle the issue for all time as a question of fact," he said.

But, he added: "I sure would not want a grand jury to issue a report critical of me."

Police Chief Dennis Jones said the department did not have access to some of the information provided to the grand jury because the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was leading the investigation into Hoffman's death. He said he continues an internal investigation and will cooperate with a review of the department's policies and procedures by the Attorney General's Office.

"I will focus on taking additional steps to ensure the safety of our citizens and that a tragedy of this nature never happens again in the city of Tallahassee," Jones said. "We will obtain justice for Rachel Hoffman and her family."

City Manager Anita Favors Thompson said: "The chief has already taken some action which appears to be consistent with what the presentment indicated they want us to do."

In May, Jones halted the use of confidential informants in drug cases. That will continue until the investigation is concluded, Favors Thompson said. Since June, search warrants and operations plans now go to Jones for approval. Personnel changes were also made.

It is premature for disciplinary action, Favors Thompson said, but the city will not shrink from it when the time comes.

"We will make whatever changes we need to make sure nothing like this ever happens in our community again," she said. "But we won't do it without facts."

The jurors said the TPD's command staff was negligent in its supervision and review of the controlled drug buy. The plan that Jones and others approved did not mention a gun. The amount of drugs was listed incorrectly. It didn't discuss the terms or location of the deal.

"There is no doubt that Andrea Green and Deneilo Bradshaw are the ones that brutally murdered Rachel Hoffman. But through poor planning and supervision and a series of mistakes through the transaction, TPD handed Ms. Hoffman to Bradshaw and Green to rob and kill her as they saw fit," the grand jurors wrote.

Hoffman had agreed to work with police if they agreed not to charge her for the 5 ounces of marijuana, prescription drugs and drug paraphernalia seized from her apartment during a raid in April, the report said. Hoffman told officers she was selling 10 to 15 pounds of marijuana out of her apartment each week to her friends, according to the grand jury's presentment.

But from the start, there were problems. Hoffman set up drug buys and made contact with potential "targets" without officers' knowledge. She told one target and other acquaintances she was an informant. Her inexperience, immaturity and care-free attitude made it unlikely that she could complete the buy, according to the grand jury.

"Although Ms. Hoffman had a well-established business of cannabis distribution with her friends, she had no experience with dealing in ecstasy, cocaine or firearms," the grand jurors wrote.

Additionally, only one of the 15 police officers involved in the operation knew where Gardner Road was, the grand jury found. Hoffman followed Bradshaw and Green down that road, about 2 miles from Forestmeadows Park. Her case agent told her to not follow them, but by that time it was too late, the grand jurors wrote. Her audio surveillance failed. Officers lost sight of her. A DEA plane overhead could not see her because of the tree cover.

The reason Hoffman went alone was because she didn't believe she could pull off the deal if an undercover officer was with her. But officers shouldn't let an informant make important decisions, the grand jurors said.

Although Hoffman was participating in drug court at the time she became an informant, the officers also failed to notify the state attorney about the drugs seized from Hoffman's home or their intent to use her as an informant.

The jurors said TPD should make changes to its policies and procedures about the use of confidential informants and take whatever disciplinary action it deems appropriate.

State Attorney Willie Meggs wouldn't comment on grand jury's report and instead said, "Let's let the presentment speak. It's the product of the grand jury."

The three DEA officers involved were not permitted by the DEA to testify before the grand jury, the report said. Jurors recommended that TPD stop working with the DEA until the DEA requires their officers to provide testimony regarding the cases they are involved in.

"Otherwise, they are of no use to the investigation and actually a hindrance to the legal process," the grand jurors wrote.

Mark R. Trouville, special agent in charge of the Miami field division, said the agents would have testified had the State Attorney's Office issued a subpoena and provided the local U.S. Attorney's Office with a summary of the information sought and its relevance to the proceeding.

Meggs said: "I could care less what the DEA and their attorney has to say. I'm not stupid. I understand what a subpoena is. They're not stupid. They understand what a subpoena is. ... They don't want to come up and tell what they did."

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Jennifer Portman said:

Experts examine questionable decisions that left Rachel Hoffman dead

Leon County grand jurors said it loud and clear: Rachel Hoffman should never have been used by Tallahassee police as a confidential informant.

She blabbed to her friends about working for the Tallahassee police right after she left the station. She was desperate to satisfy police with a big bust so the pot they'd found at her apartment in April wouldn't ruin her life. She lacked the experience to understand the grave danger police put her in when they let her go out alone with $13,000 to buy drugs and a handgun from people she barely knew.

National experts interviewed by the Tallahassee Democrat before Friday's blistering grand-jury presentment cited the same concerns about the botched May 7 drug deal that ended with finding Hoffman's body in Taylor County woods.

Novice informants such as Hoffman typically aren't used for such big buys, especially their first time out, the experts said. Controlling informants is difficult because they're untrained and eager to please and underestimate the potential jeopardy. Officers are supposed to plan for problems, be able to see and hear them at all times and be close enough to jump in if something goes wrong.

"You put a person out there who is that inexperienced or naïve and you run a good chance of getting them hurt or killed," said William T. Gaut, a retired captain of detectives for the Birmingham, Ala., Police Department and expert witness in criminal-justice cases. "That's just asking for trouble."

Big job for a rookie

Experts say police more commonly use people such as Hoffman to provide names, offer corroborating evidence or introduce undercover officers to drug dealers. As a white, middle-class FSU graduate who sold marijuana to college students, Hoffman, 23, was an unusual choice to perform a drug sting on her own.

"I would say it is atypical, to say the least, to use someone like that in such a hands-on, high-risk situation," said Fred Shenkman, emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Florida.

When confidential informants make drug buys for police, they typically proceed incrementally, starting with, say, $50 worth of drugs, then moving up to bigger deals over time.

"If there is anybody who knows the only way you get good at something is doing it for a long time, it's the police," Shenkman said.

That Hoffman might have disobeyed orders is not surprising.

"Under a great deal of stress, without a lot of training, you are probably not going to do the right thing," he said.

Seeking fast results

Confidential informants, particularly novices, are tough to manage, experts said.

"Sometimes they think they know better than you, and sometimes they don't think at all," said George R. Dekle, a UF law professor and former prosecutor.

Said Gregory D. Lee, a retired supervisory special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration and former instructor at the FBI Academy: "The most important thing is you can never trust the informant, ever. They are going to tell you what you want to hear or what they think you want to hear."

Lee said he prefers to avoid such control problems by using an informant to introduce an undercover agent to a dealer. It takes longer, though, for an agent to become trusted, and law-enforcement officials often want swift action.

"Everyone wants to do the deal, give each other high-fives and go on and do another," he said.

Sometimes, however, using undercover officers isn't practical, Dekle said.

"It's impossible to always use undercover police officers for these types of operations because some people can smell a cop," he said.

Still, Lee said, if he had used Hoffman to help make the buy, he wouldn't have sent her with the cash.

"I'd have her go there and say, 'You aren't going to see the money until I see the dope,'" he said. "And then the guy who shows up with the money is the police."

Grand jurors reported that Hoffman vetoed the idea of an undercover officer going with her on the sting. Police agreed to go along with the first-time informant.

Know when to abort

Instructing Hoffman to make such a large buy from dealers she'd known for less than three weeks likely aroused suspicion.

"She's saying, 'I just met you two weeks ago and now I've got $13,000 and want to buy a whole lot of drugs,'" Gaut said. "It's like red-flag city."

The dealers' decision to change locations from Forestmeadows Park to Royalty Plant Nursery, then to Gardner Road about two miles away from the park, was a clear sign they didn't trust her, the experts said.

"That's when you shut everything down, right now," Gaut said. "If they don't have her stopped in one minute, they have a real big problem."

That's what Tallahassee police said they tried to do, but they weren't close enough to stop her. In fact, the grand jurors said only one of 15 officers involved in the bust even knew where Gardner Road was, and a DEA plane couldn't track her because of the area's heavy tree cover.

"If you are going to put someone in a situation where visual contact is lost, you have to have all the backup there," Gaut said.

Police lost audio contact, too.

According to the armed-robbery arrest affidavit for Andrea Green and Deneilo Bradshaw, who are now charged in her murder, Hoffman's call to police ended and her cell phone went dead after she agreed to follow the dealers down Gardner. The wire in Hoffman's purse also failed.

Such listening devices are notorious for quitting at just the wrong time, experts say.

"They work fine in the office, but once you get out on the street they always stop working," Lee said.

Gaut said bluntly: "Cities are frugal and they buy cheap crap."

'Too far, too fast'

Lee said officers and supervisors need to be well trained in the use of informants but often are not.

"It takes an officer or an agent some time to develop an understanding of CIs," he said. "You really need to know what you are doing."

In this case, the grand jurors said, Tallahassee police had no idea what they were doing. The Operational and Raid Plan was incorrect and lacking in key details, such as the planned purchase of the gun. Supervision, they said, was practically nonexistent. In violation of its own policy, officers let the suspects set the location of the deal.

"This operation violated practically every provision of the policy," the grand jurors concluded.

What incensed jurors and confounded experts was the police decision to have Hoffman buy the gun. It's believed the .25-caliber she was supposed to buy was used to kill her at the dead end of Gardner Road.

"You don't put them out there buying guns," Gaut said. "That's jumping too far too fast. You are going to get this kid killed."

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Rachel Hoffman was portrayed by friends as a fairly low-level pot dealer who mainly sold to college students to support her own habit.

But grand jurors, who last week deemed Tallahassee police negligent in the confidential informant's death in May, reported that police said Hoffman told them she was selling 10 to 15 pounds of marijuana a week out of her Tallahassee apartment.

The idea that Hoffman was selling such a staggering amount of pot — at least $35,000 a week by Drug Enforcement Administration estimates — was met with skepticism by her family's attorney and experts.

"Her friends have all told me the most they ever saw was a pound," said attorney Lance Block, who is representing Hoffman's parents. "That's an unfathomable amount ... I just find that very hard to believe."

Police spokesman David McCranie said he could not comment because of a court order barring law enforcement officials from discussing the case.

When Hoffman's apartment was raided by police in April, a probable-cause statement said they found about 5 ounces of pot, a ledger used to record drug transactions and a digital scale. They make no note of any large sum of cash.

It was at that time Hoffman was recruited to become a confidential informant.

"This makes no sense. She would have been a major dealer," said Fred Shenkman, emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Florida. "They wouldn't have treated her the way they treated her ... This is a real incongruity."

Shenkman said it would be almost impossible for her friends and family not to notice if Hoffman was selling up to 15 pounds of pot a week.

"Unless she is the most stoic, disciplined hippie ever," he said.

In Tallahassee, a pound of marijuana goes for between $3,500 and $4,000, according to conservative estimates by the DEA, McCranie said.

Block plans to request the 23-year-old's bank records, but said Irv Hoffman paid for everything for his daughter, including her car, apartment and cell phone. He even sent Publix gift cards for groceries.

"He spoiled her rotten," Block said. "Between the two of them (her father and mother Margie Weiss), they were paying for everything."

Rachel Hoffman had stagnated in Tallahassee, Block said, and was biding her time, waiting to be through with her court-ordered drug program so she could leave town and go on to culinary school.

Block said the scale of her pot-selling is a side issue.

"I don't have any way to prove or disprove that she was selling that much marijuana," Block said.

But he questions the credibility of Tallahassee police.

"I don't trust anything these guys say," he added.

In February 2007, Hoffman was stopped for speeding and was arrested for having about 25 grams of pot stashed in a glass mason jar. For Hoffman to go from that to moving tens of thousands of dollars a week seems implausible, Shenkman said.

"Anything is possible, but it is extraordinarily atypical," he said. "The only person who really knows is dead."

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SomeGuy said:

Cops are trying to say she was selling 10-15 Lbs a week despite a lack of any evidence supporting it. Can you say "character assassination?"

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www.theledger.com said:

Five Tallahassee law enforcement officials involved in a botched drug sting that led to the death of a novice informant are on paid administrative leave.

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ItsGrowTime said:

What does her sales history have to do with anything now? Whether she sold a zip a week or a ton a week doesn't matter one bit at this point. She still ended up dead because of crappy police work. Sounds like the cops are trying to paint her as a big time dealer in case it goes to a civil trial. Tainting the prospective jury pool, basically.

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