Pubdate: Wed, 24 May 2000 Source: Roanoke Times (VA) Copyright: 2000 Roanoke Times Contact: 201 W. Campbell Ave., Roanoke, Va. 24010 Website: http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/index.html Author: Shay Wessol PULASKI POLICE BRING CHARGES AGAINST INFORMANT 'We Had No Reason To Not Believe This Guy' Officials say the man knowingly provided false information that led to a botched drug raid. PULASKI - An informant who sparked a mistaken drug raid on a Pulaski couple's apartment was so caught up in the cloak-and-dagger mystique that he made up a tale to continue the thrill, the town's police chief said Tuesday. The man, whom police would not identify, is in custody and charged with providing false information to authorities, a misdemeanor. The arrest warrant had not yet been returned Tuesday afternoon to General District Court, where it will be public information. Pulaski Police Chief Herb Cooley said the informant had worked on 14 other felony cases, including investigations of drugs and counterfeiting, for town police. When he approached investigators with tales of a methamphetamine lab operating inside a Pulaski apartment, the information seemed to check out, Cooley said. "He had done a good job in the past. We had no reason to not believe this guy," Cooley said. Officers with the town's narcotics team raided the apartment of William and Geneva Summers about 4 a.m. Monday. Armed with a search warrant and weapons, the team broke through a back door and held the couple at gunpoint. Officers realized they had made a mistake, and the informant soon admitted his lies. Cooley said the department is sorry the incident occurred. Officers apologized to the couple Monday. Confidential informants are routinely used by law enforcement in different types of cases. Some are petty criminals who agree to provide evidence in hopes of leniency. Others are people who just hope to lend a hand. The informant in Pulaski's case was one of those people who wanted to help thwart the drug trade in the community, Cooley said. "This was a citizen and a resident of the community with a job who offered to help," he said. Last week, the man told police he had been inside an apartment on Second Street and seen a methamphetamine lab and weapons, according to an affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for the property. Cooley said the man signed a statement about what he had seen, agreed to testify to that information in court and provided police with a layout of the house. But the floor plan drawn by the informant showed two apartments in the bottom floor of the old house - one occupied by the Summerses and a second, which contained the supposed drug lab, occupied by people from Guatemala and children. In reality, the bottom floor of the house contains just one apartment, which the Summerses call home. But, going on the information they had been given, investigators pushed forward. Methamphetamine labs are unstable and prone to explosions. Children were reportedly inside the home. And when police staged the early morning raid, they had the town's fire and rescue units and representatives of social services on standby, just in case, Cooley said. He said investigators couldn't walk inside to verify the information for fear of blowing the case. "We felt like we had checked it out by using someone who had been inside," Cooley said. On Saturday, Pulaski officers obtained their search warrant from Magistrate Jill Long at the New River Valley Regional Jail. The affidavit asking permission for a search must spell out all evidence investigators have to support their allegations, and a magistrate reads that information and decides if those facts show probable cause. "Probable cause is basically what a reasonable person would conclude is going on," Long said Tuesday. What constitutes probable cause for a search warrant varies from case to case, Long said. Pulaski's narcotics team used their "reliable informant," a person who has established a track record of providing solid information to investigators in the past. Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that studies trends in anti-crime policies, said it is common nationwide for investigators to get search warrants based solely on an informant's word. "The requirement of reliability of an informant is not extensive. It could mean that half of what an informant has said has been true," Sterling said. "No one writes that an unreliable informant told them something. The words 'reliable' and 'informant' go together like 'hot' and 'dog.'" Long said Tuesday she could not remember the specifics of the town's search warrant because she didn't have the document in front of her as she spoke. But she said it is unusual that someone classified as a reliable informant would lie. "I've never heard of that happening before," she said. Sterling said although informants often lie to authorities, they rarely fabricate the whole story. "There is no real advantage to an informant giving bogus information where he simply picks up an address and makes up information that is completely wrong. It just ends up embarrassing the people he's working for," Sterling said. The charge of providing false information to police is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea