Pubdate: Fri, 25 Apr 2003
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Todd Bensman, The Dallas Morning News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?118 (Perjury)

The Sheetrock Scandal Deepens -

OFFICER INDICTED IN FAKE-DRUG CASE

Federal Grand Jury Action Is 1st Criminal Charge In Investigation

A federal grand jury has indicted a Dallas police narcotics officer on six 
counts of providing false information in drug cases in which paid 
informants planted bogus evidence on innocent people.

The indictment unsealed Friday against Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz comes after 
a 15-month FBI investigation and marks the first criminal charges against 
police in the fake-drug scandal. The ongoing investigation has centered on 
whether police conspired with the informants, who have pleaded guilty to 
felony civil-rights violations.

Cpl. Delapaz, through his wife who also is a Dallas police officer, 
declined to comment. Neither he nor his attorney, Bob Baskett, returned 
repeated phone calls Friday. Cpl. Delapaz has asserted in court filings 
that he had no knowledge of the fraud and exercised reasonable judgment in 
trusting informants who had previously proven credible.

An attorney for Officer Eddie Herrera, Cpl. Delapaz's partner in many of 
the tainted cases, could not be reached for comment. It was unclear whether 
federal authorities planned to ask the grand jury to indict him. The three 
informants pleaded guilty to creating an assembly line to package large 
volumes of billiards chalk that ultimately ended up tagged as cocaine or 
methamphetamine in the department's evidence storage rooms. The FBI has 
been seeking to learn from the convicted informants whether their police 
handlers profited from the operation or suspected it existed.

More than 80 drug cases have been dismissed in connection with the 
fake-drug scandal. Of those, about 24 involved phony drugs or a sprinkling 
of real drugs. The rest, authorities have said, were considered tainted by 
the involvement of the two police officers or their discredited informants 
and were dismissed in the "interest of justice."

Paid Leave

Cpl. Delapaz, who has been on paid leave since January 2002, faces up to 10 
years in prison if convicted. He appeared in federal court Friday and is 
free on a personal recognizance bond.

He is accused in five misdemeanor counts of depriving four people of their 
civil rights by filing false statements in arrest warrant affidavits and to 
state prosecutors between April and November 2001.

A sixth felony count charges that he made false statements to the FBI. Cpl. 
Delapaz is accused of telling FBI agents that he had observed four people 
"transfer packages purportedly containing narcotic substances to DPD 
informants, when in truth and fact no such transfers took place."

The seven-page indictment filed Thursday and unsealed Friday offered scant 
new detail about the scandal, prompting much speculation about the findings 
in the investigation and others under scrutiny by the FBI.

Jaime Siguenza was one of four people whose rights were violated, according 
to the indictment. He expressed a mixture of dismay and relief on Friday. 
He compared Cpl. Delapaz's 10-year possible sentence to the 50 years Mr. 
Siguenza faced in prison before the false drug evidence became known.

Timeline 2000 Feb. 21 - Enrique Alonso becomes a paid police informant. 
2001 August - Mr. Alonso's brother, Luis, purchases large quantities of 
ground gypsum from a billiards supply store. Aug. 7 - Senior Cpl. Mark 
Delapaz and Officer Eddie Herrera, with help from Mr. Alonso, arrest two 
men after discovering 76 kilograms of a white powder. A field test is 
positive for cocaine. Sept. 12 - Dallas County prosecutors receive a lab 
report that a record-setting cocaine bust in August did not actually 
contain cocaine. Police are told of the results. Late September - Dallas 
County prosecutors say they are seeing the bad drug cases multiply. Oct. 12 
- - Mr. Alonso passes a lie-detector test in connection with the fake drugs. 
An unidentified police supervisor orders narcotics officers to resume using 
Mr. Alonso as an informant. Mid-October - Prosecutors begin dismissing and 
downgrading first-degree felony drug charges. Oct. 26 - A prosecutor 
informs a lieutenant in the police narcotics division about six lab tests 
that had found little or no drugs. November - Payments to Mr. Alonso are 
suspended. Nov. 20 - Prosecutors tell police of nine drug cases with 
positive field tests that showed no drugs in subsequent testing. 
Prosecutors and police meet with officials at the Southwestern Institute of 
Forensic Sciences to discuss field tests. Nov. 28 - Prosecutors send a fax 
to the Police Department asking for details in fake-drug cases. Nov. 30 - 
Police launch an internal affairs investigation. Dec. 3 - Internal affairs 
forwards the investigation to the department's public integrity unit. Dec. 
31 - Chief Bolton holds a news conference to announce public integrity 
investigation and praise narcotics officers and an informant for taking off 
the streets fake drugs that could have poisoned people.

2002 Jan 7 - The district attorney's office reports suspending prosecution 
of pending cases involving fake drugs. Jan. 11 - Police department provides 
files that allow prosecutors to identify 59 affected drug cases. Jan 15 - 
Police department asks the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the 
district attorney's office to join the department's fake-drugs 
investigation. Cpl. Delapaz and Officer Herrera were placed on paid 
administrative leave. Jan. 18 - District Attorney Bill Hill requests the 
FBI to investigate. Jan. 25 - Chief Bolton suspends department's public 
integrity investigation as the FBI expands its inquiry. Jan. 25 - A federal 
civil-rights lawsuit is filed, alleging that the police department failed 
to take corrective action, despite knowing as early as September 2001 that 
innocent people were jailed. February - Police department's narcotics 
division officers attends training on procedural changes. Feb. 1 - The 
district attorney's office dismisses seven more pending Dallas police 
narcotics cases, going back five years to a case linked to one of two 
suspended undercover officers. March 20 - Chief Bolton tells City Council 
members that new police procedures spurred by dozens of questionable 
narcotics cases will cost police department an additional $1 million a 
year. Week of April 29: U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis agrees to delay any 
action on the federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city and the two 
officers for 90 days or until the FBI completed its investigation. May 10 - 
Plaintiffs in the federal civil-rights lawsuit added Chief Bolton, Deputy 
Chief Bill Turnage and Deputy Chief John Martinez to the list of 
defendants. The complaint, filed on behalf of nine people whose drug cases 
were dismissed, cites lax supervision of the officers by the department. 
July 10 - Mr. Alonso was indicted on suspicion of violating the civil 
rights of 13 people arrested in drug cases. Jose Ruiz-Serrano and Reyes 
Roberto Rodriguez each accepted a deal under which they plead guilty to a 
single civil-rights charge in exchange for cooperating with the FBI 
investigation. Sept. 5 - Mr. Alonso accepted a deal to plead guilty to one 
civil-rights violation in exchange for cooperating with the FBI 
investigation. Nov. 5 - Mr. Hill won second term as district attorney. 
December - Federal grand jury began hearing from witnesses as part of 
federal investigation.

2003 April 24 - Federal grand jury issued sealed indictment. April 25 - 
Indictment unsealed. Cpl. Delapaz is indicted on five counts of deprivation 
of rights and one count of making false statements to federal officials. If 
convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. FBI said investigation is 
ongoing.

"It's kind of hard to believe that someone who put so many people in jail 
may only serve about two or three [years] when it's all over," he said. 
"It's just not right. But I guess he's still going to get that feeling that 
some of us did. It's going to feel like what we all felt." Dallas Mayor 
Laura Miller, who is campaigning for re-election, expressed dismay at the 
lack of new information offered in the indictment and said she was 
intensifying an effort for the city to mount its own investigation of the 
police department.

"The criminal indictments are only one piece of this; the FBI's focus is 
very narrow," she said. "Our focus is going to be much broader. How was 
this allowed to happen and why, when it was brought to light, wasn't it 
immediately stopped?"

Sgt. Thomas Glover, president of the predominantly black Texas Peace 
Officers Association, said an indictment doesn't mean the officer is guilty.

"You can't judge the entire department based on one alleged incident," he 
said. "We have to continue to trust our police officers, because, I think, 
by and large the majority of us are professionals."

FBI Inquiry

Former FBI Special Agent Danny Defenbaugh, who ordered the investigation 
before retiring, said the indictment should reflect "that law enforcement 
as a whole will not tolerate indiscriminate police corruption or a 
violation of anyone's civil liberties."

FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey, a spokeswoman for the bureau's Dallas field 
division, said the investigation will continue but declined to provide 
details, citing standard government rules that prohibit discussion about 
pending investigations.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has been overseeing 
the FBI inquiry in place of the Dallas-based U.S. attorney's office. The 
Washington, D.C., based prosecutors did not return calls for comment.

William Nellis, a Dallas attorney representing one of the convicted 
informants, said he believes prosecutors probably view the indictment 
against Cpl. Delapaz is "a starting point" from which they can later add or 
subtract charges to force the officer to talk.

"So, the other individuals involved in this thing aren't necessarily out of 
the woods yet simply because an indictment is being returned for a 
misdemeanor on one individual," Mr. Nellis said. "Nor is the individual 
charged with the misdemeanor out of the woods with respect to a more 
serious civil-rights violation case."

Informants Plead Guilty

The indictment follows felony civil rights violations against three former 
police informants who have been cooperating with investigators. All three 
pleaded guilty last year to earning thousands of dollars from police by 
planting ground billiards chalk on innocent people who were then arrested, 
charged and often jailed.

The primary informant, Enrique Alonso, earned more than $200,000 - a police 
department record - for the volume of narcotics that police seized as a 
result of his undercover work.

Police reports and court records have shown that as many as eight other 
narcotics officers participated in the tainted cases. And, one informant 
has told investigators that police forged department pay vouchers for at 
least $24,000 he never saw.

Before the scandal came to light, Cpl. Delapaz was lauded as an 
accomplished narcotics investigator. He was singled out by his supervisor 
for several sizeable drug seizures in 2001 that ultimately led to the scandal.

In an Aug. 13, 2001, nomination letter to Chief Terrell Bolton for a 
coveted Police Commendation Bar, narcotics unit Lt. Bill Turnage sung the 
officer's praises for his handling of confidential informants.

"Detective Delapaz has an innate ability to develop a rapport with and gain 
the trust of cooperating individuals," Lt. Turnage wrote. "He has been 
extremely successful in transforming an initially hostile and uncooperative 
suspect into a highly productive cooperating individual."

The letter goes on to list a number of drug busts that later turned out to 
be based on faked evidence.

The first indication of a problem came in September 2001, when lab tests 
showed that a record cocaine bust the previous month contained no real 
drugs. More cases were soon discovered. Questions about the main 
confidential informant in those cases prompted police to issue a polygraph 
exam on Oct. 12, 2001. The informant, Mr. Alonso, passed, according to 
police, and supervisors ordered the undercover narcotics officers to 
continue using him.

In a Dec. 31, 2001, news conference, Chief Bolton said he didn't think the 
problem was with the informant.

He said he believed drug dealers were selling large amounts of fake drugs, 
and that it's "a blessing" that authorities discovered it.

A statement by the police department said the internal affairs division 
would proceed with an administrative investigation into specific 
allegations against Cpl. Delapaz.

Staff Writers Tanya Eiserer and Holly Becka contributed to this report.
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