Pubdate: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Page: A-1, Front Page Copyright: 2007 Hearst Communications Inc. Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388 Author: Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Marijuana - California) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) WESTERN ADDITION DRUG PROSECUTIONS HOBBLED BY DEA INFORMANT PROGRAM Last year, San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong asked for help from federal authorities to fight drug-fueled violence in the city's crime-plagued Western Addition. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration responded in June by deploying its Mobile Enforcement Team - which relied on a paid federal informant who lived among and reported on drug dealers. The four-month operation that followed netted arrests of more than two dozen alleged members of the Chopper City and Knockout Posse (KOP) street gangs, DEA officials proudly announced last fall. "Mobile Enforcement Teams were designed to hit hard, fast and accurately," Javier Pena, the special agent in charge of the agency in San Francisco, said in a news release at the time. "The results of this collaborative crackdown speak for themselves." But now that the first trials of one of the Western Addition defendants have played out at San Francisco's Hall of Justice, juror reviews of the touted Mobile Enforcement Team leave plenty to be desired. The defendant, a 28-year-old alleged gang member named Sala Thorn, also known as Sly, was acquitted on two counts of felony drug trafficking over the course of two trials in which the key informant's credibility was all but demolished. As if that weren't bad enough for local law enforcement authorities - they had to watch Thorn, who had previously been acquitted of murder and robbery, returned to the street. Several other defendants arrested on evidence provided by the same informant are headed to trial in San Francisco - and prosecutors are starting to feel the reverberations as far as Stockton, where the same informant was key to making dozens of arrests in an operation that ended in July. "The DEA did not have the checks and balances in place," said one of two jurors who spoke anonymously to The Chronicle after acquitting Thorn on a remaining charge last week. Both panelists said they wanted to maintain the confidentiality the court guaranteed to them upon being sworn as jurors. According to Thorn's attorney, the DEA operation in the Western Addition revolved around a 55-year-old woman from Philadelphia who had been sent into the Western Addition to get inside the world of the neighborhood's gang-affiliated drug dealers. She testified during the trials that she had been recruited in 2002 by federal authorities because of her record of crack dealing and addiction. "She said she cleaned up her act and that she has not been an active addict since the 1990s," Thorn's defense lawyer, Eileen Burke, told The Chronicle after the jury returned its verdict Wednesday. But while on the witness stand, the woman gave jurors reason to doubt her sobriety - and DEA agents proved themselves incapable of knocking down those doubts. The informant told jurors she had been paid $115,000 by the DEA over a four-year period. She said she was brought to the Western Addition to buy drugs from various gang members over a four-month span until she disclosed to an agent that someone had left a gun inside her apartment. Fearing the weapon was going to be used, authorities seized the gun and ended the operation. The informant recounted meeting the defendant, Thorn, on the street and exchanging telephone numbers with him. Later, she testified, she arranged a meeting with him inside a market - to which she wore a camera and microphone - and bought 5 grams of crack cocaine for $300 from the defendant. But all that could be seen for sure on the tape was the defendant buying the informant an energy drink. The recording of the encounter, it turned out, had suffered from almost comical technical problems as the device designed to show the transaction live to federal agents watching on monitors nearby sent back mostly static and poor-quality images. The technology was "completely inept for what they were trying to do," said the defense attorney, Burke, noting that a wall or almost any other obstacle, like a bus, could easily interfere with the transmission signal. What proved particularly troubling for the jury was the lack of oversight of the informant's conduct by the DEA, according to the two jurors. Though the informant claimed she hadn't used crack since 2004, she testified she had allowed crack users to move in with her during her stint in the Western Addition and had smoked the drug during the period, but only to appear convincing to the dealers. She said she never inhaled. There was no way to prove that assertion, however, as jurors learned the informant wasn't under constant surveillance by agents and that the DEA doesn't ask its informants to take drug tests. "I think she was taking some of the DEA's money, and she was smoking - she obviously had to get the crack for herself somewhere," defense attorney Burke said. "It was incredibly pathetic. It's amazing how inept it was. It was terrible." The second of the two panelists who spoke to The Chronicle said the jury found the informant's testimony full of discrepancies. "She was terrible, to be honest," the juror said. "She said she smoked (crack) but did not inhale - I think you have to test somebody like that," the juror added. "They let her get away with so much. They were so loose with her." Also problematic was the informant's performance on the stand in the first of the two trials. She fell asleep seven times. "She had to be awaked by the D.A., the defense attorney and the court on different occasions - it was embarrassing," Burke said. In the second trial, she managed to stay awake but came under strong attack by Thorn's lawyer. "She allowed crack addicts to move in - she said she felt sorry for them," Burke said. And while the crack users were bunking in with the informant, the DEA agents had no way of knowing what was going on inside the apartment. "They didn't monitor her house, they had no idea what was going on there," Burke said. Jurors, in the end, rejected the informant's testimony, saying she simply wasn't believable, and they faulted the DEA's investigation as "shoddy" and its agents as arrogant and negligent in failing to exercise proper oversight. "The DEA was very, very sloppy," the second juror said. DEA officials declined to comment about any of the issues brought up during the trial. "A jury has heard the evidence in this case and rendered its decision," said Casey McEnry, a DEA special agent and spokeswoman for the agency in San Francisco. "While we are disappointed, we respect the judicial process and the verdict of the jury." She added that the DEA's Mobile Enforcement Teams were disbanded this year, saving the agency $20.6 million annually. McEnry said the last Mobile Enforcement Team operation was completed this summer in Stockton. A top prosecutor in the San Francisco district attorney's office acknowledged the problems with the case against Thorn but said that doesn't mean cases against other defendants arrested by the DEA in the Western Addition have been damaged. Twelve of the original 19 suspects have pleaded guilty. Following Thorn's acquittal, that leaves six defendants still facing trial. "Each of these cases rests on their own facts," Chief Assistant District Attorney Russ Giuntini said. "It is my understanding that the video in this case wasn't as good as it may be in others. I'm led to believe that the jury in this case indicated that had the video been better, they wouldn't have had a problem. Each case rests on the facts, and we are prepared to move forward." As for the other apparent flaws exposed in the trial, "we respect the decision of the jury - that's their role," Giuntini said. "This was one case, one jury's view. I think it is too early to make any characterization about the operation and how viable these cases are. We will just go try them, and the results will speak for themselves." The performance of the star witness from San Francisco is already being used to undermine the DEA's work in Stockton, where an agency Mobile Enforcement Team operation ended in July. There, agents snared 51 suspects, including members of the Nortenos and South Side Stocktone street gangs; $400,000 in drugs, including methamphetamine, crack cocaine, marijuana, tar heroin; and 19 weapons, including handguns, shotguns and assault rifles. A public defender representing one of the Stockton defendants took notice of the informant's appearance on the witness stand in the first Thorn trial and has filed a motion seeking to have the Stockton case dismissed. "DEA had previously used (the informant) in similar operations in San Francisco," the motion states. "She had done poorly as a witness while testifying in San Francisco - including appearing intoxicated, using slurred speech and falling asleep on the witness stand." The jurors in San Francisco said it was the DEA that looked worst of all. "She did her part - she earned her money," the second juror said of the informant. "The whole DEA performance was terrible. This is a government agency, our tax dollars, and this is the best you can come up with?" The first juror interviewed said he had trouble even believing the supervising DEA agent's testimony. "When your agent says one thing and the facts say another - if this is an example of how things are done - it's at best disappointing. At worst, the work could be described as shoddy. You don't expect this from the government." "It blew my mind," the second juror said. "They paid this woman $30,000 to go after street peddlers. That's the best they could do?" - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake