Rachel Hoffman Fallout: One Officer Fired, Others Reprimanded
At long last, we’re seeing some accountability for the officers who got Rachel Hoffman killed after coercing her into working as an informant in the mindbending botched drug sting disaster of the century:
Police Chief Dennis Jones requested that investigator Ryan Pender's employment be terminated.Jones also wanted this disciplinary action taken: Deputy Chief John Proctor, reprimand; Capt. Chris Connell, two-week suspension without pay; Lt. Taltha White, two week suspension without pay; Sgt. David Odom, two week suspension without pay; Sgt. Rod Looney, two week suspension without pay.
Jones is reassigning White, Odom and Connell within the department.
"We have taken the necessary time to conduct a thorough and honest review and asked others to examine our operations," Jones says in the statement from the city. He said he has contacted Hoffman's family and provided a report.
"While we cannot change the events of May 7, we can make the type of changes within the department to help ensure our future actions are consistent with policy," Jones said.
[City Manager] Thompson also issued a reprimand to Jones to require a stronger level of supervision from top to bottom in the department. [Tampa Bay Online]
Anything resembling police accountability in the war on drugs is so rare that we should really take a moment to just reflect on this. Miraculously, we’ve reached a point where all you have to do to get the cops in trouble is be a pretty white girl with a loving family and hundreds of friends, get sucked into a steaming cauldron of first-rate drug enforcement incompetence, and perish dramatically on 20/20’s tear-jerker TV special of the season.
That’s what it takes, because despite the all-encompassing aversion of police officials towards acknowledging even mild misconduct, it’s still easier than conceding that the entire drug informant system is fundamentally corrupt and perverted to its core. This isn’t about Officer Pender, it isn’t about Tallahassee, and it isn’t going to get any better just because a couple incompetent cops got called out. The Burn Em’ & Bail Drug Informant Circus of Horror is a national tour sponsored by the war on drugs and it won’t go away until every last one of us makes it abundantly clear that we want no part of this. Not with our money, not in our community, and not in our name.
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redditDrug cop;
Comment posted by rita on Sun, 09/28/2008 - 11:59amwhat a great job! For overgrown schoolyard bullies. You get to carry big guns, pick on people smaller than you, beat up girls, and the more you fuck up, the more overtime pay you get. Even better, when your arrogance gets people killed, you get a paid vacation!
I honestly believe that every police force in the nation needs to be purged. Completely.
Wow.
Comment posted by smorgan on Wed, 10/01/2008 - 8:54pmThis kind of talk is increasingly alienating the public. When the law is used as an excuse for behavior that shocks the public consciousness, it creates ammunition for reform. So keep it up, please.
But you can't defend police encouraging her to buy a gun. To buy crack. To do things she wasn't trained to do. Things she'd never done until the day the police came into her life. Rachel did what she did, but no one was hurt until the drug war got involved.
To whatever extent these officers were "just doing their job" merely illustrates the urgent need for a rewriting of their job description.
Rachel's Ripple Effect
Comment posted by Giordano on Sat, 09/27/2008 - 3:42amThe Rachel Hoffman story is in its early stages. For now, this tragic case has given reformers a window of opportunity to address all aspects of informant-based law enforcement.
Certainly police coercion is an issue that can be targeted for review. Using coercion to produce an informant in a drug case is a bit like waterboarding people to get a confession. Legalized informant coercion by rogue cops has virtually the same potential for abuse as laws that deregulate the finance industry.
If extremely coercive measures are to remain an option, priorities in law enforcement should at least focus these extreme measures only on extreme crimes. Drug crimes in themselves don’t qualify as being extreme, as most drug prosecutions lack a complaining victim.
A better option is to eliminate all but the most serious crimes that depend exclusively upon informants for their successful enforcement. Rather than a nation of informants, it’s better that the criminal laws remain accusatorial.
Giordano