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Cop Wants His Job Back After Planning the Sting That Killed Rachel Hoffman

Submitted by smorgan on
The death of Rachel Hoffman in a botched drug sting was one of the most disturbing drug war outrages of 2008, and apparently the person most directly responsible for what happened thinks everyone's forgotten about it by now.

Former Tallahassee Police Officer Ryan Pender is fighting to get his job back after a botched drug sting cost a young police informant her life.
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Pender's attorney claims there was a lack of policy in the buy/bust operations at TPD and Pender did what he was trained to do.
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Pender - who recruited Hoffman and arranged the drug sting that evening - was fired in September, 2008 after an internal affairs review found that he violated nine department policies. [WCTV]

So Pender says he "did what he was trained to do," and internal affairs says he "violated nine department policies." Perhaps he was trained to violate those policies? Actually, that wouldn’t entirely surprise me, but it's still no excuse for Pender's participation in one of the most ridiculously ill-conceived drug operations that's ever been brought to light.

The great injustice here is not that Ryan Pender got fired for his role in this fatally flawed fiasco, but rather that he was the only person held accountable for it.

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