FL Gov. Crist signs Rachel Hoffman’s Law

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — With the parents of a slain police informant looking on, Gov. Charlie Crist signed a law Thursday that will require police departments to adopt policies to protect people like their daughter.

The bill signing took place a year after the death of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old Florida State graduate who was helping the Tallahassee police. She was recruited by authorities after being caught with some marijuana and pills not prescribed for her.

She was shot to death in a botched drug sting that began May 7, 2008, and two men are now charged in her death. Her parents pushed for the legislation, named “Rachel’s Law.”

Hoffman’s mother, Margie Weiss, told the governor she got goosebumps as he signed the bill, and she said she planned to put the pen he used on Hoffman’s grave. Hoffman’s father, Irv Hoffman, wiped away tears during the ceremony and said later that he was “honored” the bill passed.

The new law will also require police departments to: train officers who recruit confidential informants, tell informants they can’t promise reduced sentences in exchange for their work, and allow informants to consult with a lawyer if they ask.

Hoffman’s parents had wanted even stronger language in the bill, including barring police departments from using people in substance abuse programs as drug informants and those who are nonviolent in work involving suspects with violent histories. Both provisions would have excluded Hoffman – a nonviolent offender in treatment – from the undercover operation she participated in.

Police departments opposed those provisions, saying investigators need flexibility to make judgments on a case-by-case basis. Hoffman’s parents said they will return to the Legislature to ask for even tougher provisions.

via Fla. Gov. signs bill named after slain informant – Florida AP – MiamiHerald.com.

Q: What kind of case is it where law enforcement needs the flexibility to send non-violent folks in rehab on stings to catch violent predators?

A: Most of them.  Law enforcement uses the low-level marijuana offender as a narc to go after the mid-level drug dealer.  What makes him mid-level?  More money and harder drugs.  Who has the skill set to be mid-level?  Guys who tend to have violence in their history.  Where does the justice system place the low-level marijuana offender?  In substance abuse rehab.

In other words, nearly everyone police would want to use as a confidential informant would be in court-ordered rehab and nearly everyone they’d want to pursue with confidential informants would have a violent history.  If Rachel’s Law was passed as her parents intended, there’d be virtually no use of confidential informants, which means far fewer drug cases, which means much less cash and property seized for the police. You can understand why law enforcement would lobby so hard at the Capitol for some “flexibility” here.

Instead the police get some new training on how to properly place non-violent marijuana possessors on undercover stings meant for violent criminals, they are limited to telling one less lie to the confidential informant, and the confidential informant is re-granted the right she already had to speak with an attorney. The public gets a dog-and-pony show of a bill with a tragic victim’s name on it so they can believe the problem’s been solved and law enforcement is allowed to continue to employ its dangerous drug war tactics against non-violent citizens.

UPDATE: Here’s the new law.  Cops also can’t date the C.I.s, I suppose that’s good.  That lawyer you’re allowed to consult before becoming a C.I.?  You have to pay; you get no right to public defender.  And while the law has a list of all sorts of considerations law enforcement should take into account before making you a C.I., they really don’t have to do it and you really can’t make them, because at the very end…

The provisions of this section and policies and procedures adopted pursuant to this section do not grant any right or entitlement to a confidential informant or a person who is requested to be a confidential informant, and any failure to abide by this section may not be relied upon to create any additional right, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by a defendant in a criminal proceeding.