Rachel Hoffman - murdered in drug sting

Rachel Hoffman who was murdered execution style after being pressured by police to wear a wire and make a set up buy in 2008. On Friday, the Tallahasse City Commissioners approved a $2.6 million dollar settlement before a wrongful-death suit being persued by Rachel’s parents.

Her parents were preparing to go forward with their lawsuit charging that the police took a young eager college student that got busted for marijuana, and turned her into a confidential informant who went on a buy with $13,000 in marked bills to buy Ecstasy, cocaine and a gun. Never having any training in law enforcement, she was taken away from the approved and surveyed spot, shot five times and had her car, credit card and all the marked money stolen. Police found her body 36 hours after they lost track of her in a roadside ditch 50 miles away, causing her parents untold grief over the terror that must have been her last hours alive.

The murderers were caught, 26-year-old Deneilo Bradshaw and 29-year-old Andrea Green, are serving life sentences in her murder. Jury selection for the lawsuit began last week, and the trial was scheduled to begin today, but in after a closed door session with the attorneys on Friday as they were finishing up jury selection, the city commissioners voted 3-2 to approve the settlment.

Jim English, the city attorney for Tallahasee, Florida said the first $200,000 dollars will be paid by the city in the next couple of weeks. The rest will be paid after the state Legislature passes a “claims bill” which could take years.

But the money isn’t at the heart of the case for Rachel’s parents, who told media on Friday evening they are grateful that this part of it is over. After her death, the Florida legislature passed “Rachel’s law” that required police to adopt new policies to help protect police informants. Police are no longer allowed to tell informants that they will reduce their sentences for cooperating, and informants are allowed to talk to thier lawyers first before they agree to help, something they never offered Rachel Hoffman before that fateful day.

External Links:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/06/2577405/city-settles-informant-death-suit.html#storylink=cpy

One of the most tragic tales I’ve reported in my time at the Stash Blog is the tale of Rachel Hoffman.  She was a 23-year-old college student in Florida who got caught selling small amounts of pot.  Cops terrified her with threats of prison, but offered her a way out by helping them as a “confidential informant” – a snitch – against two known violent drug dealers.  She was sent on the sting to buy 2 ounces of cocaine (which she never did or sold), 1500 ecstasy pills, and a handgun.  Cops found her shot, execution style, in an empty lot after the dealers got Rachel to go off the sting’s plan and accompany them in their car.  The cops were supposed to be following and watching her the whole time, but they lost the suspects and didn’t find Rachel’s body until 36 hours later.

Unfortunately, the tale of Rachel Hoffman isn’t a singular tale I can file and forget.  Some story like it seems to pop up every six months or so.  Here is the latest, from Detroit, where a teen girl was found murdered, mutilated, and set on fire in retribution for her snitch work, which she agreed to when terrified by police about her inevitable time in prison for smoking pot.

(Detroit News) Shelley Hilliard, 19, a transgender woman, was about to be arrested for possession of marijuana Oct. 20 when police offered a way out, according to testimony during a court hearing Thursday. She could set up a drug deal.

With the police listening on speaker phone, Hilliard used her cellphone to call Qasim Raqib, telling him she had someone (an undercover agent) who wanted to buy $335 worth of cocaine and marijuana, according to testimony during Raqib’s preliminary examination Thursday in 36th District Court.

Of course, Raqib was released shortly after his arrest, as drug dealers often are, since they can afford to make bail.  He then went and bought a burner cell phone and called Hilliard and lured her to meet him.  God only knows why, but she agreed.

She was driven to the site by Robert Mullen, a taxi driver who testified during the hearing that he took Hilliard on all her calls.

During the drive, Hilliard told Mullen she was worried about payback by Raqib for turning him in. Mullen arrived at the dark neighborhood to find three people, but couldn’t identify them.

Soon after dropping Hilliard off, Mullen got a call from her sounding scared, testified Mullen. The phone then sounded like it fell to the ground and went dead, he said.

Newt Gingrich would just say she shouldn’t have done that.

(Buffalo News) Bianca Hervey, a 20-year-old college student, was returning home to her apartment in Attica when a village police officer drove up behind her, put on his flashing lights and pulled her over.

Hervey’s driver’s license, Officer Christopher Graham told her, had been suspended for failing to pay traffic tickets. He arrested her.

Graham handcuffed her, put her in the back of the police cruiser and took her to police headquarters. Her car was impounded and towed away.

At the police station, Graham handcuffed Hervey to a bench and told her she would probably spend the night in jail, Hervey said.

But then Graham offered her a way out of her problems.

Become a confidential informant for the Wyoming County Drug Task Force, he told her, and he could make the charges disappear.

Police departments throughout the country use people arrested on drug charges to inform on others. In return, their charges are reduced or dismissed.

But Hervey said she doesn’t use drugs and, having just moved from Batavia to the tiny village of Attica, doesn’t know anyone in Attica who does.

That didn’t stop her recruitment as a confidential informant.

Neither Wyoming County Sheriff Ferris Heimann, nor District Attorney Gerald Stout has a problem with how Smith’s department handled the case.

Asked about recruiting someone who said she is not part of the drug trade, Stout responded to The News: “But she agreed to do it.”

Nothing more aptly demonstrates the idiocy of prohibition than a system of law enforcement and justice that uses young people as bait.  Surely nobody in the close-knit group of drug users in the tiny town of Attica, NY, is going to think twice about the new girl in town who is so desperate to buy a large amount of cocaine or pills or weed, but doesn’t seem to know which end of a joint to light.

This is even more shameful than the Rachel Hoffman case.  At least Rachel was someone who hung around with a cannabis and ecstasy-using crowd.  This Bianca Hervey sounds the majority of young people who, believe it or not, don’t do any drugs!  When police infiltrate criminal organizations, they’ve had months of training, so why do they think they can take a young lady who doesn’t pay traffic tickets and turn her into supercop?

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Hemp Headlines

1. Mother Jones explains how the Drug Czar is mandates to lie about marijuana
2. Rachel Hoffman’s Law goes into effect tomorrow in Florida
3. Cannabis has not shown “any evidence of increasing schizophrenia” in the UK
4. Two San Antonio women die from Fentanyl patches

California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner

• Convicted dispensary owner Charles Lynch

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Government at Work

• Loretta Nall with an interesting tale of President Obama’s college friend, Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, asking people online during his gubernatorial campaign about which policies they’d like to see enacted, much like Obama’s “Open for Questions“.

(Tampa Bay Online) TAMPA – Known as Rachel’s Law in honor of slain police informant Rachel Hoffman, legislation about the use and control of confidential informants goes into effect Wednesday.

In Hillsborough County, supervisors whose detectives and deputies handle confidential informants will attend an eight-hour training seminar about the law Wednesday.

The new law will require police departments to train officers who recruit confidential informants, tell informants they can’t promise a 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.

Translation: the new law will force cops to tell snitches they can’t promise reduced sentences, which is something cops could never promise anyway, but would slyly avoid saying as they made every hint and implication that they could promise a reduced sentence.  The new law will give snitches the right to speak to an attorney, which they already had.  The new law won’t stop cops from using people in drug rehab as snitches, because most of the people who could be leveraged into becoming a snitch are low-level non-violent offenders who’d likely be sentenced to drug rehab.  And the new law won’t stop cops from using non-violent offenders as snitches against violent predators, because again, cops don’t have much leverage against the violent offenders.

In other words, aside from possibly having to say “We cannot guarantee you a reduced sentence and you may wish to speak to an attorney” before they frighten and intimidate the next Rachel Hoffman into becoming a snitch, it’s business as usual in Florida.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox calls for debate on marijuana legalization
2. Allen Stanford was ‘US government informer’
3. FL Gov. Crist signs Rachel Hoffman’s Law
4. Depressed mum hanged herself while on cannabis

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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.

From Tampabay.com 29 Apr 09 – The House just unanimously approved a bill that would create greater safeguards for police informants — nearly a year after the death of Florida State University grad Rachel Hoffman.

“Depending on your age, Rachel could have been your sister and Rachel could have been your daughter,” said Rep. Peter Nehr, R-Tarpon Springs, the bill sponsor. “Rachel Hoffman’s death was unnecessary and unneeded.”

But the bill (HB 271) has lost some of its force after law enforcement groups complained provisions would hurt the widespread use of informants. Hoffman’s parents, who watched from the House gallery, say they will fight to strengthen the legislation next year. Among their wishes: That people in drug treatment programs not be used as informants.

Hoffman agreed last April to become a police informer after officers found marijuana and ecstasy in her Tallahassee apartment. The 23-year-old was found dead of gunshots on May 9 after police gave her $13,000 to buy 1,500 ecstasy pills, cocaine and a gun from suspected drug dealers. Two men have been arrested.

Rachel Hoffman was a bright young Florida State University graduate arrested for possession, and subsequently forced into drug deal by Tallahassee Police who unintentionally arranged her brutal murder. (Just a reminder for our readers that on issues related to marijuana, police are NOT your protector, they are your oppressor).

As crazy as this sounds, that is exactly what police did. They arranged for her to meet several known violent criminals, left her completely alone with them, the criminals killed her, and now she’s dead. No charges have been filed against any of the law enforcement officers that unintentionally arranged her murder.

If you are ever asked, compelled, or ordered to participate in an undercover narcotics operation as the result of a “deal” you’ve made with the DA, you need to understand they do NOT have your best interested in mind. Their only concern is “the bust”, above and beyond your safety. Your concern should be your safety above everything else. Rachael Hoffman would still be alive today and would likely be finishing her culinary school this spring if she would have said, “no” to being a narc.

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Hemp Headlines

1. FL House passes ‘Rachel’s law’ to protect police informants
2. Iowa Pharmacy Board must study whether marijuana is accepted medical use
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4. Eugene, Oregon mayor proclaims Apr 30 – May 6 “Medical Marijuana Awareness Week”

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Stash Special: PhillyNORML / NORML NJ 420 Freedom Rally

• Major Neill Franklin from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

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You Stashers rock!  Plenty of comments and chatter over in the Guestbook, and 95 of you signed up on Day One.  Consider yourself the O.S. (Original Stashers) – come meet me at Seattle Hempfest and tell me you’re an O.S. and I’ll have li’l suttin suttin fo ya.  Holla!

(Oh, that sounds funnier than it types, especially coming from a translucent spud like me.)

Today on the Stash something a little different.  We talk to a lot of doctors, activists, politicians, and musicians, but every so often, we like to talk to your average everyday cannabis consumer.  Tim Carll was a student at the University of Central Florida who found himself in a Rachel Hoffman-like predicament with law enforcement: busted for weed, set up for a drug sting involving massive amounts of ecstasy pills, and a scared 20-year-old facing the possibility of death.

Not from marijuana.  From prohibition.  Could be you.  Could be your kid.  Could be a niece or nephew or even just the part-time server/student you remember from your favorite lunch hangout.  Marijuana’s never killed anyone.  Marijuana prohibition has killed quite a few.

Then stick out your toungue and say “ahh,” Dr. Mitch Earleywine is here with your Cannabis Science.  Today we look at teens and the reasons they don’t use or quit using marijuana.  Here’s a shocker: it’s not because it’s hard to get or expensive.