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.

TALLAHASSEE – A state lawmaker is proposing a bill to drug test unemployed Floridians collecting unemployment benefits.

“Let’s make sure it’s going to people who truly are ready, able, and willing to work. People who can’t pass a random drug test really probably shouldn’t be collecting our unemployment money,” said bill sponsor Senator Mike Bennett, a Republican from Sarasota.

Last month the state of Florida paid out $117-million in unemployment benefits.

Bennett’s bill calls for 10 percent of those who file an unemployment claim to undergo random testing. Also, 10 percent of people already receiving unemployment benefits would be tested.

Leaving the unemployment office, Dorothy Odie explained how these days “the unemployed” includes “the hard-working” and people who’ve worked their whole lives. “These people that’s coming here, they’re working people that have been on their jobs. One man I met today, he’d been on his job 30 years. So, you’re labeling people,” she said.

But Bennett insists that’s not the case. “Whether soft drugs or hard drugs, get clean first so the next person who hires you will not have the liability of having you on the payroll.”

The proposal says anyone who failed their drug test couldn’t get unemployment benefits for one year.

The bill still has to go to legislative committee. The cost of each drug test would come out of individual benefits.

via Drug tests for the unemployed.

So you’re going to take money out of people’s unemployment benefits to drug test them, and if they fail, deny them benefits for a year.  I see.  In an economy where all the spending has frozen up, you want to see to it that people who are out of work have even less money to spend.  In an economy where houses are being foreclosed on at record rates, you want to have more homeless people.

Unemployment benefits are not a privilege and they are not your money, Senator.  When you work, you are paying money into an insurance pool that repays you if you are unemployed — and remember, you can’t get these unemployment benefits if you are fired for cause, like if you were fired for failing a drug test at work, for instance.  People on unemployment trying to find new work often face the hurdle of passing a drug test anyway.  To have built up the time to qualify for unemployment, you may have already passed pre-employment and random testing on the job in the past.

Being laid off and collecting a benefit you’ve worked hard and paid into all your life is not probable cause to believe you’re committing drug crimes.  Being unemployed does not give the state the right to violate your privacy.  If the concern is that unemployment benefits are being used to support “drug habits”, create new “unemployment bucks” like Food Stamps that can’t be used to buy liquor, either.  Surely pounding the forty-ouncers isn’t a “liability of having you on the payroll” any business wants when hiring you, right?  While you’re at it, how about reducing people’s unemployment benefits 50% if they are a cigarette smoker?  Health care costs for smokers are a huge business liability, right?

UPDATE: Based on reporting from a Stasher in the Comments, it seems the Rachel Morningstar Hoffman story will air on Dateline NBC this Friday, Jan 23, at 10pm ET.  Unless, of course, a plane lands in a river. — “R”R

Don’t miss tonight’s Dateline NBC (10pm ET/PT, 9pm CT/MT) for their full hour of coverage of the case of Rachel Morningstar Hoffman.  She was a 23-year-old FSU grad who was killed during a botched drug sting last May.  She had to go on an undercover buy/bust operation as part of her plea deal for minor possession of cannabis.  The cops lost track of her, and her body was found a few days later.

Or not.  Looks like we get one-hour of thrilling coverage of the airplane that landed in the Hudson River.  You know, the story where NOBODY died?  The story that directly impacts perhaps a couple hundred of people?  It’s much more important to cover a story about a 1-in-11 million risk faced by the 11% of the population that travels by air.  One dead Florida girl who sold pot and was murdered due to police negligence in a drug sting with two known violent felons?  We’ll get to that when there’s nothing more important going on.

You can tell Dateline NBC what you think about the programming change at Dateline@NBCUNI.com.

Tallahassee Democrat continuing coverage of Rachel Hoffman’s case

NORML Daily Audio Stash previous stories on Rachel Hoffman

“Negligent conduct” on the part of the Tallahassee Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration contributed to the May shooting death of 23-year-old police informant Rachel Hoffman, according to a Leon County grand jury.

The 15 members of the grand jury issued a scathing report, called a “presentment,” on Friday after three days of testimony from witnesses and law-enforcement officers. The grand jury also indicted Andrea Green, 25, and Deneilo Bradshaw, 23, in connection with Hoffman’s death.

The grand jurors said TPD failed to ensure Hoffman’s safety from the beginning.

“Less than 15 minutes after she drove away from the offices of TPD, she drove out of the sight of the officers who assured her they would be right on top of her watching and listening the whole time,” the grand jurors wrote. “She cried out for help as she was shot and killed, and nobody was there to hear her.”

The jurors said the TPD’s command staff was negligent in its supervision and review of the controlled drug buy. The plan that Jones and others approved did not mention a gun. The amount of drugs was listed incorrectly. It didn’t discuss the terms or location of the deal.

“There is no doubt that Andrea Green and Deneilo Bradshaw are the ones that brutally murdered Rachel Hoffman. But through poor planning and supervision and a series of mistakes through the transaction, TPD handed Ms. Hoffman to Bradshaw and Green to rob and kill her as they saw fit,” the grand jurors wrote.

Hoffman set up drug buys and made contact with potential “targets” without officers’ knowledge. She told one target and other acquaintances she was an informant. Her inexperience, immaturity and care-free attitude made it unlikely that she could complete the buy, according to the grand jury.

“Although Ms. Hoffman had a well-established business of cannabis distribution with her friends, she had no experience with dealing in ecstasy, cocaine or firearms,” the grand jurors wrote.

The police department and DEA treated a 23-year-old pot enthusiast as if she were the Medellin cartel, dangled her as nothing more than bait for two violent thugs, and lost contact with her on a major sting involving a firearm for 36 hours.  Negligence is putting it nicely.

The supervisors and lead officer in the botched drug sting that ended in informant Rachel Hoffman’s death have been placed on administrative leave with pay by the Tallahassee Police Department.

TPD spokesman David McCranie said the officers are Capt. Chris Connell; Lt. Taltha White; Sgt. Rod Looney; Sgt. David Odom; and Investigator Ryan Pender.

[TPD] also doubled the number of internal-affairs officers assigned to the case from the normal three to six, to speed up the investigation.

How nice. Your incompetence and zeal for dehumanizing marijuana users leads to a paid vacation.

According to personnel files, the Rachel Hoffman case represents the fifth time since 1999 that Lt. Taltha White has been investigated by the Tallahassee Police Department’s internal-affairs unit and the second time an investigation involved a confidential informant.

White was the lieutenant who approved the controversial drug-and-gun bust involving Hoffman on May 7, and the one who was heavily criticized in the grand-jury presentment that was released Aug. 1.

“Although a lieutenant was monitoring the radio transmissions, she was also tasked with a computer audit at the same time and was somewhat distracted,” the presentment read. “Further, the lieutenant had only been supervising the unit for less than three months and had no prior experience in the VICE unit.”

During the course of the grand-jury testimony, White also admitted that she did not read the operational plan (OPS) before signing off on it.

Sorry, Lieutenant, signing off on dangerous stupid plans without reading them is a job reserved for Congress.

Rachel Hoffman was portrayed by friends as a fairly low-level pot dealer who mainly sold to college students to support her own habit.

But grand jurors, who last week deemed Tallahassee police negligent in the confidential informant’s death in May, reported that police said Hoffman told them she was selling 10 to 15 pounds of marijuana a week out of her Tallahassee apartment.

The idea that Hoffman was selling such a staggering amount of pot — at least $35,000 a week by Drug Enforcement Administration estimates — was met with skepticism by her family’s attorney and experts.

When Hoffman’s apartment was raided by police in April, a probable-cause statement said they found about 5 ounces of pot, a ledger used to record drug transactions and a digital scale. They make no note of any large sum of cash.

It was at that time Hoffman was recruited to become a confidential informant.

“This makes no sense. She would have been a major dealer,” said Fred Shenkman, emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Florida. “They wouldn’t have treated her the way they treated her … This is a real incongruity.”

Shenkman said it would be almost impossible for her friends and family not to notice if Hoffman was selling up to 15 pounds of pot a week.

“Unless she is the most stoic, disciplined hippie ever,” he said.

In Tallahassee, a pound of marijuana goes for between $3,500 and $4,000, according to conservative estimates by the DEA, McCranie said.

So read the ledger.  If she kept track of her drug transactions, and she were dealing 10-15 pounds a week, you’d have quite a few entries in that ledger.

When you do the math, $35,000 a week works out to $1.82 million a year.    You’d think someone with that kind of cash flow would really stand out in a college student crowd, don’t you?

Updated: Meggs says he won’t prosecute DEA cases because of Hoffman case | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee Democrat
Willie Meggs, state attorney for the 2nd Judicial Circuit, has written a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement saying he will no longer prosecute federal Drug Enforcement Administration cases in state court.

Meggs, in the letter dated Wednesday to FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey, said, “Due to recent events, please be advised the State Attorney’s Office for the Second Judicial Circuit will no longer prosecute cases in State Court when agents from the DEA are involved. Should your agency join a task force or use federal DEA agents during your investigation you should first contact the U.S. Attorney to make certain that the U.S. Attorney will take your case.”

Meggs is seething mad that three agents from the DEA were not allowed by the agency to testify to a grand jury investigating the botched police drug war sting leading to the murder of Rachel Hoffman.  So if DEA won’t cooperate in a Florida investigation, Meggs has decided Florida won’t cooperate in any DEA investigations.

It’s rare to see two drug war agencies battling each other.  As the accountability for this massive drug war failure is sought, look for all these police agencies to play a mammoth game of CYA.  Unfortunately, it is not one agency or cop to blame, it is the entire structure of federal prohibition of marijuana that is to blame, a system that provides incentive to law enforcement to use young innocent responsible cannabis users as bait for the larger bust.

Donate to the Rachel Morningstar Hoffman Foundation

Nearly two weeks ago, an SSDP member lost her life in the crossfire of the War on Drugs.

Rachel Hoffman had just graduated from Florida State University, with plans to attend culinary school. As an undergrad, she was popular among her group of friends, many of whom she met through her involvement in FSU’s chapters of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Like many college students, she shared marijuana with her friends, and would often “go in” on larger amounts in order to save money. And that’s how she got busted.

Rachel was threatened with prison time, then promised a slap on the wrist if she agreed to wear a wire and set up a deal with her suppliers. Tallahassee police gave her $13,000 in cash and told her to purchase 1,500 ecstasy pills, 2 ounces of cocaine, and a handgun. They never informed her attorney, family, or the state prosecutor before they sent Rachel into the lions’ den that day. And nobody had the chance to tell her she was in way over her head.

After police found Rachel’s body, they held a press conference and blamed her for her own death. Among Rachel’s family and friends, sadness quickly turned into outrage and action. Last Wednesday, hundreds of students marched in protest of the role the Tallahassee Police Department played in Rachel’s death. They held signs that read “Who Killed Rachel?” and “No More Drug War” while wearing t-shirts from SSDP and other allied organizations. Please take a moment to watch this powerful video of the demonstration:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In her memory, Rachel’s parents have established the Rachel Morningstar Foundation, the goal of which is to pass a law requiring legal advice to be sought before a civilian can consent to undercover work. They will also work to decriminalize marijuana in Florida. Please make a generous donation to the foundation today, and include a personal note to Rachel’s parents if you are moved to do so.

In the meantime, Rachel’s murderers must be brought to justice. But the drug dealers who pulled the trigger clearly aren’t the only ones responsible for her death. They are the police who coerced her into being an informant and the politicians who justify waging a War on Drugs to “protect young people from drugs,” while using those very same young people as pawns in their deadly game. On Wednesday, one protester’s sign poignantly asked, “Do you feel safe?”

ABC News has now picked up on the story in Florida about Rachel Hoffman, the young woman murdered after Tallahassee police inserted her into a dangerous undercover drug sting.  More details have been uncovered, such as the discovery of over five ounces of marijuana at Hoffman’s home, along with scales and baggies.

ABC News: Cops Pressed to Explain Dead Informant
In addition to the 2007 drug charge, authorities also released information about an underage drinking charge Hoffman faced in 2003, as well as multiple instances in which she was targeted by thieves — crimes he said are often related to drugs.

“They’re basically pointing the finger at Rachel,” said [defense attorney Johnny] Devine, who served as Hoffman’s attorney after the 2007 bust, in an interview with ABC News. “What does her underage drinking charge have anything to do with what happened to her?”

[Devine] wanted to know why, as her attorney, he did not know about this offer from police — something McCranie said was not uncommon.

“They’re asking her to do something that would put her in a life or death situation,” Devine said. “I have never had any time where the police department has not called me to tell me this is what’s happening.”

Further, Devine said, Hoffman did not have any previous experience with firearms, but authorities knew from the terms of the deal that she would be confronted by a pair of men — one of whom had a violent criminal past — who were carrying at least one gun.

“She had never worked as an undercover agent,” he said. “She had no experience or training in this matter.”

Finally, Hoffman challenged police reluctance to at least share with her family members some details from the murder scene to allow them to grieve.

“They are left to speculate and guess about the cause of her death,” he said. “Was she tortured? Was she beaten?”

While the police continue to defend the decisions that drew Hoffman into her role as an informant, even William “Willie” Meggs, the state’s attorney in Tallahassee who will ultimately prosecute Green and Bradshaw, said that his office should have known about the April raid at Hoffman’s apartment and her subsequent deal with authorities.

“We would have liked to have known and we did not,” Meggs told ABC News, stressing that as a participant in the drug court, Hoffman already had a relationship with a case worker in the program and should not have any kind of drug interaction involving police without his office knowing.

The police continue to play “blame the victim”, saying that what killed Hoffman was two murderers and her “drug lifestyle”.  But Hoffman was only involved in small amounts of marijuana and was never involved with guns, so to send her on a drug buy for 1500 ecstasy pills, two ounces of coke, and a handgun was completely out of her character.  This is not the kind of nuance that is lost on hard-core drug dealers, especially when you have been recently released from police custody and you ask to meet them in a public place.