Over the weekend, I’ll put up a more thorough review of the last few days in the trial of Ryan Frederick, the Chesapeake, Virginia man charged with capital murder for shooting a police officer during a botched drug raid.

But here’s one item of note: Earlier this week, we heard the unlikely testimony of Steven Wright, the police informant in the case. Wright gave damning statements about buying marijuana from Frederick dozens of times over about a six month period, and state that Frederick threatened to kill both him in his family. Wright also admitted to both illegally breaking into Frederick’s home three days before the raid (to collect probable cause for the search warrant), and to lying to the police about said break-in for months. His testimony was not only harmful to Frederick, it helped assuage allegations that Chesapeake police officers were sending informants to break into private homes in order to look for evidence for search warrants.

Wright has been in jail since last October on several charges stemming from his theft and use of credit cards, including a charge of grand larceny. He was supposed to appear in court last December on those charges, but that appearance was delayed, rather conveniently, until two days after his testimony in Frederick’s trial.

Yesterday, Wright was released on bond. He still hasn’t been charged for breaking in to Frederick’s home, nor has he been charged for obstructing the investigation of Frederick and the raid by allegedly lying to police about the break-in for months.

Big development in the Ryan Frederick trial today.

This morning, Frederick’s attorney, James Broccoletti, requested and was granted a recess after three attorneys contacted him last night with concerns about state’s witness Jamal Skeeter, a jailhouse snitch who testified on Tuesday.

According to local TV station WVEC, one of the attorneys was actually another prosecutor, Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney Earle Mobley.

Broccoletti said Mobley told him Skeeter is well-known to prosecutors for giving false testimony and is considered a “professional witness.”

Ebert apparently told the court, “he did not realize Skeeter had questionable credibility.”

His long felony record and wholly implausible testimony didn’t give it away?

MORE: From the Virginian-Pilot:

A spokesman for Mobley said this morning that Portsmouth prosecutors had used Skeeter as a witness but stopped. The spokesman, Bill Prince, could not immediately identify what cases Skeeter testified in.

“We didn’t find him to be trustworthy. We felt an obligation to turn that over to the Chesapeake people,” Prince said this morning. “We got to the point where we wouldn’t use him anymore.”

To sit on such information, he said, would be “offensive.”

Mobley’s office also sent a letter last year to the Norfolk commonwealth’s attorney upon learning that Skeeter was scheduled to testify against a homicide suspect.

Norfolk did not use Skeeter as a witness.

You don’t often hear about one state’s attorney undermining another’s case in the midst of a trial. Mobley deserves a ton of credit, here.

Informant and jailhouse snitch testimony dominated yesterday’s proceedings at the Ryan Frederick trial. Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). My prior coverage of his trial here.  Virginian-Pilot coverage of yesterday’s events here.  Coverage from the local libertarian blog Tidewater Liberty here.

The star for most of yesterday was Steven Wright, the informant who tipped police off to Frederick, and who illegally broke into Frederick’s home three nights before before the raid to obtain probable cause.

A few observations, before I excerpt from the Virginian-Pilot’s coverage of his testimony:

• The Virginian-Pilot article doesn’t mention it, but Wright was arrested a few days prior to the raid on charges of credit card theft and fraud. Those charges were dropped shortly after the raid, then reinstated months later, when Wright was arrested again. He was due to stand trial last month. Conveniently, his trial date was moved to tomorrow, two days after his testimony against Frederick.

• Wright’s portrayal of Frederick as a vengeful killer with a gangsta’ vibe runs contrary to everything I’ve heard about Frederick from neighbors, coworkers, and friends and family.

• According to Wright and the police detectives the state has put on the stand, Wright not only illegally broke into Frederick’s home, he lied to police about it for months, possibly compromising not only a drug investigation, but an investigation into the killing of a police officer. Yet he’s never been charged—not for the break-in, nor for lying about it for months.

Here’s the Virginian-Pilot’s account of Wrights testimony:

Ryan Frederick threatened to kill police informant Steven Rene Wright after learning that Wright broke into his garage and stole five marijuana plants, Wright testified at Frederick’s murder trial Tuesday.

“I had a week to turn myself in to him or he was going to go after my family,” Wright said from the witness stand. “He said he was going to… kill me if I didn’t come.”

[...]

Wright said he and a friend, Renaldo Turnbull Jr., broke into Frederick’s garage on Jan. 14, 2008, and stole five of about 10 plants growing in a sophisticated hydroponic tent. They then went to another friend’s house where they made a cell phone video of the plants.

The plants were never turned over to police, he said, but Frederick learned Wright took them and called with the threats.

Wright said he met Frederick earlier in 2007 while dating the sister of Frederick’s fiancee.

In the six to eight months prior to the raid, Wright said, he’d been to Frederick’s house at 932 Redstart Ave. 30 to 50 times; he saw the marijuana growing operation at almost every visit; and he smoked the drug with Frederick and others. He said Frederick even explained to him how the hydroponic system produced superior cannabis.

Wright said he became a police informant after seeking help from a drug dealer in an unrelated case who threatened him. He said police paid him $60 for information that led to the arrest of that dealer.

Despite being limited by the judge to testifying about one or two marijuana sales between November 2007 and the night of the raid, Wright blurted out that he bought marijuana from Frederick some 20 to 30 times throughout 2007.

Wright insists he was never asked by Chesapeake police to break into Frederick’s home. Rather, he said he did so voluntarily as part of a scheme he planned with several friends. They’d steal half the plants, then leave the other half for the police to find after Wright tipped them off. The problem for the prosecution, here, is that in order to believe Wright’s testimony, they’ll also have to accept his own testimony that he’s a habitual liar who routinely spins out falsehoods when it’s in his interest.

The state then called Jamal Skeeter, a jailhouse snitch with a long felony record.  From the Tidewater Liberty blog:

Mr. Skeeter said that he had been in the Chesapeake jail for a period of about 10 days in June of 2008. He had been brought here from the Correctional facility at Lawrenceville, where he was serving a 14 year sentence. He was here to testify as a witness in another case.

He wore red coveralls, indicating that he is in solitary confinement. (Mr. Frederick has been in solitary confinement throughout his entire stay at the jail). He said that in June he was in the gym (on his one hour daily “break”) when “someone” pointed Mr. Frederick out (thru a glass door) as “the guy who shot a policeman.” Mr. Skeeter somehow arranged to speak to Mr. Frederick (through a glass door) and that Mr. Frederick immediately “broke out in a story” saying that he knew he was shooting a cop, but that he was trying to get off on self-defense.

[...]

He said Mr. Frederick told him that he was high when the police got to his house, and that he had hollow points in his gun. When asked about Mr. Frederick’s demeanor, Mr. Skeeter said he “was trying to be a gangsta” and didn’t seem sorry for what he had done.

[...]

Mr. Skeeter claimed that he has made no deal with anyone, and that he’s doing this (testifying against Mr. Frederick) for Det Shivers family because “it ain’t right.”

To sum, the career felon Mr. Skeeter took interest in Frederick after “someone” told him Frederick shot a cop. In their first conversation, through a glass door, during an hour-long break in the jail’s gym, Frederick apparently confessed everything to Mr. Skeeter.  Skeeter, the felon, then contacted prosecutors, not to get time off his own sentence, but because of the overwhelming sense of empathy he felt for the dead cop’s family, and because Frederick’s confession violated his own personal sense of right and wrong.

Sure.  Sounds plausible.

The state then called jailhouse informant Lamont Malone, who is serving time for seven different felonies.  Malone has already testified once against someone else, resulting in a reduction in his sentence from life to about 19 years.

Again from Tidewater Liberty:

He said he is currently in the Chesapeake jail (he has also been in Suffolk and Portsmouth), and has “gotten to know” Mr. Frederick. He said Mr. Frederick’s jailhouse nickname is “Calvin.” He said that Mr. Frederick calls his gun “Roscoe” and that Mr. Frederick shot the police after they kicked in his door because he “panicked” and “had to get rid of his product.” He said that Mr. Frederick told him that he grew “Hydro” and that he had to get rid of his plants. He didn’t say how he did this.

He said that Mr. Frederick told him that he wanted to keep his case in Chesapeake because of the support, and that he expects that his lawyer is going to get him off.. He said that Mr. Frederick has expressed no remorse.

[...]

He said that Mr. Frederick makes unkind comments about Mrs. Shivers, and that he doesn’t seem sorry for what he did. He said that Mr. Frederick has been “laughing it up” with another prisoner, who is facing similar charges.

Laying it on thick, aren’t they?

When weighing yesterday’s testimony against Frederick’s story, it’s probably useful to remember that Frederick had no prior criminal record, and had a full-time job that required him to get up early in the morning (with kind words from his employers). Friends and neighbors described him to me last year as a shy, introverted guy who smoked pot recreationally.

It’ll be interesting to see if Renaldo Turnbull gets called to testify, and what his testimony might look like if he does.

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). Prior coverage of his trial here.

(Note: My analysis of the trial is based on coverage by the Virginian-Pilot and by local blogger Don Tabor.)

On Friday, the jury heard more testimony police officers who were on the raid. It’s notable that the testimony from the various officers varied about which and how many announcements individual officers heard. One officer who was with the second raid team that hit Frederick’s garage, for example, says he only heard one announcement, from a female officer. This, even though he was outside with the other raid team, only a short distance away. Frederick, meanwhile, was sleeping, separated from the officers by walls, and distracted by barking dogs and likely his own paranoia from having just been burglarized.

The second raid team was also slowed down by a fence, and entered the garage after the other team began taking down Frederick’s door.  That means the garage raid team’s announcements wouldn’t have been a factor in determining whether or no Frederick should have known the people invading his home were police.

One thing I neglected to mention from Thursday’s proceedings that’s worth rehashing: Just as they did at a preliminary hearing last March, the police again said they moved to break into Frederick’s home after one officer peered through a window and saw a moving human figure. If the purpose of the knock-and-announce requirement is to give the home’s occupant time to answer the door and avoid a violent confrontation, a figure moving toward the door shouldn’t be a reason to commence with the battering ram. Doing so renders moot the whole point of knock-and-announce. If the cops see you move to answer the door, they invade because you’ve blown their cover.  Of course if you don’t answer the door, they’ll also be taking down your door.

The other two notable items from Friday involved more shenanigans from the prosecution. During opening statements, prosecutor James Willett told the jury Frederick was “stoned out of his mind,” and “in a blind rage” when he shot Det. Jarrod Shivers the night of the raid.

During his own opening, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti showed video of an interview with CPD Det. Edward Winkelspecht, who said Frederick didn’t appear high after his arrest. Despite the fact that his name was on the prosecution’s witness list, when Broccoletti said in court Friday that he’d like to hear from Det. Winkelspecht, the Virginian-Pilot reports,

“…prosecutors told Judge Marjorie T. Arrington that the officer was unavailable to testify because he was in Georgia for training and was expected to be there for weeks, if not months.”

Seems odd that the prosecution wouldn’t have ensured that such an important witness would be around for questioning—or, if you’re sufficiently cynical, it isn’t odd at all.

At Broccoletti’s request, the judge compelled the officer to come back. Det. Winkelspecht then testified today that Frederick was coherent and responsive the night of the raid, that his eyes weren’t bloodshot, and that he had no concerns about Frederick not understanding or comprehending his rights. The police also apparently either didn’t give Frederick a drug test, or they did and the results either weren’t positive or weren’t conclusive.

All of which means Willett had zero evidence for the “stoned out of his mind” and “blind rage” description of Frederick he made to jurors in his opening statement. I’m not sure what Broccoletti can do about that, other than to remind the jury during his closing, and to take note of it all for the appeal should Frederick be convicted

The other major detail from Friday involves a videotaped reenactment of the raid conducted by police and prosecutors that the state has fought vigorously to keep the defense from seeing. From Tabor’s report:

Though the video was the product of a search warrant, the prosecution has maintained it was an internal ‘work product’ of the prosecution crafted to help them develop their theory of the case and not subject to discovery by the defense. They admitted that the defense was entitled to any measurements, drawings, photos or graphs resulting from the search, but not the video. But they also claimed they made no measurements, photos or drawings, only the video.

The problem is that the prosecution then entered a still from the video into evidence, which one of Frederick’s attorneys noticed included a string used to measure the trajectory of the fatal bullet. That’s pretty clearly a measurement, which means the prosecution wasn’t telling the truth about what’s in the video, and hasn’t given the defense all of the evidence it’s required to turn over. The judge ruled that the defense be allowed to view the video, and ordered the prosecution to look again to be sure it wasn’t holding any evidence that could be relevant to Frederick’s lawyers.

According to the Virginian-Pilot, the police also revealed today what they found in Frederick’s home—lights, tubing, and some books about growing marijuana. None of those things are illegal, though they do indicate—as Broccoletti conceded in his opening statement—that Frederick was likely growing marijuana. Broccoletti told the jury Frederick grew solely for his own use, and so far the prosecution has provided no evidence of selling or distribution. The police found no plants in the house or garage on the night of the raid, but did find misdemeanor amount of dried marijuana. Still, it looks like this will all boil down to whether this jury can look at the holes in the state’s case long enough to get beyond “growing pot + shot a cop.”

The jury was supposed to view Frederick’s home this afternoon (over the objections of the prosecution), but that visit was cancelled. The reports I’ve seen don’t say why.

Ryan Frederick is the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). My coverage of the first two days of his trial here.

I should note in these updates that I’m not actually in Chesapeake for the trial. My analysis of what’s happening is contingent on reporting from the trial from the Virginian-Pilot newspaper and from local blogger Don Tabor, who is writing up reports from notes he’s taking in the courtroom (and whom I’ve found to be pretty fair in his prior coverage of the case).

Yesterday began with the state calling Jarrond Shivers’ widow to the stand. I found this odd, and a couple of criminal defense attorneys I spoke with (both not related to the case) confirmed my suspicions. I don’t doubt Nicole Shivers’ grief, but her tearful testimony added nothing substantive to what’s at issue in this case: whether Ryan Frederick knew or should have known that the men breaking into his home were police officers. Shivers testified about her first date with her husband, about their relationship, and about the last time she saw him. This sort of testimony at least makes some sense during a sentencing hearing, but during the guilt phase of a criminal trial, it’s inappropriate. It’s only purpose is to spark juror emotions—to put in their head that a "not guilty" verdict may only inflame the widows’ grief.

According to Tabor, Frederick attorney James Broccoletti didn’t object to Shivers taking the stand, though it’s possible that he objected to her inclusion as a witness at an earlier hearing. Broccoletti didn’t respond to an email query (understandably, given that he’s in the middle of a trial). It’s possible that Broccoletti calculated that objecting to allowing Shivers to have her say would lose him sympathy with the jury, particularly if he thought he’d be overruled, anyway. I’d be interested in what readers with a criminal law background think of Nicole Shivers taking the stand.

The rest of the day was taken up by testimony from police officers involved in the raid. They reiterated the claim that they knocked and announced themselves repeatedly. Tabor found their testimony believable. I’ve heard from others at the trail who found them less credible.  But I’m not sure their credibility matters. Even taking the officers’ testimony at face value, from the first knock until the battering ram took out the lower panel of his front door, Frederick had at most 25 seconds to wake up, gauge what was going on outside his home, and determine what to do about it. This, while his dogs were going nuts, and after he’d been burglarized days earlier (by the police department’s own informant).

A few other items that came out yesterday that are worth noting:

•  On the day of the raid, Frederick bought two dead bolt locks for his door. A relatively minor point, but it helps establish his state of mind the night of the raid.

•  Broccoletti conceded that Frederick did at some point grow marijuana plants for personal use, but Frederick adamantly denies ever selling any. The police had no evidence at the time to suggest otherwise. (I don’t know what the state has in store for the trial.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they trotted out a jailhouse snitch claiming to have bought marijuana from Frederick). They attempted no controlled buys from Frederick. They surveilled his home and found nothing unusual. The affidavit mentions no complaints from neighbors (the neighbors I’ve spoken to speak highly of him). This raid wasn’t conducted on a community menace. It was conducted on a guy who smoked and sometimes grew pot in his own home, for his own use.

• Indeed, the police officers who testified yesterday conceded that the only evidence they had on Frederick was the word of their informant, Steven Wright. Wright at the time was being held on felony charges related to credit card theft. According to the officers who testified, Wright had helped them on one prior case, and was paid $50. 

I should first add that this testimony conflicts with what Renaldo Turnbull (the other man who broke into Frederick’s house with Wright) told me in June, and with what he told the Virginian-Pilot last February. Turnbull said both he and Wright had been working with the police for months, and that the police had encouraged them to illegally break into private homes to obtain probably cause for search warrants.

But let’s assume the police officers are telling the truth. If so, that means they broke into Frederick’s house after nightfall, using a battering ram, based solely on the word of a shady informant who at the time was facing his own felony charges. Not only that, but he didn’t even have the marijuana plants he claimed to have taken. Those plants, if they even exist, have never been in police possession.

• From the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts, Shivers’ partner in the Frederick case, testified at length about the history of the investigation, the informant used and the surveillance conducted.

He described how they pulled up to the house that night in an unmarked van with the lights off. A second group was in an unmarked car, and a marked patrol unit rolled up past the house.

Dressed mostly in black, they “approached in a stealth manor,” [sic] Roberts said. Shivers was to be the first through the door.

They started pounding on the door, shouting and then trying to break it down with a battering ram.

“I wanted, without a doubt, Mr. Frederick to know that we were the police outside,” Detective Sgt. Scott Chambers said.

This doesn’t make sense. If they wanted Frederick to know there were police outside "without a doubt," why approach the house in a "stealth-like manner"?  Why dress in black, and pull up silently in black, unmarked cars? If they wanted Frederick to know "without a doubt" that the police were outside his home, they should have used lights and sirens.  Perhaps a bullhorn.

This is the typical position the police take in these cases. They simultaneously maintain that the ninja tactics are necessary to take the suspect by surprise—and that the suspect should have known it was the police who were breaking into his home. The only way to resolve those two positions is to say that the police want to be stealth until they get to the door, at which point they want to be loud and boisterous.  That is, they want to take the suspect by surprise until just before entry, at which point they want to make it clear who they are. That puts an incredible amount of pressure on, in this case and others, a sleeping person to wake up and correctly ascertain what’s going on.

(I’d encourage readers to experiment sometime.  Lay down in a bedroom and have a friend pound on your front door and yell.  See if you can decipher what they’re saying, even while awake.)

• As I discussed yesterday, the other gaping hole in the prosecution’s case is that they’re maintaining that even though Steven Wright told them Frederick’s home was broken into three nights before the raid, and even though they knew that Wright was in Frederick’s home the same night it was burglarized, they didn’t know until months later that it was actually Wright who conducted the burglary, and that he conducted it specifically (and illegally) to obtain probable cause for the search warrant.

Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

Roberts’ testimony drew the most intense cross-examination after he named the informant – Steven Wright, whose full name is Steven Rene Wright. The police have refused until the trial to name him.

Also for the first time, Wright was identified as the person who alerted police to a break-in at Frederick’s house days before the raid.

Wright failed, however, to tell police that it was he who broke into Frederick’s garage and stole several marijuana plants, despite being asked “15 times,” Roberts said. Police didn’t learn that until about three months ago, he said.

Again, lots of problems, here. If they had to ask Wright "15 times," might that speak to his trustworthiness as an informant—particularly one on whose word would be the sole reason you conduct a home invasion raid?

Moreover, why would Wright possibly implicate himself by telling the police about the burglary in the first place? Did the police think Frederick invited him in?  Did they ask Wright how he was able to take several plants without Frederick noticing?

The state seems to be arguing that Wright came to the police that night and said something to the effect of, "Okay, I found several marijuana plants in the guy’s garage tonight.  I took a few. Don’t ask me how I got them. Also, I don’t have the actual plants anymore. Must have lost them. But I’m sure they were marijuana. Trust me on that. Also, somebody broke into his garage tonight. But it wasn’t me."

And they bought it?  In fact, they not only bought it, they bought it enough that they didn’t feel they needed to do any further investigation before conducting a raid?

Seems to be that what Turnbull told me and the Virginia-Pilot is a far more plausible explanation. The cops had an arrangement with these guys. The cops looked the other way while their informants illegally broke into homes to get probable cause. That would explain why the cops knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been burglarized three nights earlier (and were recorded saying as much).

Finally, we still don’t know if Turnbull and Wright been charged for burglarizing Ryan Frederick’s home. If not, why not?

Today is the third day in the trial of Ryan Frederick, the 28-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing murder charges for killing a police officer during a drug raid (see this wiki for more on Frederick’s case). Tuesday primarily consisted of jury selection. Yesterday featured the opening statements.

I’m really in awe of the prosecution’s brazen strategy. According to the Virginian-Pilot, prosecutor James Willett argued in his opening that Frederick was “stoned out of his mind,” and “in a blind rage” at the time of the raid. Willett is apparently confident that no one on the jury has ever smoked marijuana. Frederic attorney James Broccoletti then asked the judge to admit into evidence a video in which a police detective flat-out says that Frederick didn’t appear high at the time of the raid. Moreover, in a recorded conversation taken shortly after the raid, Frederic says he didn’t know the men breaking into his home were the police. And he’s weeping.

As I suspected, the prosecution’s case is going to rely not just on the word of criminal informants, but of jailhouse snitches, too. Again from the Virginian-Pilot:

[Frederick] later told a jail inmate that if he had more ammunition, “he would have taken them all down,” a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

“He’s over there” in jail “bragging about it. He thinks he’s going to beat this charge,” James Willett, one of three prosecutors, told the jury during opening statements.

This is just absurd. Frederick was on suicide watch shortly after the raid. He surrendered after discovering the men breaking into his home were the police. Everyone I’ve spoken to who knows Frederick describes him as meek, shy, and introverted. It isn’t surprising that the prosecution could find a felon willing to say Frederick confessed to him in exchange for help with his own sentence. What will be surprising is if the jury is made aware of the deal he cut with prosecutors.

One other huge inconsistency in the state’s case came out in opening arguments. From the Tidewater Liberty blog:

[Willett] went on to describe how the police carefully planned how to serve the warrant and of the necessity of serving it with overwhelming force because they knew Frederick’s home had been burglarized and he would be wary.

Let’s set aside for a moment the incredibly dumb calculation that it would be a good idea to launch an aggressive, forced-entry, after-dark raid on a man the police knew would be “wary” because his home had just been burglarized. (A man who had no prior record and no history of violent behavior, by the way.)

We now know that the police informants were the ones who broke into Frederick’s home, and that this is how they obtained probable cause for the raid. Yet the police didn’t explain on their affidavit for the warrant that their probable cause had been obtained illegally, as is required by law. The state says this is because the police weren’t aware of that fact until months later. Yet they’re now arguing that the police knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s house had been broken into three nights earlier, even though Frederick never reported the break-in.

So the state is arguing the following:

• The police knew on the night of the raid that Frederick’s home had been burglarized three nights before the raid.

• The police learned of the break-in through their informant, Steven Wright. Frederick never reported the break-in.

• The police mention on the warrant that Wright was in Frederick’s home “72 hours” prior to the raid.

• Despite all of this, the police never made the connection that, despite his criminal record, and that he was desperate to get help on the felony charges he was facing at the time, their informant could possibly have been the one who committed the break in.

The Chesapeake police involved in this raid were either corrupt or stupid. They either lied on the warrant, or they were incredibly ignorant of what their informants were doing. The prosecution has apparently calculated that their case against Frederick is better served by “stupid.”

Frederick’s defense is moving for a mistrial given these inconsistencies in police and prosecution statements regarding the informants.

This, from the Virginian-Pilot’s latest article on the upcoming Ryan Frederick trial, actually threw a chill down my spine:

Also subpoenaed for the trial were five jail inmates who evidently had conversations with Frederick about the shooting. One of them is Marlon Reed, a Norfolk gang leader who already got one break on his sentence after testifying against co-defendants in his federal racketeering case.

I’ll make a prediction: At trial, we’ll hear about how the slight guy who has wept at nearly every public appearance since his arrest (one year ago yesterday, by the way) was openly boasting to other inmates about the cop he bagged. Or maybe they’ll say he tried to sell them marijuana.

To retrofit a phrase, once the state has determined you’re a nail in need of smashing, there’s really no limit to the number of hammers at its disposal.

Lots of interesting new information came out at a pre-trial hearing yesterday in Chesapeake, Virginia for Ryan Frederick, the man charged with capital murder for killing Det. Jarrod Shivers during a botched drug raid on Frederick’s home last January.

To briefly catch you up: Police were acting on an informant’s tip that Frederick was growing marijuana in his garage.  They found no plants, and only a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, which Frederick concedes was for personal use.  Both I and the Virginian-Pilot newspaper have since reported that the informant in the case, “Steven,” and another man who also says he was a police informant, Renaldo Turnbull, illegally broke into Frederick’s home three nights before the raid to look for probably cause, likely with the consent or at least the knowledge of the police.

Here’s what we learned yesterday:

• The State is now conceding that the police informant in the case illegally broke into Frederick’s home three nights before the raid.  Until now, they had either denied the connection or refused to comment.

• Frederick’s attorney released an audio recording taken in a police car shortly after the raid.  In it, Frederick tries to explain that he was confused and frightened because someone had broken into his home earlier in the week.  A police detective replies, “We know that.”  In a second recording, the detective says again, “First off, we know your house had been broken into. OK?”

• Yet according to the Virginian-Pilot, the State still insists that, “there is nothing whatsoever to suggest police knew at the time who broke in or who was involved. They said police learned months later that the parties involved included one of their informants.” (Emphasis mine.)

This doesn’t make any sense.  The affidavit the police filed to obtain the warrant notes that the police informant was in Frederick’s home three nights before the raid.  That’s exactly when the burglary happened.  The State is trying to argue that even though (a) the police knew their informant was in Frederick’s house three nights before the raid, and (b) the police knew someone had broken into Frederick’s home three nights before the raid, they apparently believed at the time that these two incidents were entirely coincidental, which is why they didn’t include on the search warrant affidavit the fact that their informant illegally broke into Frederick’s home to obtain probable cause.

There are two options here.  The Chesapeake police are either corrupt, or they’re naive to the point of incompetent.  The State apparently believes its case is better served by arguing the latter.

But there’s one other niggling detail that throws the State’s argument into a tailspin: Ryan Frederick never reported the break-in.  How, then, could the detective who questioned Frederick the night of the raid have known about it?

• Despite all of this, Judge Marjorie A.T. Arrington still denied a defense motion to suppress the warrant.  Which if nothing else I guess gives Frederick an early issue to put in his appeal should he be convicted.

• There’s now more than enough evidence to suggest that Chesapeake police had knowledge that the probable cause for the search warrant to Frederick’s home was obtained illegally.  Moreover, Turnbull’s interviews with me and with the Virginian-Pilot also raise the possibility that this wasn’t the first time a Chesapeake police informant burglarized a private residence to search for probable cause.  According to Turnbull, this was common practice.  And the police encouraged it.

It’s past time for an outside investigation, preferably from the Justice Department.

• Special Prosecutor Paul Ebert subpoenaed Virginian-Pilot reporter John Hopkins, the other journalist to speak to Turnbull. Ebert never called Hopkins to the stand. But the possibility that he could have caused Judge Arrington to bar Hopkins from the courtroom.  Hopkins—who has covered this case as well as I’ve seen any journalist cover one of these raids—now won’t be able to attend next month’s trial, either.

• The plants the informant Steven claimed to have found in Frederick’s home were never turned over to the police, and thus were never tested to confirm that they were actually marijuana. For all we know, they could still have been Japanese Maple saplings. Turnbull says Steven turned the plants over to the police.  The State is either arguing that the police didn’t know Turnbull and Steven removed the plants, or that they were aware, but never got around to asking Steven to turn them over.  Again, the choice here is corruption or incompetence.

That also means that this entire raid was conducted solely on the word of the informant Steven, a shady character who at the time was facing his own criminal charges for credit card fraud.  There were no controlled buys, and no significant surveillance.  The only corroborating investigation the police did were a few drive-bys of Frederick’s home. According to the affidavit, that should have lessened their suspicion, because they noted no unusual activity.

Prior posts on the Frederick case here.

UPDATE: Chesapeake-area blogger Rick Caldwell writes:

Ryan Frederick is being harassed by the city of Chesapeake, through code enforcement. His sister has recently moved back to the area, having lived overseas for several years. Since her arrival, she has received numerous notices from the city’s code enforcement division, regarding siding in disrepair, the condition of the pool in the back yard, and demanding the removal of two signs expressing support for Ryan from the front yard. The city has been sending these notices to Ryan at the jail as well, and is even threatening to sue over the pool.

Nice touch.

Like Mark Draughn, I’ve been somewhat skeptical of Barry Cooper, the former drug cop turned pitchman for how-to-beat-the-cops videos. He comes off as more of a huckster than a principled whistle-blower, which I think does the good ideas he stands for (police reform) more harm than good.

But damn. I have to hand it to him. This might be one of the ballsiest moves I’ve ever seen.

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

To clarify just a bit, according to Cooper, there was nothing illegal going on the bait house, just two evergreen trees and some grow lamps. There was no probable cause. So a couple of questions come up. First, how did the cops get turned on to the house in the first place? Cooper suspects they were using thermal imaging equipment to detect the grow lamps, a practice the Supreme Court has said is illegal. The second question is, what probable cause did the police put on the affidavit to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant? If there was nothing illegal going on in the house, it’s difficult to conceive of a scenario where either the police or one of their informants didn’t lie to get a warrant.

Cooper chose to bait the Odessa police department because he believes police there instructed an informant to plant marijuana on a woman named Yolanda Madden. She’s currently serving an eight-year sentence for possession with intent to distribute. According to Cooper, the informant actually admitted in federal court that he planted the marijuana. Madden was convicted anyway.

The story’s worth watching, not only to see if the cops themselves are held accountable for this, but whether the local district attorney tries to come up with a crime with which to charge Cooper and his assistants.  I can’t imagine such a charge would get very far, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone try.

Here’s some local media coverage:

A few items on the Ryan Frederick case:

• Two weeks ago, I emailed Virginian-Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty and public editor Joyce Hoffman asking for a correction for the errors and Dougherty’s last column about the Ryan Frederick case (explained in this post). So far, no correction. And it wasn’t a subtle error. Doughtery misstated some substantial facts about the informant scandal related to the case.

• A few people, like commenter FreedomFan, expressed concern about this comment from Frederick’s attorney James Broccoletti about the informants who broke into Frederick’s home:

In reality, the informer did not ‘observe’ marijuana plants, he stole them.

Is Broccoletti admitting Frederick was growing marijuana, here? I called Broccoletti’s office and spoke with another attorney working on the case. He said that comment was taken from the defense brief asking the judge to quash the warrant. The line was in response to the prosecution’s proffer, in the context of assuming that the plants were marijuana. He said the defense at this point is absolutely not conceding that whatever plants Turnbull and Steven may have taken from Frederick’s garage were marijuana. He wouldn’t comment on the Japanese maple theory.

My own feeling at this point is that there’s a good chance Frederick was growing a small amount of marijuana for personal use. Even assuming the worst, though, that doesn’t excuse the police breaking the law to obtain probable cause for a search warrant. The (lack of) investigation and paramilitary tactics were still wholly inappropriate, and of course Frederick shouldn’t punished for defending his home.

• A few people have also asked why we should believe Turnbull about the police misconduct, but not believe the portion of his statements to a Virginian-Pilot reporter where he says Frederick explicitly threatened the police. It’s a fair point–and the prosecution wants you to believe the latter, but not the former.

I guess the reason I’m inclined to believe one but not the other is because the police misconduct and intimidation of Turnbull fit the facts we already know about the case. Turnbull’s story about he and Steven working as informants, breaking into Frederick’s garage, and their ensuing arrests is backed by court records and the search warrant and affidavits. His story about Frederick calling his cell phone and threatening the cops, on the other hand, doesn’t fit what I’ve been told about Frederick by his friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers.

It also doesn’t make much sense. The prosecution’s theory is that after the burglary, Frederick got Turnbull’s number off his caller ID (Turnbull and Steven stupidly called Frederick before breaking in to his home to see if he was around). He then called Turnbull, said he knew the police were coming, and said he had “a plan for them, too.” Prosecutors say Frederick then got rid of the remaining marijuana plants, and waited for the police to come, so he could kill one of them.

Nothing about that passes the smell test. I don’t doubt that Frederick called Turnbull. He probably even threatened Turnbull, thinking it was Steven of an acquaintance of Steven’s (remember, Frederick and Steven knew one another–Steven once dated the sister of Frederick’s fiance). If Frederick planned to kill the cops, why would he go to the trouble of disposing of his marijuana plants? Why would he dispose of the plants, but leave the incriminating magazines, grow equipment, and keep around some marijuana for personal use? Why would he knowingly take on a team of raiding cops with a cheap handgun? Why would he give up seconds after killing just one of them? Why would he wait until his door had been busted in to start shooting?

As I wrote in my last reason piece on this case, it’s time for a federal investigation. We aren’t going to know what actually happened in this case until Turnbull and Steven are given immunity, and can speak freely without fear of Chesapeake authorities coming down on them for what they say.

I have an article up at Slate today explaining why Obama and Biden’s criminal justice proposals are misguided.

In particular, Obama is proposing to resurrect the COPS and Byrne grant programs, which shows an unfortunate, uncritical throw-federal-money-at-the-problem approach to crime.

Regular readers of this site know that Byrne and COPS have created all sorts of problems, including the further militarization of local police departments, statistics-driven drug policing, multi-jurisdictional task forces that lack accountability, and the disproportionate targeting of minorities, particularly blacks.

Obama has expressed some encourage sentiments on many of these issues. It’s too bad that he’s embracing policies that are going to make them worse.

Over at reason, I have an interview with DEA whistle-blower Sandy Gonzalez, who helped expose the gruesome murders at the House of Death.

Gonzalez reported that federal ICE agents knowingly looked the other way while one of their drug informants helped torture and murder as many as 12 people.  For his trouble, Gonzalez was forced into early retirement.

There has yet to be any independent investigation.  And the government is now trying to deport their own informant back to Mexico, where he’ll almost certainly be killed.

Bonus for Agitator readers:  I’ll post the unabridged, much longer interview here later this week.

I have a piece up at reason that lays out the latest developments in the Ryan Frederick case.

What a strange column by Virginian-Pilot columnist Kerry Dougherty this morning.

Dougherty, you might remember, wrote a column last February in which she excoriated bloggers, activists, and other journalists for daring to question the police in the Frederick case, then floated the idea (later adopted by the prosecution) that the state somehow deserves a change of venue because as they learn more about the case, the Chesapeake jury pool seems to be showing less and less deference toward the police.

This morning, Dougherty basically turns her column over to Chesapeake Police Chief Kelvin Wright, so he can refute what Renaldo Turnbull, Jr. said in interviews with me and with Virginian-Pilot reporter John Hopkins.

Doughtery begins with a non sequitur, invoking a prior case where a convicted murderer protested his innocence to the media, and was later proven to have lied. I guess her point is that criminals sometimes lie. It’s a bizarre way to begin a column defending the police, given that much of the state’s case against Ryan Frederick right now rests on the word of two men that the prosecutors acknowledge are criminals.

But it gets worse. In her rush to defend the honor of Chesapeake PD, Dougherty then botches the details of what Turnbull actually told her own paper’s reporter.

First, Dougherty writes:

In a front-page story in The Pilot last week, Turnbull not only claimed to be one of the confidential informants Chesapeake police relied upon to get a search warrant for the address of suspected drug dealer Ryan Frederick earlier this year, but he said the cops knew in advance that he and another thief were going to burglarize Frederick’s property.

The first part of this sentence simply isn’t true. Turnbull didn’t tell me or Hopkins that he was the informant in the Frederick case. He was rather clear that the other man, “Steven,” was the informant. Steven was picked up on charges of credit card theft and fraud, then cut a deal with the cops. According to Turnbull, Steven then contacted him to assist in the break-in, because the two had worked together with the police on other cases for several months. The two of them then broke into Frederick’s home. But it was Steven who worked directly with the cops on the Frederick case, and Steven is the one police refer to in the warrant as the informant. Turnbull explicitly told me he had no dealing with the police on Frederick’s case.

It was Steven who told Turnbull that the police had okayed the burglary ahead of time.  But that obviously jibed with Turnbull’ss own dealings with the police on prior occasions, where the police similarly either encouraged or gave tacit approval to burglaries for the purpose of gathering evidence.

Dougherty is flat wrong on the facts, here.

Dougherty makes a similar mistake later in the column:

The chief dismissed Turnbull’s claims that he had a private phone conversation with Shivers in which the detective gave him permission to burglarize Frederick’s garage.

It was Shivers’ partner who was the lead investigator on the Frederick case, Wright said, not Shivers himself. Besides that, Chesapeake officers communicate with informants only when another officer is present.

Wright said that when the inmate claimed he had an incriminating conversation with Shivers, he cast aspersions on the only officer in the city “who cannot defend himself.”

Again, that isn’t what Turnbull said. Here’s the passage from Hopkins’ article that Dougherty is referring to:

Turnbull said he met with Shivers once and talked with him on the phone on other occasions. During a meeting at a 7-Eleven store near the intersection of Battlefield Boulevard and Cedar Road in Chesapeake, Shivers introduced himself.

“He told me what to look for. He said, if you know of any burglaries or anything, let Steven know… He said no evidence, no pay… He said if you know where it is, go get it.”

Nowhere in that passage does it say that the 7-11 meeting between Shivers and Turnbull or any of the phone conversations between the two were in any way related to the Frederick case. That’s because they weren’t. Turnbull was recounting his experiences with Shivers in other cases. Remember, Turnbull said he and Steven had been working with the police for several months. Remember also that in the search warrant for the Frederick raid, the officer explained that he had been working with this particular informant for several months. These continuing consistencies between Turnbull’s statements and verifiable facts from other parts of the case–some of which weren’t public at the time Turnbull first spoke with Hopkins last February–are what make this portion of Turnbull’s story so credible.

The big problem Chief Wright doesn’t address, of course, is why the police didn’t disclose on the warrant that their probable cause had been obtained via an illegal burglary. The fact that the burglary wasn’t disclosed, again, lends credence to Turnbull’s statement that these burglaries were common practice. If you’re an honest, by-the-book narcotics cop who serendipitously happened upon a marijuana grow thanks to information you gleaned from someone you arrested on an unrelated burglary charge, you don’t neglect to mention the burglary in your search warrant affidavit, and then accidentally refer to the burglar as a trusted informant with whom you’ve been working for several months.

Also of note: It has since been revised, but in Hopkins’ original article yesterday, he noted that Chief Wright wouldn’t answer any of Hopkins’ questions about Turnbull.  Wright told Hopkins both that he didn’t have time, and that he wouldn’t comment on police informants (no one at Chesapeake PD returned my calls, either). The article is now edited to appear as if Wright’s denials went straight to Hopkins. They didn’t. Wright’s comments in Hopkins’ article are just a rehashing of what he said to Dougherty. You might note that Dougherty is now listed as a contributor at the bottom of Hopkins’ article.

Strange, isn’t it?, that Chief Wright wouldn’t have the time to speak with Hopkins, but would have time to speak with Dougherty, an opinion columnist and pro-police partisan. Hopkins has a better grasp on the details of the case (obviously), was the person who spoke directly with Turnbull, and would have been able to ask pointed follow-up questions of Chief Wright.

Okay.  So come to think of it, maybe Chief Wright’s inability to find time to talk with Hopkins isn’t so strange after all.

Finally, Chief Wright denied to Dougherty that Turnbull was ever a police informant, and also denied that he was one of the burglars prosecutors referenced at the hearing earlier this month. If that’s true, Turnbull’s a pretty gifted bullshit artist. Because he gave Hopkins details about the raid and about Frederick’s home that weren’t public at the time. He also seems to know quite a bit about being an informant. At the hearing, prosecutors also very clearly mentioned “burglars,” in the plural. If Turnbull wasn’t one of them, it’ll be interesting to see who they do end up trotting out as Steven’s accomplice.

Oh yeah, one more question: At the hearing, prosecutors acknowledged that the two “burglars” on whose word much of their case rests did in fact illegally break into Ryan Frederick’s home–their choice of the word “burglar” sorta’ implies as much. It’s been eight months since that burglary. Why haven’t the two men been charged for it?

Let me add a little color commentary for Agitator readers to the post below:

I think special prosecutor Paul Ebert really shot himself in the foot on this.

I don’t know how he thought he could admit evidence from these two “burglars” without having to explain who they were, how the police came to know them, or without anyone noticing the obvious similarities between the “burglars’” stories and the information in the police affidavit for the search warrant. I was speculating that the informant was also the burglar within a week of the raid.

When I first reported all of this back in June, no one seemed all that interested (which I guess is a rather humbling account of my influence!). Not Ebert’s office, not Chesapeake PD, not the U.S. attorneys office. The Virginian-Pilot knew about these accusations (I can now say that their reporter is the one who initially tipped me off), but their editors decided to sit on the story unless and until they could get more confirmation for Renaldo Turnbull’s story.

I even sent my article to Frederick attorney James Broccoletti, who replied through his secretary that he had “heard some rumors” but didn’t put much validity in them. (I’d add here that I don’t know Broccoletti’s strategy–he may have simply been playing me off because he didn’t want to tip his hand, or didn’t want to consort with a reporter. What’s clear is that he wasn’t actively pursuing the informants-as-burglars angle at that time.)

In any case, if Paul Ebert had tried to make his case simply on the fact that Frederick had a small amount of pot in his house and shot and killed a cop, he could have avoided all of this. It certainly worked for the prosecutors in Cory Maye’s case.

Instead, Ebert wanted to tack on the felony drug charges. And the only way he could do that was to introduce the evidence the informants claim to have found when they burglarized Frederick’s home. The kicker was the phone call from Frederick to one of the informants police found in Frederick’s cell phone records (the burlgars rather stupidly called Frederick ahead of time to see if he was home–another pretty good indication that they were working for the police). That call opened the door for the unlikley threat Turnbull is now saying Frederick made against the police, which I’m sure had Ebert salivating.

Unfortunately for Ebert, his admission of the existence of these “burglars” was enough to persuade editors at the Virginian-Pilot to run their own reporter’s interview with Turnbull from last February, in which Turnbull was quite a bit more candid than he was with me (by the time I got to him, the cops had already added new charges to his rap sheet, in what he says was clear retaliation for his talking to the other reporter). When that article ran, Broccoletti got interested, as did much of the rest of the community in Chesapeake.

My upcoming piece for reason will call for a federal investigation into all of this. Ebert is a longtime Commonwealth’s Attorney, so anything coming from the Virginia Attorney General’s Office won’t do.

These two “burglars” aren’t going to tell the truth unless they have immunity and no longer fear Ebert and local authorities. What they know is not only critical to ensuring a fair trial for Ryan Frederick, it will also likely impact a great many more narcotics cases in Chesapeake.

Ryan Frederick is the 29-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man who shot and killed Chesapeake Det. Jarrod Shivers during a drug raid on Frederick’s home last January.  Police say an informant told them Frederick had an extensive marijuana-growing operation in his garage.  They found only a few joints—enough for a misdemeanor.

I’ll have a more detailed look at the incredible recent developments in the case in a bit, but the short version is that the prosecution’s case against Frederick is unraveling.

Last June, I reported the possible existence of a second informant in the case, and in an interview, this informant told me that he and the other informant had broken into Frederick’s home three days prior to the raid.  Such a burglary would have been illegal, and the police would have been required to note in their search warrant affidavits that the probable cause for the warrant had been obtained illegally (they didn’t).

Worse, last February this man told a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot (who then told me) that the police both knew about and encouraged the break-in, and in fact had encouraged informants to break into private homes in other cases for the purpose of collecting probable cause.

At a pre-trial hearing earlier this month, prosecutors in the case announced that they had testimony from two "burglars" who say they had stolen marijuana plants from Frederick and that, more dubiously, Frederick had then called them and made an explicit threat about killing a police officer.  The prosecutors did not say if these "burglars" were also the informants, or if they had been working with the police before the burglary.

That surprising revelation from prosecutors persuaded editors at the Virginian-Pilot last week to publish the details of reporter John Hopkins’ interview in February with the same guy I interviewed, essentially confirming what I reported in June.  The details of Hopkins’ interview leave little doubt that the "burglars" who broke into Frederick’s home were also the police informants.

Today, Ryan Frederick’s lawyers filed a brief asking the judge to quash all evidence seized from Frederick’s home after the raid:

Police showed a “reckless disregard for the truth’’ and misled a magistrate to get a search warrant for the home of Ryan Frederick, the man accused of killing a detective during a drug raid on his house, according to his attorney.

Police failed to tell the magistrate that their confidential informant had burglarized Frederick’s property to get evidence to support a search warrant, asserts attorney James Broccoletti. The drug raid that followed on the night of Jan. 17 was a violation of Frederick’s Fourth Amendment right; therefore, all evidence collected should be thrown out, he said in a motion filed in Circuit Court.

This could become another major drug informant scandal.  More to come.

Tomorrow morning, it looks like the Virginian-Pilot will confirm what I first reported back in June: Two men broke into Ryan Frederick’s house three nights before the police raided his home, and one of them was likely the informant mentioned in the police warrant. It also means that the probable cause for the warrant was obtained illegally, a fact police neglected to mention in the warrant.

I guess I can now also reveal that the informant mentioned in the article, Renaldo Turnbull, Jr., was also the man I spoke with in the Chesapeake Jail last June–I referred to him in the post as “Reggie.”

Turnbull has also said some other pretty damning things about how the Chesapeake narcotics police conduct their drug investigations, including that they knew ahead of time and approved of the break-in to Frederick’s home. He has also said the police routinely asked he and Steven (the other informant) asked them to break into homes to collect evidence.

Of course, Turnbull isn’t likely to say any of these things anymore, now.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions. I’ll have more tomorrow.

UPDATE: The full story is now live.

Over the last several months, I’ve noticed that the web comments to the Virginian-Pilot’s coverage of the Ryan Frederick case have gone from almost universal calls for Frederick’s head on a plate in the days following the raid to, lately, a healthy majority expressing skepticism toward the Chesapeake Police Department, and a pretty strong showing of support for Frederick.

It looks like Special Prosecutor Paul Ebert has noticed, too.

The special prosecutor in the case against Ryan Frederick, the Chesapeake man accused of killing a city detective, wants the murder trial moved out of the Hampton Roads area.

The commonwealth has urged the court for a change of venue from Chesapeake to a court elsewhere in the state. Frederick is to stand trial Jan. 20 in Chesapeake Circuit Court on charges of capital murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and possession with the intent to distribute marijuana.

Paul Ebert, the commonwealth’s attorney from Prince William County appointed to the case, said the trial must be moved because pretrial publicity has made it impossible for the commonwealth to get a fair trial.

Frederick’s attorney, James Broccoletti, said he opposes any move, arguing that the citizens of Chesapeake have not only an obligation but a right to sit in judgment in a case of this magnitude.

Actually, what Ebert wants is a knee-jerk jury that will convict upon hearing “marijuana” and “shot a cop,” with no further deliberation.

Maybe the stellar legal minds who read this blog can help me out here: Is there even the slightest possibility that the judge could grant Ebert’s request? I was under the impression that a defendant always has the right to be tried in the jurisdiction where the alleged crime was committed. He can ask for a change of venue, but prosecutors generally can’t. Am I wrong?

On Friday night, ABC’s 20/20 did a segment on the murder of Rachel Hoffman.

It’s unfortunate that it took the death of a pretty, young, college-aged white girl for abuse of the drug informant system to attract this kind of attention.

After a "wrong-door" drug raid in Harlem led to the death of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill in 2003, New York City officials promised to implement reforms with respect to the use of confidential informants, and institute checks to verify that narcotics officers and SWAT teams were hitting the right residences.

But as civil rights attorney Joel Berger and I explained in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, the city soon reneged, claiming that the promised reforms were merely discretionary, and could be revoked at will.  Soon enough, stories of wrong-door raids began popping up in the newspapers again—and have since.

There were two more in the Bronx this week.

The NYPD is admitting it was wrong when officers broke down the doors of two apartments in the Bronx during a pair of misguided drug raids.

They found nothing, and it turns out both homeowners were innocent.

Officials say the apartments never should have been raided, and they admit the search warrants were based on lies from a confidential informant.

[...]

Police say that three separate times, the drugs from his alleged undercover buys were really drugs that were hidden under his clothing. Cops were fooled, and because of it, two local residents were traumatized.

[...]

On Saturday, when Eyewitness News began questioning cops about the story, they adamantly insisted there were undercover drug buys in both apartments.

[...]

Now, after repeated calls to the NYPD, their story has changed. They now tell Eyewitness News that they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there were any undercover buys in the apartments, just a confidential informant who allegedly lied.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, police say, "We’ve initiated an investigation which has resulted in the informant being arrested for possession of narcotics. The investigation is continuing regarding his conduct leading up to these two search warrants."

They also say surveillance video shows the informant, who was supposedly searched beforehand by cops, reaching into his undergarments three separate times, exchanging the cops’ money for hidden drugs, then allegedly walking out of the building.

Why didn’t they check the surveillance video before conducting the raids?  And how thoroughly could they possibly have searched this informant if he was able to hide drugs in his clothing?  Moreover, if they were this sloppy while using this informant, how do we know other cops in the city aren’t making similar mistakes with other informants?  This particular informant has been the source of information for at least a dozen other drug raids.

Once again, the larger point here is that these raids are too violent and dangerous, the margin of error to small, and the tips and investigations that lead to them too subject to mistakes and bad information for them to be used on nonviolent drug offenders.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a long and fascinating wrap-up of a massive debacle involving DEA agent Lee Lucas, drug informant Jarrell Bray, and the many people the two of them wrongly put behind bars.

The case reads a little like a trashy crime noir novel.  Despite ignoring repeated warnings about Bray’s trustworthiness from local police, and despite signs early on that he should have known Bray was prone to making things up, Agent Lucas continued to take the convicted felon at his word, and continued to wrack up arrests and convictions based on Bray’s assertions. 

Two dozen cases were dismissed.  All but one of those wrongfully arrested were black.   The kicker is that after all of this, Lucas is still on the DEA’s payroll (despite about a half dozen prior incidents where he has been accused of unethical behavior).  And former U.S. Attorney Greg White, who prosecuted the cases Lucas brought in, has since been promoted to U.S. magistrate.