The 23 Year Old Informant

I caught this video on the ABC News website and was terribly disturbed by the picture this story paints.  You can see the story for yourself here – ABCNews Pot’s Dealer’s Tragic Choice Ended in Death – and below I will go over what the 20 minute segment describes.  Rachel Hoffman, a 23 year old girl, who had just graduated from college, was pulled over by police for a routine traffic stop, during which they found a small amount of marijuana.  She was not charged with any crime related to the possession, and was enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program in Tallahassee, Florida.  All of her drug related charges would be dropped upon successful completion of the rehab program, and one year clean.

Months later, in April 2008, for reasons described by police as ‘tips’, they raided the Rachel’s apartment.  What did their home invasion/raid yield?  They say it was enough to face a felony charge of running a drug house.  In reality the bust consisted of 6 pills, a mix of Ecstacy and Valium, and 1/4 pound of marijuana, aka a small baggie.  Because of her prior arrest, she was threatened by police with a jail term that could be as long as 4 years in state prison – an eternity for a 20 something with their whole life ahead of them.

In her fragile state, with the threat of jail looming over her head, Rachel was talked into becoming a confidential informant (CI) for police.  The officer interviewed in the segment denies that any sort of pressure was put on Rachel to bceome a CI.  She was told to make a connection with two gentleman that were known drug dealers in the Tallahassee area, and she was to set them up for an arrest upon a deal being made.  On the day of the sting operation she got in her car with $13,000 in marked bills, and went to meet the gentlement on the outskirts of town, being followed by a police handler.  This was no small-scale deal.  Rachel was to buy a handgun, cocaine, and 1,500 Ecstacy pills.

The police claim to have lost Rachel when she ‘deviated from the plan to meet at the specified location’, although she was never given any training on how to properly complete the sting, nor was a dry run ever done.  The state prosecutor said that Rachel should have never been used as a CI because of her involvement in drug court, and their office was never informed that Rachel was being used as a CI.  The segment on ABC also features a consultant who reviewed the case, and he said that the Tallahasse officers’ decision to use Rachel was flawed due to her lack of knowledge in firearms, and there was no need for her to have actually made the buy; she could have simply set up the meeting and never been there that day.

At 6:45 pm, Rachel called her police handler, and told them that the men wanted to go to a third destination than the original metting place at the park, and that was when they lost her.  She was not being watched when they went to the third location, and no one made any attempt to follow her or call off the operation.  Once she was lost, she was on her own.  Her body was found 2 days later, 50 miles away from the place she had met with the men.  She was killed by the handgun she was to have purchased from the men that day.

The arrogance of the police officer in this segment is so overwhelming it is almost intolerable.  From his point of view, it seems that wearing a badge means you never have to apologize, even if your mistakes end up in the death of an innocent young girl.  Never once does he acknowledge the fact that their errors lead to her death, and the police department was quick to label Rachel as a known drug dealer once news of her death came to light.  The Tallahasse Police published in reports and told reporters that she was a gangster with multiple felony drug charges against her.  The officer interviewed consistently refers to her as a criminal in the interview, despite the fact that she has never been convicted of a single crime.

So smoking some pot now classifies you as a criminal?  I hope the Tallahasse PD is ready to start making their rounds and begin arresting at least three-quarters of their town’s residents.  I wish so much that this story was just not true; that a girl did not have to die because she was pressured by police to become an informant in order to escape jail time due to a couple of pills, and a small bag of dope.  Rachel was not a kingpin in the drug underworld, selling kilos of mary jane to be distributed on the streets.  She was just a kid that liked to smoke herb and pop a few pills every now and again – both of which you can legally get in some states with a doctor’s prescription.

This is the fundamental flaw with the ‘War on Drugs’.  Much like another war we are presently involved with, this war is never meant to be won.  We are all being told to hate and fear drug users, abusers, and peddlers, but for what?  Rachel certainly is not a criminal, but in the eyes of the law she is.  What makes her actions so much different than the soccer mom that lives down the street driving her kids around all day high on Xanax?

The people we are fighting in this war are fictitious.  Your nephew in college that smokes pot and your accountant who abuses oxycontin are really the same, they are both people who choose to use drugs, and you would agree that neither one of them deserve to be prosecuted for their behavior.  But if the ‘War on Drugs’ is being had on an imaginary enemy, it makes it much easier to support and fund with our tax dollars.  We are never going to get rid of the imaginary scourge responsible for the drug epidemic, which makes it possible for money to constantly be put into the system.

Why would people contribute money to fighting a cause that does not really exist?  Fear.  A byproduct of the creation of an imaginary enemy is the fact that the population will be afraid of said enemy.  If people are afraid of drugs and drug users, they will form a bond and create feelings of solidarity among one another. When people are afraid they will agree to things that they would not normally say ok to, which so far, has resulted in living with less rights than the Constitution grants us.

If drugs were decriminalized there would no longer be an illegal market through which drug dealers were making gobs of money.  If no one is making tons of money selling drugs, than people have a lot less of a reason to kill each other over a couple of pounds of pot.  If I can choose whether or not I want to get in a car and drive off a cliff, I should also be able to decide whether or not I want to put toxins into my body.