Drug Busts Gone Bad, Then Worse

Crime: Dallas is hit by claims of planted, fake cocaine and corrupt cops and informants.

By MEGAN K. STACK, Times Staff Writer

April 5, 2002

DALLAS -- The bogus drug busts are notorious: Mexican immigrants were jailed, went broke or got deported, only to have the evidence against them fall apart. The bricks of white powder they were charged with peddling turned out to be plaster of Paris--not cocaine or speed, as police had claimed. In all, more than 70 arrests have come unstrung this winter in a very public crescendo of bad cop work and shoddy prosecution.

Now Dallas is in an uproar. Federal investigators are probing the police department. Scores of drug prosecutions have been dismissed. Two narcotics detectives have been suspended. And a scandal that started in the dingy streets on the outskirts of town has worked its way into the city's political machinery.

"It's like watching a slow train wreck," said Paul Coggins, former U.S. attorney for the northern district of Texas. "We may never know exactly what happened."

If truth can be gleaned at all, it will be extracted from a tangled constellation of cops, drug pushers and immigrants. The informants blame crooked detectives. The detectives blame corrupt tipsters and drug dealers who, they say, were trying to rip off their clients with worthless products. The onetime suspected drug dealers--who are expected to file a bevy of civil rights lawsuits against the city--blame a vast, racist conspiracy.

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