Posted on 07/25/2008 8:49:03 PM PDT by bamahead
After being caught twice with a "baggie" of marijuana, 23-year old Rachel Hoffman was reportedly told by police in Tallahassee, Florida that she would go to prison for four years unless she became an undercover informant.
The young woman, a recent graduate of Florida State University, was murdered during a botched sting operation two months ago.
"The idea of waging a war on drugs is to protect people and here it seems like we're putting people in harm's way," said Lance Block, a lawyer hired by Rachel's parents.
The Florida Attorney General's office says it is reviewing the procedures and protocol of the Tallahassee police.
"I'm calling her a criminal," Tallahassee police chief Dennis Jones told 20/20, who maintains that both drug dealers and drug users are considered criminals to his department.
Under Florida law, possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana is a felony.
The Tallahassee police chief says Rachel was suspected of selling drugs and she was rightly treated as a criminal.
"That's my job as a police chief to find these criminals in our community and take them off the street, to make the proper arrests," Jones told 20/20.
Rachel's case also is raising questions about how police recruit and use informants in undercover operations.
"There need to be some safeguards here," said Block, the Hoffman family lawyer.
The young woman received no training before being sent to an undercover meeting to buy a large amount of drugs and a handgun from two suspects.
Police says Rachel was killed by the very handgun she was supposed to buy.
"I don't think she understood the risk or danger that she was in," said Block.
Rachel was in a drug court diversion program when she became an informant.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Try working for a beer distributor. You could hire and fire 100 pot smokers in a year. I’m told that they look for jobs in warehouses and outdoors mostly so as not to get caught as easily.
How dare society have laws against those vices!
I agree. Terribly wrong on MANY levels. I wonder how many more lives the “war on drugs” is going to take.
Do the time, been sick all day on the computer and can’t time heh.
No, if you read the thread, I called for legalizing pot and hashish, nothing else.
Keep up.
If it's such a problem, why not pre-employment drug tests, and random routine testing?
Sorry but nonsense.
Then you’re a hypocrite to use the old ‘God made’ argument for your drug, but not others aren’t you.. potheads make the worst debaters, but in their heads they win every time.
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Four YEARS for some pot? Right..............I bet you thought that kid in Georgia should’ve gone to prison for ten years for getting a blow job.
Where do you get that Singapore has very little in the way of drug problems?
"The GOS [Government of Singapore] nonetheless is concerned about the increase in addiction rates and recidivism among drug offenders who have undergone treatment. There are currently about 9,000 addicts undergoing rehabilitation in Singapore treatment centers, the same number as in 1995."
--http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1996_narc_report/index.html
The Netherlands-- "Demand Reduction. The Netherlands has extensive demand reduction programs and lowthreshold medical services for addicts, who are also offered drug rehabilitation programs. Authorities believe such programs reach about 7080 percent of the country's 25,000 harddrug users."
--http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1996_narc_report/index.html
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Using a population of 3 million for Singapore in 1996, that works out to an addiction rate of about 0.30%. Using the State Dept. figures for the Netherlands, and a population of 15.1 million, the addiction rate was about 0.17%.
Also note that the Singapore figure only takes into account the addicts under treatment, whereas the figure for Holland is the estimate of the total number of addicts.
Yeah well I worked with engineers with PHD’s every single day who smoked.
She made a bad choice. No doubt. But I don't think good judgement was made sending her into this situation.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. She had MDMA on her as well. She made all the choices that led to her death.
And now, thanks to the police, she is dead.
Oh, thank you Police for saving society from this dastardly criminal by screwing up and having her killed. We are SO much more safe now.
He said they were foreigners: "usless"
What a splendid little attempt at humor! Do you hang out with Johnny Taliban, by any chance? I think you two have the same sense of humor.
If I had my way anyone using drugs should on the spot execution.
Oh, death squads killing people on the spot, how wonderful! Let's do away with the bourgeois rubbish of due process. Have you considered moving to Iran? They kill all sorts of people for violating the slightest rule. Maybe you could get a job as executioner there.
Actually it doesn’t. A recent study of 10,000 heavy pot smokers showed NO LINK TO LUNG CANCER. And are we studying why not? Of course not! We’re too stupid!
As much of a hypocrite as you. I don’t see you calling for alcohol to be banned, its much worse than pot.
How many people have overdosed on pot?
She got herself killed..
Messing with drug/gun runners isn’t safe.. She should’ve just gone to trial and dealt with the consequences.
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