Police use drug addict as informant, get what you might expect

[Morris816]

Very good piece of investigative reporting:

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2014/11/trinidad_war_on_drugs_attacked_the_innocent.php

Long story short: The Trinidad (Colo.) Police Department had two drug addicts serve as informants for a drug investigation, leading to a large amount of arrests -- all dismissed because the informant's stories didn't add up and because of lousy evidence.

Seriously, why in the world would a police department want to have a drug addict serve as an informant when you have no idea if that person is going to be honest.

It's a long read, but well worth it. Here's a sampling:

As it turned out, two of the accused had the perfect alibi: They were in jail at the time they were supposedly selling drugs on the streets of Trinidad to the police's informant. In both cases, the informant was Crystal Bachicha, a 34-year-old woman with a lengthy criminal record. Bachicha also claimed to have bought drugs from Gonzales, her former probation officer; from Valdez, who says she and Bachicha have a history of "bad blood" between them; from Vargas, who insists she's never met the woman; and from Ridolfi and twelve others, including a woman that Bachicha was once accused of trying to murder.

Defense attorneys probing the case soon discovered numerous misleading or false statements in the sworn affidavits submitted to obtain the arrest warrants. The affidavits routinely stated that the dope purchased by the informants had field-tested positive for heroin, meth or some other controlled substance; in several instances, though, subsequent testing by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation indicated that the substance in question had no narcotic qualities at all. Although the informants were wired, the affidavits offered only bare excerpts of the conversations recorded and little dialogue that suggested a buy was taking place. And there was no information provided about how the targets were selected, how the meetings were arranged, or what the informants were getting out of the deal.