- Police Brutality Watch

Latino Immigrants Falsely Arrested

Dallas City Hall is issuing a formal apology over a fake drug scandal, nearly three years after it surfaced. What turned out to be pool chalk, was planted on dozens of Latino immigrants by highly paid informants working with narcotics detectives. Several informants have been convicted. Offering an apology to the victims of the 2001 fake-drug scandal, the Dallas City Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing "deep remorse" for the false arrests. The measure passed Wednesday also offered apologies to the victims' families and the city's residents for breakdowns at the Police Department. "It is very, very tragic what happened to a great number of people, and I think we are on the right track now," said Mayor Pro Tem John Loza. The scandal erupted in late 2001 after more than two dozen people, mostly Hispanic immigrants, went to jail based on bogus drug evidence planted by corrupt police informants. The resolution states that those false arrests - which have led to criminal charges against several former narcotics officers and the informants - should be "indelibly etched in our history," so that similar mistakes aren't repeated. Calling it an "extraordinary step," City Attorney Madeleine Johnson said such a vote expressing remorse for city failures probably is unprecedented in the city's history. The two-page resolution asks officials to continue searching for reasons why the department's "system designed to fight a war on drugs was subverted so that innocent people became its casualties." [more] and [more]