An investigation found an informant was allegedly raped twice in a sting in which her law enforcement handlers left her unmonitored and unprotected.
ALEXANDRIA, La. — A woman outfitted with a tiny microphone and hidden camera walked up to a dilapidated drug house on a chilly afternoon last year looking to buy meth from a dealer known on the streets as"Mississippi."
"Just the audio from it is enough to turn your stomach," the official said."It's a female being sexually brutalized while she's crying and whimpering." Records show it wasn't until the woman left the area on her own and contacted her handlers that deputies searched the single-family home and arrested Antonio D. Jones, 48, on charges of second-degree rape, false imprisonment and distribution of meth after recovering 5 grams of the substance in the sting.
And while it's not clear what kind of deal the woman struck with the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office, her cooperation as an informant didn't seem to make much difference in clearing her own criminal record. "That changed everything, the way we do business," Wood said."Technology has grown unbelievably. There's things that we can do to keep the folks safe."
"We do this 10,000 times a day around the country, and not everybody has transmitting equipment," Redemann said."Is this tragic as hell? Absolutely. We need to learn from what happened here." With few exceptions, states have been slow to track or regulate law enforcement's use of informants, even in the wake of high-profile oversights. In 2009, Florida lawmakers adopted Rachel's Law, the first comprehensive legislation in the country governing use of informants, after the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman in connection with an undercover drug sting for Tallahassee police.
"They never thought of that, and had they known that was occurring they would have certainly stopped it," Terrell said."One of their big concerns now is the safety of the confidential informant." Govt-and-politics AP Trump's PAC faces scrutiny amid intensifying legal probes Former President Donald Trump is sitting on top of more than $115 million across several political committees. He's positioned himself as a uniquely indomitable force in the GOP and would almost certainly have the resources to swamp his rivals if he launched another presidential campaign. But that massive pile of money is also emerging as a potential vulnerability.