Amy Goodman
@DemocracyNow·3.2M subscribers·19.4K videos
After Arrest, How Florida Police Sent Young Informant to Buy Drugs and the Gun That Ended Her Life
Posted
February 20, 2013
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1:13Now PlayingTo watch the entire interview with Sarah Stillman on Democracy Now!, visit In her George Polk Awardwinning article "The Throwaways," New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman investigates law enforcement's unregulated use of young confidential informants in drug cases. Stillman details how police broker deals with young, untrained informants to perform highrisk operations with few legal protections in exchange for leniency and sometimes fatal results. Appearing on Democracy Now!, Stillman tells the story of Rachel Hoffman. After police found drugs in her apartment, Hoffman agreed to assist Florida officers in a major undercover deal involving meeting two convicted felons alone to buy twoandahalf ounces of cocaine, 1,500 Ecstasy pills, and a semiautomatic handgun. Within days, her body was found shot five times with the gun that the police had sent her to buy.
SARAH STILLMAN: "Yeah. Well, part of what really stood out about Rachel's case is that, you know, here she was, this young woman found with some pot and, I believe, a small handful of ecstasy pills. And she was sent off ultimately to buy 1,500 ecstasy pills, a stash of cocaine and handgun from two convicted felons. Ultimately, in the midst of the sting, the police lost track of her, as often happens in these situations. She was told to go to a second location. And when she did that, ultimately, one of the men found the wires, the surveillance wires that the police had hidden in her purse, and shot her."
AMY GOODMAN: "In her purse?"
SARAH STILLMAN: "Exactly. They were hidden in her purse, which some—some police would argue was sort of against the conventional protocols of, you know, the safest place to put the wires. But they opened the purse to—essentially, to stage a robbery, to steal the money in the purse. And then she was killed."
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