October 5, 2008 -- Tallahassee Democrat (FL) The Left Turn Rachel Hoffman Didn't Make Internal-Affairs Report and Rebuttal Debate Who Had Control of the Drug Bust in Which She Died By Jennifer Portman, Democrat Senior Writer

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Traffic on North Meridian was typical for a weekday evening. A steady flow of cars snaked up the canopy road as people went home to Tallahassee's northeast suburbs and shuttled kids to soccer games.

Driving north to Forestmeadows Park in her silver 2005 Volvo, Rachel Hoffman fit right in. About 6:40 p.m. May 7, the Tallahassee Police Department informant was set to meet two suspected drug dealers and buy cocaine, Ecstasy and a gun.

Alone, with $13,000 in her purse and wearing a wire, she worked her iPhone constantly, bouncing between calls with one suspect and Investigator Ryan Pender, her main TPD contact. In an unmarked car behind her, he had just pulled over at Maclay School to monitor her wire.

Hoffman, familiar with the college clubs on Tennessee Street but not the playing fields off Meridian Road, turned too soon into the sports complex, not the park. A DEA agent behind her kept driving north but alerted Pender, who swung back onto Meridian.

He saw her, helped create a gap in traffic so she could pull back out and told her by phone to go to the next entrance, to turn left at the flashing yellow light. That's where she'd meet the suspects. Three cars of officers were waiting.

Hoffman said she'd do what Pender told her. She wouldn't follow the suspects to the plant nursery up the road where they now wanted her to go.

Pender watched as Hoffman's car crested a rise in the road and dropped from sight. He turned left into the baseball fields to listen to the deal go down. No one had eyes on her anymore.

At that moment, TPD's internal-affairs investigation concludes, any control over Hoffman and the operation vanished.

Pender, fired last month for nine policy violations, insists it wasn't his fault she was lost. He says his plan was solid, his preparation thorough. He was in constant touch by phone and by wire. There was no reason to think she wouldn't go to the park. She told him she was turning in right then.

Only she didn't. And the next time police saw her, she was dead.

Defending His CI

Ryan Pender trusted Rachel Hoffman. He liked her, thought she was smart, was impressed with her street slang and ability to figure in her head the price of a bunch of drugs. She told him things that could get her into more trouble than she already was in when he busted her at her Polos on Park apartment in April with a quarter-pound of pot. She pressed him, he said, to make her a confidential informant.

"She had a degree. She was very friendly. She was very forthcoming with information...," Pender told internal-affairs investigators. "I deal with a lot of CIs. She was one of the better ones at talking the game and being involved."

When she told him she'd bought the handful of Ecstasy pills he found at her place at a music festival because she didn't like the drug and wanted to get it off the street, he believed her. She was that kind of "earthy" person. He told her to list him in her cell phone as "Pooh Bear."

Pender knew she was in a court-ordered drug diversion program, but he thought the rules about checking with the state attorney before using an informant extended only to those on probation or parole. People in drug court had been used before.

Even though on her first day Hoffman confessed to a dealer she was trying to set up that she was working for the police -- then got him to become an informant to help her and later paid his utility bill -- Pender kept her. She had a reasonable explanation and told him right away.

The dealer was a friend who was sweet on her, Pender told internal-affairs investigators. He knew about the bust at her apartment. When he confronted her about being an informant, she couldn't come up with a lie. Once he knew, he wanted to help her work off her charges.

"You make it sound dirty, like it was this dirty deal that they had on the side. It wasn't that way," Pender said. "It was more, 'She took care of my financial responsibilities so I don't need the money. I'm doing this solely for Rachel. That's why I'm here.'"

Pender didn't cut her loose when she disobeyed him again and met with a potential target on her own. The suspected drug dealer, one of the two she was going to meet that fateful May evening, flagged her down on Tennessee Street. She worried that if she didn't stop and talk it would look suspicious. Again, she immediately told Pender.

His supervisor, Sgt. David Odom, said Pender told him partially what was going on with Hoffman. He agreed with the 18-month vice officer's opinion that she was worth keeping. He'd had no issues with Pender's handling of informants before. In fact, he said, Pender was "probably one of the best investigators I had in the vice unit."

But Odom said Pender didn't tell him about the deal with the other informant. If he had, he would have told him to cut her. Those farther up the command chain knew virtually nothing. Hardly anyone at TPD even knew Hoffman's name until she vanished.

"I was not aware there were any problems with Ms. Hoffman," vice Capt. Chris Connell told internal-affairs investigators.

All that would be revealed after she was shot to death and, according to police, the men she was supposed to bust led police to her body -- after family members in Perry saw them tossing out $50 bills and carrying a 25-caliber gun.

"Knowing what I know now," said Deputy Chief John Proctor, "I would not have approved in any way, shape or form this operation."

Choosing a Site

But May 7, when everyone up to the division captain was at a briefing, no one had a problem with the typically fluid nature of the operation. The location was changed from the suspect's parents' house in Summerbrooke, to the Thomasville Road Wal-Mart -- then, at the men's request, to Forestmeadows.

Department policy says isolated locations are best for such operations, but officers said populated places such as store parking lots were used all the time. A bustling city park -- though no one interviewed could remember another time such a place had been used -- was deemed OK. There was one way in, one way out.

Pender said he wasn't letting the suspects dictate the location. He thought their suggestion of the park was a good one, so it was his choice.

"Then when we call to confirm, (the suspect) confirms, 'Yeah, Forestmeadows,'" he explained to internal-affairs investigators. "Perfect. Now he thinks ... he's in control of the deal, but he's really not."

Sending Her Off Alone

No red flags were raised when it was said that Hoffman would go alone in her car or that one suspect had not been fully identified -- both frowned upon in written standard operating procedures. Pender said he tried his best to find out the identity of the second suspect but could not. And it was common practice, he said, for CIs to go to deals alone. Hoffman thought having an undercover officer with her would make her nervous.

She also wanted to have the money and monitoring devices in the purse she always carried, rather than stashed elsewhere in the car. She wasn't controlling the situation, he said, because it was his decision to let her do those things.

No one was concerned that, along with the drugs, she'd be purchasing a gun. Pender told Hoffman, who had no experience with firearms, not to touch it.

Virtually nothing was signed off on paper, but everyone stated orally he or she was satisfied with the plan. Some officers in the room, who'd been involved in more than 100 such deals, said the standing-room-only briefing was especially thorough. It was business as usual.

Guarding the Money

None of the police officers, however, could remember a time when a buy-bust involved more money.

When Deputy Chief Proctor released the $13,000, he hadn't read the operational plan. He'd been at home and was on pain medication for a procedure he'd had done that day.

All he knew was the deal was to go down in northeast Tallahassee. He figured the chief knew what was going on and others had all the details worked out.

"I personally told Inv. Pender, as did the deputy chief, that the money didn't leave his sight," Connell said. "So, if the money didn't leave his sight, the girl didn't leave his sight."

Pender's direct supervisor, Odom, was out that day, participating in one of the frequent training sessions that took him out of the office. Sgt. Rod Looney, a 16-year veteran notified a day before about the operation, would be in charge of the biggest team in memory: 15 TPD officers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

But Pender was lead officer. Hoffman was his CI.

"Any source, you know, you tell them to do something, it's a possibility they are going to do something else," Looney told internal-affairs investigators. "You got to watch what they do, you got to be on top of them at all times."

'Turn Around!'

Back on Meridian Road, everyone was waiting for Hoffman to pull into the park. Pender realized too much time had passed. He was losing her on the wire. He called her, it seemed like 100 times, to no avail.

Then DEA agent Lou Andris, who'd kept heading north after Hoffman made her wrong turn into the ball fields, radioed Pender to say he saw the suspects in their gray BMW at Royalty Plant Nursery.

"If we know where they are, at least we know where half the deal is," Pender recalled telling Andris, who turned around at Hawks Rise Elementary, 0.1 mile north of the nursery, and headed back south.

Pender was about to leave the baseball fields to look for Hoffman when she finally called him back.

"I followed them from the nursery," she said. "We're on Gardner. It looks like the deal is going to go here. It's a dead-end street."

Pender told her: "'I told you not to do that. Turn around! Turn around! Do not follow them!'

"I had no response from her, which meant, you know, either she hung up on me or we lost the signal. I had a strong signal.. . .

"I think that she hung up on me, not because she didn't want to hear it. I think it was because she was in the heat of the deal, and the deal was about to go down."

Pender ordered all units to Gardner Road.

K-9 Officer Bill Hurlburt heard the urgency in Pender's voice. The 20-year veteran had an electronic map and radioed to others where Gardner Road was. Most had no idea.

In less than four minutes, arrest teams arrived. No sign of Hoffman.

When Hurlburt got there, he found a black Reef flip-flop a half-mile down in the middle of the road. It didn't seem to be a crime scene. No glaring reason to think the worst.

Not until later did officers know the flip-flop was Hoffman's. It would be after dark before they realized Hurlburt's car had been covering two live .25-caliber rounds and one spent shell casing near a rise in the dead-end road.

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