After days of discreet phone calls, Jason Elysse flew from Boston to meet a drug dealer at a busy IHOP in Hialeah, Fla. Over hot chocolate and scrambled eggs, they discussed the surging price of street drugs and a plan for Mr. Elysse to buy at least a kilogram of cocaine.<\/p>\n
To grease the wheels, the dealer insisted that Mr. Elysse take a free baggie of the stuff to try after leaving the pancake house. Like a sample at Costco, the dealer would later testify.<\/p>\n
Mr. Elysse left with the bag. It\u2019s not clear if he tested the product himself, but it was apparently good enough: A few days later, he showed up to a meeting to buy the full kilogram.<\/p>\n
Once he got there, detectives were waiting. The generous dealer was actually an undercover detective with the Hialeah police. Mr. Elysse was arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking.<\/p>\n
It was a typical sting operation, in all ways but one. The sample on offer was not flour or baby powder. It was real cocaine.<\/p>\n
Now, years later, Mr. Elysse\u2019s conviction has been overturned and the curtain has been pulled back on a long-running operation in which narcotics detectives in Hialeah regularly handed out real cocaine as samples during investigations, often losing track of the drugs.<\/p>\n
The judge overseeing the case, Milton Hirsch of the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, cited the practice in overturning Mr. Elysse\u2019s conviction in April. State law, the judge wrote, does not allow officers to \u201cstand on the street corner, or sit in the IHOP, and hand out free cocaine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge found that the Hialeah Police Department had regularly been putting cocaine \u201con the streets of Florida and, inevitably, into the veins of Floridians.\u201d He noted that detectives could not tell him \u201cif a child died from ingestion of the cocaine that they gave away.\u201d<\/p>\n
The unusual ruling was the latest twist in a South Florida corruption saga involving a prolific informant<\/a>, a police chief now facing charges related to the undercover drug stings, and a city eager to shake its reputation<\/a> for bending the rules of law enforcement.<\/p>\n Detectives posing as drug dealers \u2014 a tactic known as a reverse sting \u2014 is legal and not new, although defense lawyers often criticize it as entrapment<\/a>.<\/p>\n A spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney\u2019s Office said in a statement that prosecutors would not appeal Judge Hirschs\u2019s ruling for legal reasons unrelated to the cocaine samples. The spokesman, Ed Griffith, defended the practice of providing samples of drugs such as marijuana or cocaine as a way to help build broad cases against criminal organizations and \u201cgain the trust\u201d of the would-be buyers.<\/p>\n He added a caveat: \u201cOf course, this would never be done with a substance as dangerous as fentanyl or a whole host of other substances.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hialeah Police Department declined to respond to a list of questions.<\/p>\n Detectives typically use sham drugs in reverse stings, unless they can immediately recover them, said Chris Foreman, the director of training and development for the National Narcotic Officers\u2019 Associations\u2019 Coalition. The risk of letting real drugs circulate in the community is too high, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is highly irregular that you would let real drugs walk out and not be accountable for where they end up,\u201d Mr. Foreman said.<\/p>\n Hialeah has long been known for<\/a> blue-collar grit, traffic jams and its sizable Cuban American population. Fairly or not, Hialeah is also known for police misconduct, something that rankles city leaders.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Mayor Bryan Calvo threatened legal action<\/a> against the makers of the Netflix movie \u201cThe Rip\u201d over its fictional depiction of Hialeah police officers who steal millions of dollars in cash from a drug dealer\u2019s home. The movie is loosely based on a real story \u2014 but one that did not happen in Hialeah or involve its police force.<\/p>\n Still, over the past decade, Hialeah officers have been convicted in cases of kidnapping<\/a>, writing bogus traffic tickets<\/a> and sexually<\/a> exploiting women in custody.<\/p>\n Last year, state agents arrested<\/a> Sergio Velazquez, a former chief of the Hialeah Police Department, on allegations that he stole cash seized during police drug stings and squirreled it away in his office. Mr. Velazquez, who held the position from 2012 to 2021, has pleaded not guilty to charges of grand theft, money laundering and organized fraud.<\/p>\n