[420 Girl]

Tallahassee Police Chief Dennis Jones admits the department was wrong to have initially said Rachel Hoffman got herself killed when the confidential informant was shot in a disastrous May 7 drug bust.

"We were placing most of the blame on Rachel Hoffman. I regret that now," Jones said Friday. "It made us look like we weren't taking responsibility for what happened."

Speaking a day after the release of harsh internal-affairs reports, Jones said he'd suspected early on that there was more to the story than simply Hoffman's refusal to obey instructions by following two suspected drug dealers to an unauthorized location. But that's what officers initially told him, he said, and that's what he told the public.

"I think we were too quick to relate what we knew at the time," he said.

Within a few days, however, he began to look into the incident and read the officers' first reports. He realized the department had made mistakes, too.

"That's when I said, 'Whoa, wait a minute, guys. This isn't the way we were supposed to be doing it,'" he said.

Hoffman's family lawyer, Lance Block, said the chief's comments are a step in the right direction.

"It's been obvious for five months now that Rachel Hoffman was the victim of negligence by the Tallahassee Police Department, which directly led to her death," Block said. "So, Chief Jones' comments are clearly appropriate."

Jones ordered an internal-affairs investigation three days after Hoffman's body was found May 9. That investigation found 21 individual violations of nine separate policies.

"I didn't think it would be so many policies not being followed," Jones said. "We have to share in the responsibility."

Ultimately, however, Jones and other city officials say, it's the job of the criminal and civil courts to determine exactly who shoulders the most responsibility.

"If there hadn't been these procedural errors, can you say with any certainty that Rachel wouldn't have been killed? I don't think we can," said Michelle Bono, assistant to the city manager. "Even in the best of operations, you never know exactly what the outcome will be."

But Hoffman's parents and others have contended that she should never have been used as a confidential informant in the first place. Certainly, they say, police should never have let such an untrained novice go alone to meet suspected drug dealers who officers knew had a gun.

Hoffman was also in a court diversion program stemming from an earlier marijuana-possession conviction. Because of that, the State Attorney's Office should have been notified before Hoffman was recruited as an informant, but that never happened.

"(City officials) say that they want to be held accountable," said Block. "I think they should admit they are negligent and say they are sorry and ... compensate this family fairly."

Jones said that Hoffman should have been dropped as an informant early on. From the beginning, she did numerous things that should have made it clear to her main contact, Investigator Ryan Pender, that she wasn't cut out to be an informant.

"He should have cut her loose then," Jones said.

As chief, he trusted his staff and didn't think it necessary to micromanage how confidential informants were used.

"There were assumptions made that people were doing their jobs," Jones said. "My disappointment is a loss of confidence in those folks."

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