Police Informant Says His Lies Killed a Harmless Pot Smoker

by Jacob Sullum
Reason
Dec. 29, 2014

Here is how one source described Ronnie Coogle, a former confidential informant for the Tampa Police Department, in an interview with Tampa Bay Times reporter Peter Jamison: "He's just the scum of the fucking earth. I hate to say that. I hate to cuss. But it's the truth. He is nobody to give information about nothing to nobody, because everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie." And that was Coogle's brother. Saying that Coogle has a credibility problem is like saying that Darth Vader has an image problem.

It is therefore hard to know what to make of Jamison's disturbing story, in which Coogle blames his police handlers for fabrications that resulted in the death of a harmless pot smoker named Jason Westcott during a drug raid last May. But one thing seems clear: The cops recklessly relied on Coogle's highly questionable word as long as he was helping them makes busts, turning against him only after he accused them of misconduct. Now the police department argues that Coogle is utterly unreliable except when it comes to providing evidence against Westcott and other drug suspects.

On the night of May 27, armed men dressed in black entered the home that Westcott shared with his boyfriend, Izzy Reyes, who was sleeping on the couch. One of them threw Reyes to the floor, shouting, "Police! Search warrant!" Hearing the tumult, Westcott, who was in bed, grabbed a legally owned pistol and opened the bedroom door. The cops fired five rounds, killing him. Searching the house, they found 0.2 gram of marijuana, which was 99.99 percent less than the pound Coogle had claimed to have seen while buying a gram from Westcott the previous month. Coogle also claimed that Westcott and Reyes had a heroin connection in New York, but there was no heroin in the house.

Coogle, who said he was guilt stricken after learning about Westcott's death, told Jamison he made it all up under pressure from his handlers: Westcott might occasionally sell a little pot to his friends, but he was hardly a major dealer, and he had nothing to do with heroin. Coogle said he did accurately report that Westcott owned a pistol, but a detective transformed that fact into a claim that Westcott carried the gun during every drug deal. "It was a small but consequential detail," Jamison writes, "elevating Westcott to an armed drug trafficking suspect and triggering the use of the SWAT team."

Coogle, despite his self-reported pangs of conscience, emerges as a thoroughly despicable character, not only ratting on friends for money but, by his own account, lying in the process. Yet Coogle's avowed lies present a problem for a police department that relied on him to justify a dangerous SWAT raid. "In July," Jamison notes, Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor "vouched for his credibility." Defending the investigation that resulted in Westcott's senseless death, she said an informer with a "track record" of providing "reliable information about drug dealers" had reported seeing a pound of marijuana in the home and had "additional information suggesting trafficking in heroin."

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