Deal leaves informant fearing retribution
Attica police accused of reneging on pledge
ATTICA — Bianca Hervey's father voided an agreement for her to make a drug deal for the police in this small village after the 20-year-old college student was stopped on a traffic charge. Another young person stopped for the same reason wasn't so lucky.
The young man, whose name is being withheld by The Buffalo News, made a drug buy for Attica police after — like Hervey — he was told that his traffic charges would disappear if he agreed to become a confidential drug informant.
But after making the drug deal, the man said, Attica police insisted he make more. When he refused, he was picked up on the original traffic charge. Now he fears retribution from the drug dealer he set up.
Hervey said she signed the agreement after Officer Christopher Graham told her she probably would spend the night in jail.
The young man said he agreed to make a drug buy after Graham used another approach on him.
He said he had told Graham, who is 24, that he had taken tests for the military and was looking forward to enlisting.
"He told me, "you're not going to get in the service with these charges,' " the informant said. "I was crushed when he told me that."
Then, he said, Graham offered him a way out.
"Look, I can make all this disappear for you," he quoted Graham as saying.
Graham gave the young man his cell phone number and told him to send him a text if he found any prospective drug buys.
"He told me marijuana wouldn't do," he said. "He was looking for bigger stuff, heroin, cocaine, pills, pharmaceuticals."
The young man, who grew up in Attica, sent Graham a text message the next week that he had a prospect. He said Graham and Police Chief William Smith showed up at his house and took him to the police station.
He said he was given money to buy the drug and made the purchase while police watched at a distance.
"After the deal was made, I thought everything was done," the young man said. "A week later, I got a text from Graham. He said we need to make another deal."
"I told him no," the young man said. "He told me to lose his [cell phone] number.
"After the deal, I missed court for the traffic tickets," he said. "I thought he said the charges would disappear. I thought it was done."
A village judge swore out a warrant accusing him of failing to appear in court, and Graham and Smith, the police chief, came in two police cars to arrest him.
Now the informant still faces the original traffic charges, but fears police will arrest the man who sold him the drugs and he will be blamed.
"It's hard for me to sleep at night," the informant said in an interview.
"I'm afraid I'm going to get a phone call some night that he's been hurt or worse," said the young man's mother, who wasn't told of the agreement until after her son made the drug buy.
Smith confirmed the arrest, saying the court had issued the warrant.
"He was picked up on a warrant from Village Court because he didn't fulfill his obligation," Smith said.
How many buys was he required to make? Smith was asked.
"I don't think I can discuss that with you, but he didn't fulfill his obligation," Smith said. "That's all. It's that simple. He didn't do what he was supposed to do."
Norman P. Effman, the longtime public defender in Wyoming County, said no lawyer ever would approve the kind of deals the Police Department is offering.
"It's absolutely ludicrous," Effman said. "Any defense lawyer in his right mind would not say this would be a good deal."
"In a case like this," Effman added, "you clean up your mess and pay a fine of $100 to $150. No lawyer would risk a client over a traffic ticket."
Effman said most drug cases made through confidential informants use people already charged with a drug crime.
Both Hervey and the informant were arrested on traffic charges and insist they are not part of the drug scene, have never been arrested for drugs and don't use drugs.
Police officials who have worked informants in narcotics cases say using people outside the drug culture as narcotics informants is extremely rare.
Richard D. Furlong, Bianca Hervey's father and a labor lawyer with Lipsitz Green, unsuccessfully complained to the police chief, Village Board and mayor about his daughter's treatment.
"If the average American read about a kid in another country being treated like that, the immediate reaction would be, "Thank God we live in the United States where we have our freedoms,' " Furlong said.
Smith, the police chief who came to Attica after retiring from a career largely spent supervising narcotics officers in the Buffalo Police Department, says he doesn't know what the fuss is about.
"It's his choice," Smith said. "Some people don't have the money to pay fines. This is a way to do it so people don't have to pay fines. It's the same whether you get off on a charge for say, shoplifting, or you don't pay a fine. It's the same difference."
Smith said he is being criticized for trying to take drugs off the street.
"We can walk the streets at night here," he said of Attica, a village of nearly 2,500 people best known for its state prison. "If there's anything to apologize for, it's someone trying to do something to clean up the drug problem.
"There's nothing done that was illegal," he said. "There was nothing done without permission. I don't understand where you're going with this."
Smith commands the Wyoming County Drug Task Force, which Wyoming County District Attorney Gerald Stout credits him with starting four years ago.
According to documents obtained from the state by the News under a Freedom of Information request, the task force receives slightly less than $35,000 a year from the state to pay overtime and equipment costs to operate the task force.
Last year, the task force made 46 drug arrests and seized drugs valued at $101,650, according to the records provided by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. The seized substances consisted mostly of marijuana but included small amounts of cocaine, heroin and pharmaceutical drugs.
The task force, administered by the Wyoming County district attorney, consists of deputies from the county's Sheriff's Office and officers from the villages of Arcade, Attica, Perry and Warsaw.
The informant said he never will view police again in the same light.
"I haven't been able to sleep," he said. "If I could take it all back, I would do it in a heartbeat."
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