Fired Lawrence Police Officer Stuart “Mike” Peck wasn’t following the rules when he recruited drug informants and did favors for them.

There were no rules to follow.

Unlike many police departments, the Lawrence Police Department has no written procedures for working with confidential informants. Now, a few months after Chief Ron Olin fired Peck — a patrol officer known for aggressively cultivating drug informants — that’s about to change.

The department is close to unveiling procedures that would create a registry of informants and require officers to keep a detailed log of their contacts with the informants, officials said.

The rules also would prohibit social relationships of the kind Peck developed with at least one informant.

“No policy is going to prevent fudging. That’s the difficult part,” defense attorney Jim Rumsey said. “But if you have the policy in place, then that’s a start.”

Peck said his aggressive pursuit of drug dealers was like “operating on a high wire without a net.”

‘Potential for problems’

Lt. David Cobb said a draft version of the rules was made available to officers last summer when it came to the department’s attention that patrol officers had begun routinely using confidential informants. Traditionally, such work had been done by the specialized, three-member Drug Enforcement Unit, a joint city-county agency.

“We saw that there was potential for problems,” Cobb said. “Without having each and every contact documented, without filling out what was promised and what was not promised, the concern was that (officers) would put themselves in a position where they could be compromised.”

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Peck said he was aware of the draft procedures, but no one was enforcing them.

“My understanding was that these were not policies we were using, but they were there for officers to peruse and make suggestions,” he said. “It wasn’t something my supervisor told me to do.”

Earlier this year, Peck fell from the high wire and hit the ground in public view.

In late January, Judge Michael Malone ruled Peck falsely said an informant’s credibility was unquestioned when he applied for a search warrant based on the informant’s tips.

Malone found that Peck had a social relationship with the informant and that Peck “had knowledge of the source’s extensive history of convictions and arrests for crimes of dishonesty.”

He also found that other officers warned Peck about the informant’s credibility and Peck knew the informant went on crack cocaine binges.

New guidelines

The proposed rules would prohibit officers from lending informants money or interacting with them while off duty, Sgt. Mike Pattrick said.

The rules also would require a photograph of the informant, a written agreement and a background check to be included in the person’s departmental file.

Each informant would be assigned a number for reference purposes.

The Lenexa Police Department has had a similar policy for at least six years, said Rick Roth, a sergeant in that department’s investigations division. It applies to all officers — not just those assigned to drug enforcement –but most of the work with confidential informants in Lenexa is done by detectives.

“We do not allow our patrolmen to get too involved with confidential informants,” Roth said.

Peck said he saw some benefits to the policy but predicted it would be a burden that would discourage patrol officers from using informants.

“It’s so restrictive that no one will attempt to use it unless they’re a member of the Drug Enforcement Unit,” he said. “Every bit of information would have to be documented and forwarded to the DEU, so, in theory, they would be privy to everything I got.”

Peck has said his firing was making officers afraid to use other aggressive tactics, such as asking for consent to search cars during traffic stops.

‘Perception and deception’

Defense attorney Rumsey said he couldn’t give a detailed opinion about the rules because he hadn’t seen them. The department has not made the proposed policy publicly available because it still is in draft form.

“The policy is only as good as its content and whether or not people adhere to it,” said Rumsey, who represented the defendant in the case that led to Malone’s ruling.

One thing Rumsey would like to see in the rules is a requirement that informants, many of whom have a record of drug use, be subject to random drug testing. People who are addicted to drugs often will do or say anything they think will help them get more drugs, and they also might not accurately perceive events they’re describing to police, he said.

“The drug testing ought to happen for two reasons: perception and deception,” Rumsey said.

The most recent draft version does not require drug testing for informants, Sgt. Pattrick said.