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Romaine Lestin, 36, admitted to shaking down Colombian and Haitian smugglers for thousands of dollars and letting them fly cocaine-filled planes through Haiti's capital to the United States.

He faces up to life in prison on the cocaine-conpiracy conviction. But he is expected to receive only about 10 years at a sentencing hearing Nov. 9 before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke.

L estin, expelled last summer from the Dominican Republic on a smuggling-conspiracy charge, is among four senior Haitian National Police officers implicated in the federal investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, IRS and FBI.

From January 2001 to February 2004, Lestin held three police positions -- commander of the SWAT unit, precinct captain of the community of Tabre, and chief of the airport.

INSIDE INFORMATION

As part of his plea agreement, Lestin is providing inside information to federal prosecutors who have charged at least 14 suspects, most of whom have pleaded guilty to conspiring to import tons of cocaine into the United States and laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds.

Jean Nesly Lucien, the former director of Haiti's National Police force, and Rudy Therassan, a former police commander, pleaded guilty this summer. Former Haitian anti-drug czar Evintz Brillant faces trial Sept. 12.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein called the foursome ''corrupt national police officers'' at Tuesday's plea hearing, saying they allowed cocaine to be stowed in suitcases and cargo containers aboard American Airlines flights to Miami.

The wide-ranging investigation has not produced any direct evidence that Aristide was aware of the cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering conspiracy.

Still, Aristide, who has been living in exile in South Africa since last year, remains a target of the federal grand jury investigation.

At a sentencing hearing last year, another convicted Haitian cocaine smuggler, Jacques Ketant, blurted out that Aristide was a ''drug lord.'' The statement was not made under oath.

NAME MENTIONED

Aristide's name also was mentioned several times by a key witness in last month's trial of a reputed drug kingpin.

Oriel Jean, convicted Haitian presidential palace security chief, testified that Aristide approved a national security badge for Serge Edouard that allowed him to travel freely throughout the country and that the powerful trafficker donated money to the president's private charitable foundation.

Jean told jurors that Aristide was unaware of his involvement in the alleged drug organization headed by Edouard. He said Aristide only learned about it after confronting the security chief in 2003. The Miami federal jury convicted Edouard of running a conspiracy to export cocaine and pay bribes to top security officials in Aristide's administration.

Edouard, reputedly one of Haiti's richest men, was found guilty of 11 counts of cocaine smuggling and money laundering. He faces up to life in prison.

The oldest girl greeted Lake County Sheriff's deputies at the door late Wednesday wearing Marie Kasinger's bulletproof police vest.

Deputies said the 12-year-old called 911 and had been holding the gun for protection. The girl and her sisters had been frightened by a banging noise outside.

Fruitland Park Police Chief J.M. Isom collected Officer Kasinger's badge, uniform and .45-caliber handgun from her Thursday at her Lady Lake home. Kasinger, 39, had worked for the police department for about three months.

"She just made a bad mistake," Isom said. "But it was a serious offense. Somebody could've been seriously hurt."

The 12-year-old girl told dispatchers her mother was out celebrating a friend's birthday, and that she and her sisters, ages 11 and 7, thought they heard a prowler.

Deputies found Kasinger's police handgun in a closet with one bullet in the chamber.

Officer Kasinger was issued a citation for unsafe storage of a firearm, a misdemeanor. She was not arrested. A court hearing was scheduled for Aug. 17.

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06/13/2005 - A grand jury indicted a Lake Worth police officer Wednesday on four charges, including falsifying a police report and official misconduct.

Authorities released few details of the case against Officer Jose Pina, 33. The charges stem from a March 21 chase, said Pina's lawyer, Anthony Livoti Jr. of Fort Lauderdale. Livoti is the senior staff attorney for the Fraternal Order of Police.

"The case is coming out of a pursuit where the state attorney did not file charges against the person they were pursuing, even though he was involved in a robbery, fleeing from a police officer and in possession of crack cocaine," Livoti said. "I guess in Lake Worth it's OK to rob people, flee a police officer and possess crack cocaine ... if you accuse an officer of something."

The grand jury declined to indict Officer Gregory Albanese in connection with the same incident, said Paul Zacks, chief assistant state attorney.

In a prepared statement, Lake Worth police would only say that Pina has been with the agency since May 2004. On April 14, he was placed on administrative leave.

Livoti said Pina is a highly decorated, 11-year veteran of the New York Police Department. He moved to South Florida to be closer to family.

As a policy, the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office takes cases involving police misconduct to the grand jury, Zacks said.

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06/13/2005 - A former Palm Beach County deputy sentenced to life in prison will be eligible for parole in 25 years. That was the law in 1993 when Gervasio "Julio" Torres allegedly molested three boys.

A judge has sentenced him to life in prison for allegedly having sex with young boys he met at the sheriff's office youth training program. A jury convicted the 35-year-old earlier this year.

Torres claims he's not guilty and didn't say why three boys, now men, would sit before a jury detailing sexual acts they say occurred years ago. A prosecutor also asked for a trial date for another molestation case against Torres.

Torres' defense attorneys pointed out inconsistencies in the men's accounts. They also questioned the motives of the sheriff's detectives who investigated Torres.

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06/13/2005 - Somewhere along the wide, palm-lined streets just north of Naples, Felipe Santos vanished.

He disappeared without warning on a Tuesday morning, on his way to work.

Santos and two of his brothers were driving to a construction job, about 6:30 a.m., when his white Ford struck another car beside the Green Tree Shopping Center.

Damage was minor. No one was hurt.

A Collier County deputy arrived at the scene and wrote up Santos for driving without a license, not having insurance and careless driving.

The deputy put Santos in a patrol car and drove away. Later that day, Santos' construction foreman contacted the Collier County jail so his brothers could bail him out.

But Santos wasn't in the jail. He never had been.

The deputy would later say he never arrested Santos, that he decided instead to drive him to a Circle K store and let him go.

That was more than a year ago, on Oct. 14, 2003, and Santos' family has not seen him since.

Months later, a lawyer from St. Petersburg named Linda Friedman Ramirez started looking into the case, trying to figure why a grown man with a young family would simply disappear. At a loss, she went to the Internet and typed in the name of the deputy, "Steven Calkins."

Instead of finding answers, she stumbled onto a deeper mystery.

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^{3/25/2005 - A Key West weekly newspaper publisher who was arrested for reporting details of a complaint he filed against a local police officer may proceed with his civil suit against the city, a federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled Tuesday.}

^{The U.S. Court of Appeals (11th Cir.) held that a Florida law prohibiting leaks by any participant in an internal police investigation, including the person who filed the complaint, violates the First Amendment.}

^{By "proscribing speech critical of government officials, [the law] purports to regulate speech which 'lies near the core of the First Amendment' without a compelling justification for doing so," Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. wrote for the three-judge panel.}

^{Dennis Reeves Cooper, editor and publisher of Key West The Newspaper, published a series of articles in May and June 2001, claiming that Key West Police investigator Robert Christensen failed to investigate a citizen's complaint of perjury against another police officer. As a result of the information he gathered, Cooper subsequently filed his own complaint against Christensen with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The department notified Cooper that it had instructed Key West's then-Police Chief Gordon Dillon to look into the matter and report back within 45 days.}

^{In June 2001, Christensen reported in his newspaper that he had filed a complaint against Christensen and that the department had given Dillon 45 days to investigate it. One week later, Cooper published a commentary recounting his allegations against Christensen and urging Dillon to "tell the truth . . . and let the chips fall where they may." That same day, Dillon obtained a warrant for Cooper's arrest for allegedly violating Florida law chapter 112533(4), by naming Christensen as the target of the investigation and stating that Dillon had 45 days to respond to the department.}

^{The law makes it a misdemeanor for anyone who participates in a law enforcement agency's internal investigation to disclose any information learned as a result of the investigation before it becomes public record. With the help of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Cooper sued Dillon for enforcing the law, claiming it imposed an unconstitutional prior restraint on his speech.}

^{A federal district judge dismissed Cooper's suit in February, finding that the statute was content-neutral and not unconstitutional. Cooper appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.}

^{The appeals court ruled that the statute was not a prior restraint because it "did not silence Cooper before he could speak." Rather, the law aimed to stifle a particular kind of speech, pertaining to "pending investigations of law enforcement officers," the court ruled. As a content-based restriction on speech, the law therefore had to be narrowly tailored to promote a compelling government interest.}

^{The court found that the three state interests cited by Dillon -- shielding witnesses from influential information, protecting the reputations of wrongfully accused officers, and preserving the privacy interests of the participants in the investigation -- were not sufficiently "compelling" to justify the law's infringement on free speech. Because it deemed the law unconstitutional, the court declined to analyze whether the statute was narrowly tailored.}

^{The court determined that through Dillon's actions, the city of Key West had adopted a policy that deprived Cooper of his constitutional rights and is therefore liable to Cooper under federal law.}