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   https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/11ea672/2147483647/strip/t   
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   This photo provided by the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office in September   
   2022, shows Antonio D. Jones. He was booked Jan. 13, 2021, on charges of   
   second-degree rape, false imprisonment and distribution of meth. (Rapides   
   Parish Sheriff’s Office via AP)   
      
   ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) — A woman outfitted with a tiny microphone and hidden   
   camera walked up to a dilapidated drug house on a chilly afternoon last year   
   looking to buy meth from a dealer known on the streets as “Mississippi.”   
      
   But as the informant disappeared inside with a career criminal with a rap   
   sheet spanning three decades, her law enforcement handlers left her undercover   
   on her own — unprotected and unmonitored in real time. And the devices she   
   carried passively    
   recorded a crime far more horrific than any drug buy.   
      
   Under threat of violence, the dealer forced the woman to perform oral sex on   
   him — twice — in an attack so brazen he paused at one point to conduct a   
   separate drug deal, according to interviews and confidential law enforcement   
   records obtained by The    
   Associated Press.   
      
   “It was one of the worst depictions of sexual abuse I have ever seen,”   
   said a local official who viewed the footage and spoke to AP on condition of   
   anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the ongoing case.   
      
   “Just the audio from it is enough to turn your stomach,” the official   
   said. “It’s a female being sexually brutalized while she’s crying and   
   whimpering.”   
      
   Even as the woman cried and her assailant threatened to put her “in the   
   hospital,” narcotics deputies remained down the block in the blighted   
   neighborhood, unaware of what was going on. That’s because, as authorities   
   told the AP, they never    
   considered such an attack might happen and the devices the woman carried   
   didn’t have the ability to transmit the operation to law enforcement in real   
   time.   
      
   “It was recording but not to where my guys were monitoring it,” said   
   Rapides Parish Sheriff Mark Wood, blaming the January 2021 incident on his   
   inexperience from only being in the top job six months at that time. “There   
   are always things you learn    
   that you can do better.”   
      
   The case in this central Louisiana city of 47,000 underscores the perils   
   confidential informants face seeking to “work off” criminal charges in   
   loosely regulated and often secretive arrangements with law enforcement.   
   Police rely on informants in a    
   wide range of cases, compensating them with money or leniency in their own   
   cases yet often providing little or no training.   
      
   Records show it wasn’t until the woman left the area on her own and   
   contacted her handlers that deputies searched the single-family home and   
   arrested Antonio D. Jones, 48, on charges of second-degree rape, false   
   imprisonment and distribution of meth    
   after recovering 5 grams of the substance in the sting.   
      
   Deputies surveilling the home after the woman went inside assumed she “must   
   be OK” because someone else entered after her to buy drugs, said Lt. Mark   
   Parker, the ranking officer in the operation.   
      
   Parker, who retired this month, told the AP that the sheriff’s office   
   didn’t start using equipment capable of monitoring in real time until after   
   the alleged rape, and often would send informants into stings without any   
   recording equipment at all.   
      
   “We’ve always done it this way,” Parker said. “She was an addict and   
   we just used her as an informant like we’ve done a million times before.   
   Looking back, it’s easy to say, ‘What if?’”   
      
   And while it’s not clear what kind of deal the woman struck with the Rapides   
   Parish Sheriff’s Office, her cooperation as an informant didn’t seem to   
   make much difference in clearing her own criminal record.   
      
      
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