Judge States Seattle Police Weren’t Required to Monitor Informant

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the Seattle Police Department had a duty to monitor a confidential informant who turned violent.

In the complaint, Francisco Islas Casillas said he was kidnapped, robbed and assaulted by police informant Jessahel Ortega-Baldis in 2012. Ortega-Baldis showed up at a car-repair shop Casillas owned with some other men, handcuffed and blindfolded him at gunpoint, and drove him around for a while before throwing him out of their van. Ortega-Baldis subsequently demanded $20,000 from Casillas for not killing him.

Ortega-Baldis' handlers at the Seattle Police Department said that from the time he became an informant in 2006 until he was arrested for the kidnapping, he had shown no violent tendencies. He only had traffic incidents on his record.

In his ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly ruled there was simply no indication that the informant posed a foreseeable risk to anyone.