Pubdate: Sun, 27 Jan 2008
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2008 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Alan Feuer and Al Baker
Note: Cara Buckley and Daryl Khan contributed reporting.
Cited: Unnecessary Evil 
http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/informantabuse.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/informants
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?246 (Policing - United States)

OFFICERS' ARRESTS PUT SPOTLIGHT ON POLICE USE OF INFORMANTS

It is sometimes said that snitches are the lifeblood of police work. 
The question is: Are they also a poison?

Formally known as C.I.'s, for confidential informants, they are a 
detective's best friend. They act as eyes and ears. They serve as 
secret tipsters. They take the police, by proxy, to the dangerous and 
privileged places where badges cannot go.

At the same time, they present problems of administration -- and 
sometimes of temptation -- to those who uphold the law. Petty crime 
is often tolerated in exchange for information. Detectives can be 
duped by an informant's agenda. While cases of corruption are rare, 
it is fairly common to have more "give" in this delicate give-and-take.

The issue of confidential informants was thrust into the spotlight 
last week by news that four narcotics officers in Brooklyn had been 
arrested, in a case that involves accusations of paying informants 
with drugs seized from dealers the informants had pointed them to.

The officers are not suspected of making any illegal profit, and one 
law enforcement official has said police officers' trading of drugs 
for information in the pursuit of arrests could be described as 
"noble-cause corruption." The practice would, however, shatter police 
policy, break the law and, in the view of police commanders and 
prosecutors, erode the integrity of officers.

The scandal led the Brooklyn district attorney's office to seek the 
dismissal of more than 80 drug cases, and 100 more are under review. 
Besides the arrests -- of a sergeant, a detective and two officers in 
the Brooklyn South narcotics bureau -- six additional officers were 
suspended and several others were placed on modified or desk duty, 
barred from doing enforcement work. Four supervisors were transferred 
and a new commander was assigned to the Police Department's Narcotics Division.

Confidential sources are generally recruited and managed in secret, 
and their numbers are hard to determine in large police departments 
like New York's. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to 
its budget request for 2008, maintains more than 15,000 secret 
informants; the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to an 
internal audit from 2005, has about 4,000 at a time on its payroll.

The use of informants has been attracting attention in various 
jurisdictions. In July, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings 
on informants, prompted by the fatal shooting by the police in 
Atlanta of a 92-year-old woman in a drug case involving an informant. 
A New York assemblyman has proposed a bill to increase oversight of 
informants and in effect restrict their use.

The informants themselves have been public targets. A Web site, 
whosarat.com, is devoted to exposing "rats of the week," witnesses 
who cooperate with the government. There is even a street campaign to 
convince people not to become informants. Popular T-shirts show a 
stop sign imprinted with the words "Stop Snitchin'."

The list of what informants do for the police is long and varied: 
They infiltrate criminal groups that investigators cannot personally 
approach; they vouch for undercover officers trying to establish 
credibility on the streets; they identify safe houses, stash houses 
and cellphone numbers; they help set up surveillance and, in the 
process, save the police countless hours of work and significant 
amounts of money.

"With confidential informants we get the benefit of intimate 
knowledge of criminal schemes by criminals, and that is a very 
effective way to investigate crime," said Daniel J. Castleman, chief 
of the Investigative Division of the Manhattan district attorney's 
office. "It's no secret that people conduct criminal activities not 
alone but in combination, and if you can flip someone involved in the 
criminal scheme, it makes it much easier to investigate and to prosecute."

To avoid problems, it is standard practice in police departments and 
federal law enforcement agencies to closely vet and watch informants 
- -- a process that one official in the New York field office of the 
Drug Enforcement Administration called "knowing them from womb to tomb."

In the New York Police Department, once informants are approved for 
use they are photographed, fingerprinted and entered into a closely 
guarded registry. Any officer who deals with them is required to log 
the contact in the registry, with a record of any payments made.

Of course, the habitues of drug dens and dark alleys are not known 
for their honesty, and several former and current law enforcement 
officers said they took care to vet their informants often and 
personally, even after they were entered in the registry.

"The bottom line is you need a back door, as we say, to get in to 
check once in a while to make sure they are being honest with you," 
said a law enforcement official who frequently works with informants. 
Like several other officials interviewed, he declined to be named 
because of the sensitivity of the issue and the secrecy involved in 
using informants.

William Oldham, a former detective with the elite Major Case Squad 
and a co-author of "The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who 
Murdered for the Mafia," gave this procedure for keeping informants 
honest on the street: Before any operation, search the informant 
thoroughly. Note all money and any drugs on the informant's body. Put 
on the recording device, if one is to be used. Hand over the marked 
money for the drug buy, making sure it was photocopied in advance for 
serial numbers. Try not to lose sight of the informant during the 
deal. Search again when the informant returns.

Mr. Oldham said his own choice in dealing with illegal drugs was to 
use, in order of preference, an undercover officer, an informant 
working in exchange for lightening a sentence, and, only as a last 
resort, an informant who was working for the cash.

"There's no real upside to a paid informant," he said. "If they're 
working for the money, their heart's not really in it."

Beyond logistical concerns, there are moral questions surrounding the 
use of informants. It is legal to pay an informant with money rather 
than drugs, but is it right? What if he uses the money to buy drugs? 
What if he gets high and commits another crime? What if he overdoses, 
perhaps fatally?

The four officers arrested in the Brooklyn South case stand accused 
of paying their informants with drugs, an allegation that stunned one 
former undercover officer currently assigned to a precinct in the 
district. He said it was relatively easy to secure money from the 
department to pay informants.

"You index it under who you got it from," he said, "and then just 
voucher it." A lawyer for one of the officers has said the officers 
were merely trying to make drug arrests and were not being accused of 
trying to steal for their own benefit.

The American Civil Liberties Union maintains a Web log, titled 
Unnecessary Evil, tracking news coverage of informants, especially in 
drug cases.

According to news reports cited on the blog, the authorities in New 
Jersey decided in November not to prosecute a police detective who 
impregnated a drug informant in 2005. The same month, a police 
department in South Carolina was found to have been paying an 
informant to participate in drug deals even as a local sheriff's 
office was chasing the same man for crimes he had committed while on 
the payroll. And according to The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, a 
federal judge there freed 15 men from prison last week, ruling that 
their convictions were based on the testimony of a government 
informant who lied on the stand.

"The practice of using confidential informants in the war on drugs 
has its own special pathologies," said Alexandra Natapoff, an 
associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She 
said the frequent use of informants can degrade other weapons of law 
enforcement, like wiretaps and undercover work. In extreme cases, she 
said, it can result in "the police relying on criminals to tell them 
who their targets should be."

At the same time, the dangers of informing are felt in the 
communities where the cooperators live. Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, 
a Brooklyn Democrat, said that the police are relying on informants 
so heavily in some neighborhoods that residents have become 
suspicious of one another, giving rise to the "Stop Snitchin'" backlash.

"This kind of informing stuff that is going on in the ghettos of 
today is not unlike what had gone on in the ghettos of Warsaw and 
Eastern Europe and East Berlin," Mr. Lentol said.

He proposed a bill in Albany last year to give defense lawyers more 
power to challenge an informant's testimony, prohibit or require 
court approval when prosecutors drop serious charges in exchange for 
testimony, and require that the police file annual public reports on 
their use of informants. The bill was not voted on last year but was 
again referred to committee this month.

"All of these snitches have stopped people from wanting to cooperate 
with the police because nobody knows who to trust," Mr. Lentol said. 
"It's like a community poisoning."

While most law enforcement officials would oppose restrictions on the 
use of informants, they acknowledge its pitfalls. "It's like playing 
with fire," said the law enforcement official who frequently works 
with them. "Fire, in certain times, is good: if you have to burn 
something out, kill it, delete it. But if you let it get out of hand, 
it can destroy the village."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake