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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." Note: Cara Buckley and Daryl Khan contributed reporting. |
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