Snitching

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David Headley: another drug/terrorism informant works both sides

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According to the New York Times, David Headley, drug-dealer-turned-informant-turned-terrorist, was working for the DEA while collaborating with Pakistani terrorists who eventually attacked Mumbai, India in 2008. Headley has pleaded guilty to his role in that attack, and is currently cooperating with the government in an effort to avoid the death penalty. Story here: DEA Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning. Part of India’s anger over the incident stems from the fact that the DEA had been warned repeatedly by several people who knew Headley that he sympathized with terrorist groups, but, ignoring the warnings, the DEA nevertheless persuaded a court to take Headley off probation and sent him to Pakistan in 2001. From the Times:

In recent weeks, United States government officials have begun to acknowledge that Mr. Headley’s path from American informant to transnational terrorist illustrates the breakdowns and miscommunications that have bedeviled them since the Sept. 11 attacks. Warnings about his radicalism were apparently not shared with the drug agency that made use of his ties in Pakistan.

The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., began an investigation into Mr. Headley’s government connections after reports last month that two of the former drug dealer’s ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headley’s life reported his ties to terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed.

An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.

An NPR story this morning explains the breakdown in official communication by noting that the DEA would have been protective of its informant and unlikely to share his identity with other agencies, Warnings Overlooked in Case of American Tied to Mumbai Attacks. But this is only part of the story. As the Times points out, the DEA ignored the warnings precisely because Headley was a long time and valuable informant. This is the same blindspot that earlier this year led CIA officials to bring a prized informant to a base in Afghanistan, only to see him turn suicide bomber — see Afghan suicide bomber was informant-double-agent.

This debacle illustrates the significant costs of the criminal informant compromise. First, informants avoid punishment for their own crimes–Headley served less than two years in prison although he could have faced up to nine years for distributing 15 kilograms of heroin. Second, as the government grows increasingly reliant on its criminal sources, officials come to tolerate informant crime, double-dealing and inaccuracy as a routine part of the compromise. Because the dominant culture of informant management is one of secrecy, even as between government agencies, this further weakens the process of intelligence-gathering, information-sharing, and law enforcement. Since the government maintains that it cannot conduct the war on terror without informants, it is time to rethink the rules of this risky public policy.

Farewell Post

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This is my last post as a guest blogger. I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to think deeply about the problems of snitching and policing. Today I want to thing about the dangers inherent in becoming an informant.

The stop snitching movement normally focuses on the cost of snitching to the community. However, two recent cases suggest that the cost of informing can be high because the police insufficiently protect their informants. In the most recent case, from Missoula, Montana, police officers reportedly pressured Colton Peterson, a mentally ill marijuana grower to “work as a ‘cooperative defendant,’ gathering string on potentially more serious drug dealers in the area, and in exchange police would tell prosecutors he had cooperated with the investigation.” Peterson committed suicide, in part, his family claim, because of the pressure to snitch. In another case, police in Tallahassee, Florida, arrested Rachel Hoffman, a college student, “for drug possession and … g[a]ve[ her] the opportunity to avoid multiple felony charges by acting as a confidential informant for the police.” She was told to purchase drugs, including cocaine, from local drug dealers, but was killed during the undercover operation.

In each case, the police appeared to be more concerned to turn non-violent marijuana users into snitches than ensure their safety. In each case, vulnerable young individuals were preyed upon by police not simply to turn states evidence, but to go back into the field as undercover informants, in Hoffman’s case to buy harder drugs than she used, as well as to purchase a handgun. In each instance, the police were criticized for their lack of training in using informants.

Thanks again to Alexandra Natapoff for the opportunity to contribute to this blog.

Video-Taping Policing

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A recent snitching-related phenomenon has seen citizens secretly recording police activity. Different types of recording devices have been used, from the omnipresent mobile phone, to cameras mounted in cars or, in a recent case filed in Maryland, a motorcycle helmet. The police, however, are fighting back: in Maryland, an officer caught on a tape posted on YouTube sued the arrestee under a wiretap statute for recording the encounter that led to the arrest.

While the judge ultimately threw out the case, the Maryland police are not alone in arresting individuals who record or watch them do their job. In fact, the subtext of a recent Supreme Court case, Devenpeck vs. Alford, 543 U.S. 146 (2004) concerned a police officer who (wrongfully) arrested a suspect for tape recording the arrest.

Citizens taping cops can fit the definition of snitching, if the citizen plans to use the tape to gain lenience or drop the charge. It also fits one scenario in which subjects have proved more willing to inform on lawbreakers: when the wrongdoer is a police officer.

Why do the police react so negatively to citizen video-taping? After all, the police themselves use dashboard-mounted cameras in police cars that capture traffic stops. In part, the police do so because they believe having an accurate record of the stop will most often support the officer’s version of events and undermine some of the negative attitudes towards the police.

One reason might be that citizen-sponsored videotaping (as opposed to police-sponsored taping) is a direct challenge to police control and authority. Since much of the stop-snitching phenomenon is a reaction to community perceptions of antagonistic policing or forcible policing that distances the police from the community and uses criminal informants to target low level crimes, citizen videotaping is a means of redressing the balance, by creating a record of what the police, in fact, do.

Police overreaction to citizen videotaping is best understood as a demand for a display of respect for and deference to the police. It highlights the distinction between consensual policing, of the sort that treats citizens with respect as equals, and the sort of adversarial posture that relies on criminal informants to the detriment of communication and community relations.

Mandatory Time Off for Informants in Protective Custody?

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Here’s a snitching development from New South Wales, in Australia:

“The New South Wales Government says criminals who give evidence against other criminals will not automatically get reduced sentences because of the hardship they suffer in jail.

Attorney-General John Hatzistergos says they will get a discount for providing information to police but not an additional discount for the extra hardship they may suffer.”

The New South Wales system gave two automatic discounts to jailhouse informants. These might be characterized as the direct and collateral benefits for informing (on the lines of direct and collateral penalties at sentencing). The direct benefit was time off for the nature and quality of the information given; the collateral benefit was to compensate them for hardships suffered through requiring protective custody. Like direct and collateral penalties, one is clearly related to the criminal’s act (in the case of punishment, the crime; in the case of informing, cooperation with the government); another is regarded as regulatory in nature. In the case of punishment, there is a whole range of collateral penalties, ranging from losing the right to vote, to deportation (for eligible foreign nationals), to losing public housing, health care or welfare eligibility. In the case of informing, New South Wales treats protective custody as regulatory, and so as a matter of ensuring safety and security within prisons, rather than as an additional punishment consequent to informing.

It is unlikely that the American system would treat this type of direct/collateral benefit as legally significant. After all, the decision to reward the informant with some sentencing recommendation is well within the discretion of the prosecutor. And it’s well established that decisions regarding protective custody are regulatory rather than punitive. But New South Wales apparently had a mandatory award of time off for informants for protective custody. Apparently, the state’s rethinking of that policy reflects a tough on crime attitude on the part of prosecutors that is now catching up on prison informants.