Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

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Police raids and imaginary informants

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Dennis Fitzgerald is a former DEA agent and Miami police narcotics supervisor. He has written an article entitled “Wrong-Door Raids, Phantom Informants, and the Controlled Buy,” in which he not only describes problems with drug informant use, but also some best practices that can counter them. For example, he points out that “the creation of ‘phantom informants’ is a practice that has plagued police departments for decades,” and recommends that police agencies institute better documentation requirements to counter this problem. More generally, he discusses the problem of wrong-door raids and the police practices that generate them. From the article:

During the last 20 years, police have killed at least 40 innocent people while conducting wrong-door raids. According to a study by the Cato Institute, “Because of shoddy police work, over-reliance on informants, and other problems, each year hundreds of raids are conducted on the wrong addresses, bringing unnecessary terror and frightening confrontation to people never suspected of a crime.”

Here’s a link to the Cato Institute raid map. Fitzgerald goes on to identify the problems that lead to such raids, including:

1. Willful disregard for police standard operating procedures governing the use of informants and conducting controlled buys

2. Use of “cookie cutter” affidavits containing boilerplate language from a computer program

3. Blatant lies in search warrant affidavits

4. Creation of phantom informants

5. Supplying drug exhibits “purchased” by a phantom informant

6. Planting drugs in homes when no drugs are discovered during a search.

Fitzgerald is also the author of the book “Informants and Undercover Investigations: A Practical Guide to Law, Policy and Procedure” (CRC Press, 2007).

The Page 99 Test

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Snitching is featured this week over on the Page 99 Test . The blog is driven by the writer Ford Madox Ford’s adage: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” Page 99 of Snitching reads as follows:

Today’s informant culture goes beyond the inquiry in any specific case about whether it might be dangerous to reveal the name of an informant or whether a particular investigation might be compromised by such revelations. Rather, the system is moving towards wholesale policies of keeping cases, dockets, and practices secret. Today, the potential threat to some witnesses is now seen by courts as a reason to overcome the presumption of openness for all criminal records.

In these ways, the practice of using informants undermines public transparency throughout the criminal system. By resolving liability in secret, it insulates investigative and prosecutorial techniques from judicial and legislative scrutiny. This reduced public access affects numerous other constituencies as well, making it more difficult for the press, crime victims, families, and policy analysts to obtain information about the workings of the justice system or about specific criminal cases. Informant use has thus become a powerful and destructive informational policy in its own right, reducing public transparency and obscuring the real impact of criminal practices on individuals, communities, and other institutions.

“The Forfeiture Racket”

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Here’s another important story from Radley Balko at Reason Magazine entitled “The Forfeiture Racket.” It chronicles the disturbing history of our powerful drug forfeiture laws, and how governments have seized literally billions of dollars from innocent people. Here’s an excerpt:

Over the past three decades, it has become routine in the United States for state, local, and federal governments to seize the property of people who were never even charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. Nearly every year, according to Justice Department statistics, the federal government sets new records for asset forfeiture. And under many state laws, the situation is even worse: State officials can seize property without a warrant and need only show “probable cause” that the booty was connected to a drug crime in order to keep it, as opposed to the criminal standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, owners of seized property all too often have a heavier burden of proof than the government officials who stole their stuff.

According to Balko, the U.S. Justice Department’s forfeiture fund reached $3.1 billion in 2008; less than 20 percent of seizures involved property belonging to people who were actually prosecuted.

Informants play an important role in forfeiture. Not only can the government rely on informants to meet its evidentiary burden of showing that the property is connected to criminal activity, but under federal law, informants can receive bounties of as much as 25 percent of the value of the seized assets. For an overview of U.S. informant-forfeiture practices, see Joachin Alemany, United States Contracts with Informants: An Illusory Promise?, 33 Univ. of Miami Inter-American Law Rev. 251 (2002).