Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Families & Youth

BuzzFeed investigation into student informants

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BuzzFeed has been running a revealing investigation into how police–including campus police at Ole Miss–in Oxford, Mississippi have been pressuring students and college-age residents into becoming informants.  Here are links to the most recent articles:

How Mississippi Discovered The Drug War’s “Golden Egg” (April 20, 2015): A small-town narcotics unit has built a team of confidential informants by arresting low-level-offender college students and pressuring them to flip.

How Mississippi Cops Threaten College-Age Kids Into Becoming Informants (Oct. 1, 2015): A recording of two officers from Oxford, Mississippi’s Metro Narcotics unit sheds light on how the unit pressures college-age suspects into becoming informants.

From the most recent article:

“[E]ach year Metro Narcotics enlists an average of 30 informants, most of whom have little connection to the drug scene other than as low-level buyers. Around half of the 240 or so people arrested by Metro Narcotics in 2014 were first-time offenders, and the unit made three times as many arrests for marijuana as for any other drug. To get these young men and women to cooperate, the unit’s four agents often threaten them with prison sentences or a life-long drug record.”

The article also includes transcripts of a conversation between police and two young potential informants in which police threatened the young pregnant woman with an unrealistical 30-year sentence, and got her boyfriend–who had no drug charges or contacts–to agree to become a drug informant to ‘work off’ his girlfriend’s charge.  The two young people initially agreed, but then decided not to become informants after they consulted with an attorney. 

Attention is turning to student informants

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20/20 did this special feature on “Logan,” the U. Mass student who died of a heroin overdose after becoming a drug informant for campus police: The Dangers of a College Student Becoming a Campus Police Drug Informant.  U. Mass canceled its informant program after a university working group issued this critical report.

Reason just posted this story about Andrew Sadek, a 20-year-old student at North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, who was shot and killed after he agreed to work as an informant:  Busted Over $80 Worth of Pot, College Student Turns Informant, Then Turns Up Dead.

Florida might step up again as a leader in this arena.  Legislators have introduced bills that would ban the use of minors and college students as informants in buy-and-bust drug operations.

HuffPost on DEA snitching debacles

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In a two-part series about “the sketchiest things the DEA has done while waging the war on drugs,” informant debacles take the lead in this Huffington Post article.  Here are a few of the headlines:

-The DEA once turned a teenager into a drug kingpin so he could act as an informant.

-The DEA allows informants to break the law, but have no records as to how often it happens.

-One of America’s most notorious terrorists once served as a DEA informant.

-The DEA strung one informant along for 20 years with the promise of citizenship. She still hasn’t received it.

Student Informants

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A series of recent news articles have documented the use of college student informants by campus and local police.  A 20-year-old student named Logan at U. Mass Amherst was permitted to continue his drug habit, and keep the secret from his parents, by becoming an informant.  He died from a heroin overdose.  From the Boston Globe story, “UMass police helped keep student’s addiction secret”:

   Campus police agreed not to seek criminal charges against Logan or notify his parents after he agreed to become a confidential informant, code named “CI-8,” something Logan called “an offer I can’t refuse” in a text message to a friend. In December 2012, Logan led police to another dealer — who was immediately arrested and suspended — while Logan remained a student in good standing. Police even refunded $700 they had seized from his room, which he immediately used to buy drugs, according to another text to a friend.

At several University of Wisconsin campuses, police acknowledge converting students  into informants who have been arrested for drugs.  According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism,

  One UW-Whitewater student used as a confidential informant, speaking on condition of anonymity, says he was arrested for selling marijuana and ended up buying ecstasy. Within three hours of his arrest, he says a campus detective searched his phone, identified potential targets and had him sign an agreement.  The student, facing felony charges, says he made multiple controlled buys on campus.

These stories follow on the heels of developments at the U.S. Air Force Academy where a student informant program was dismantled after it was made public by the Colorado Springs Gazette.  Post here.

Air force academy informant policies ignite debate

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The New York Times has been following developments at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs after the academy’s informant program came to light and was subsequently dismantled. NYT story here: Informant Debate Renewed as Air Force Revisits Cadet Misconduct. The informant program turned out to be the impetus for the only three prosecutions of sexual assault in the last 15 years. The ability of the informant program to produce such benefits, even as it mistreated and eventually expelled its own participants, reflects the constant dilemma of informant use: is the information it produces worth its significant costs? From the NYT:

Defending the practice, a retired deputy judge advocate general Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper, said [] that the academy’s honor code sometimes had to be broken to expose crimes like drug dealing and sexual assault. … But the idea of having students spy on one another is controversial, with both alumni and experts on campus sexual assault arguing that it violates the honor code’s ban on lying and erodes trust among cadets.