Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Informant Crime

Committing Crime While Working for the Government

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TalkLeft picked up on this story about a Secret Service informant who, while assisting the government, launched one of the largest identity theft operations in U.S. history. Back in 2003, Albert Gonzalez avoided indictment for identity fraud by becoming a snitch; his cooperation resulted in the dismantling of a significant identity theft ring of which he appeared to be the ringleader. He kept on with his criminal activities, however, apparently even using his government connections to warn other hackers.

This is simply one of the biggest problems with informant use: the fact that offenders can use active cooperation not only to avoid punishment but to continue offending. It is a problem inherent in snitching: the most useful informants are typically the most active criminals, so the government has to tolerate some amount of criminality in exchange for information about and access to criminal activities. The scale of the phenomenon ranges: from the small (addicts who stay on the street by providing information to police) to the large (drug dealers who remain in operation by informing on colleagues and competitors) to the mind-boggling (terrorists who provide information to the U.S. government while participating in new terrorist activities). In my book I write extensively about the harm that this practice can cause in high-crime urban communities in particular. When law enforcement tolerates crimes committed by cooperating offenders, whether it is drug use, property crimes, or violence, the neighborhoods in which those offenders live have to put up with it.

Informants Killing Informants

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To what extent should the government employ and reward murderers, drug dealers, and other criminals as informants? In a developing case in Texas, the U.S. government is trying to figure out who killed one of its Mexican drug cartel informants. Turns out it might have been another U.S.-run informant. Story here.

I bring up this incident because it illustrates a bunch of key issues. One is just a matter of scale: there are now so many informants in the system that we get cases like these in which the government is running the people on both sides of the crime. That’s how deep the phenomenon runs.

Second: The government routinely permits serious criminals to remain at large because they are useful, even though they are highly likely to commit new crimes. As one former U.S. special agent remarked about the Texas case, federal officials knew that their informant’s job was tracking down people that the cartel wanted to execute. Given that, they “probably should have known he was conspiring to kill someone.” Now they’re mad because he may have killed one of their other informants. The problem of government-tolerated snitch crime is an old problem. Check out the 2004 congressional report at the left entitled “Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants.” Congress found it appalling that the FBI let known mob murderers remain at large because they were snitching on their rival mafia counterparts. In Chapter Five of my book, I document how the toleration for informant wrongdoing is widespread and can worsen crime and insecurity in inner city communities.

Finally, the Texas story reminded me of Troy Smith. As part of his informant deal, Troy Smith had to produce six arrests of other people in order to avoid drug charges himself. When he tried to sell meth to another informant as part of his quota, he got busted. Because of a procedural mistake by his lawyer, Smith could not raise the “public authority” defense, i.e. the claim that the government authorized him to commit the crime. Smith is currently serving a 12-year sentence, arguably for doing exactly what the government told him to do. I tell this story not only because it seems ironic and unfair, but because the pervasive use of informants invites precisely this kind of debacle.