Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Police

Snitches snitching on snitches

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I write critically about criminal informants, but it bears remembering how they enabled the FBI to break the mafia.  In June, mob boss “Cadillac Frank” Salemme was convicted of ordering the murder of a witness.  Key witnesses against Salemme included Stephen “Rifleman” Flemmi, infamous killer informant in his own right who avoided the death penalty by testifying against Salemme and others. Salemme himself had been living under federal witness protection for having testified for the government over a decade ago.  As one lawyer commented about the old mafia leadership, “Everybody’s been burned to a crisp here by informants.”

Whether it’s good public policy to cut deals with murderers in order to go after other murderers is a subject of long debate. At least some in Congress didn’t think so–see this report: Everything Secret Degenerates: the FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants.  It is now a violation of Department of Justice guidelines for the FBI to permit one of its informants to commit a violent crime, but violent criminals get leniency all the time in exchange for cooperation.

North Dakota passes cutting edge legislation

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In the wake of the death of college student Andrew Sadek, North Dakota has passed Andrew’s Law, an important piece of legislation that sets a new standard in informant reform.  Some of the most heartening aspects of the bill are as follows:

  • It bans the use of informants who are 15 years old or younger. Only California and New Jersey currently ban the use of juvenile informants at the state level, and their cutoff is 12 years old.  
  • College police may not use college students as informants.
  • Police officers must be trained before they use informants.
  • All informant agreements must be in writing. The agreement must include, among other things, an explanation of what the informant is expected to do and what benefit they can expect to receive.  This is particularly important since young and vulnerable informants may not know what is expected of them, and law enforcement may continue to use them without clear boundaries or limits.
  • The agreement must tell the informant of their right to consult with counsel.
  • The agreement must warn the informant that the work may be dangerous.
  • The bill creates procedures for complaints, and an investigative process when an informant is killed.
This legislation is the culmination of a decade-long public debate over vulnerable informants that has been brewing since 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman was killed in Florida in 2008.  Since then, we have learned about the rampant, unregulated use of young informants, and how some campus police pressure college students into risking their education and even their lives.  North Dakota’s new law is one of the best responses so far.  More details from the Huffington Post here.

Intercept publishes FBI informant manual

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The Intercept has published the FBI’s 2015 Confidential Human Source Policy Guide. It includes policies on recruitment, payments, and international informants: The FBI Gives Itself A Lot of Rope to Pull In Informants.  From the article:

“The classified guidelines reveal:
  • Before approaching a potential informant, agents are encouraged to build a file on that person, using information obtained during an FBI assessment, including derogatory information and information gleaned from other informants. The FBI claims that it seeks derogatory information in order not to be blindsided by its informants’ vulnerabilities, but such material may also be useful in coercing cooperation from otherwise unwilling recruits.
  • FBI agents may use undercover identities to recruit informants, including online. These approaches are not limited by a rule stipulating that agents and informants are allowed no more than five meetings with a target before their activity is subject to supervisory approval as an undercover operation.
  • With permission from supervisors, FBI agents may recruit minors as informants. They may also, with permission from the U.S. Department of Justice, recruit clergy, lawyers, and journalists.
  • Informants may operate in other countries for the FBI, and the FBI guidelines do not require notification to be given to the host countries.”

10th anniversary of Kathryn Johnston’s informant-related death

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In 2006, Atlanta police shot and killed Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old grandmother. Her death–which involved the botched and illegal use of numerous informants–triggered a national inquiry into informant use, a Congressional hearing, and several criminal prosecutions.  This CNN retrospective looks back at the story and the reforms that Atlanta has instituted since then.  Here is a link to the original 2007 congressional hearing.

Informant contradicts Tampa police account of SWAT killing

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The Tampa Bay Times reports that a criminal informant has come forward to dispute the police’s account of a SWAT team killing.  In Confidential informer blows whistle in fatal Tampa SWAT raid, the Times describes the informant Ronnie Coogle as a 50-year-old addict and long-time offender who often worked as a police informant.  Coogle says that police misrepresented the information he gave them, as that as a result police unnecessarily killed “Jason Westcott, a young man with no criminal convictions whom a SWAT team killed during a drug raid that found just $2 worth of marijuana.”  As the Times describes it, it’s impossible to know what the truth really is, both because of Coogle’s own admitted record of lying to police, and the police’s failure to monitor or keep records about Coogle and the case:

“Coogle is nobody’s idea of a righteous whistle-blower. The only constant in his story is his own dishonesty; even when he confesses to lying you don’t know if he’s telling the truth.  Much of what he says can be neither proved nor disproved, in large part because of the Police Department’s minimal supervision of his work. But Coogle’s allegations against the cops who paid him, and even his own admissions of double-dealing, aren’t necessarily what’s most disturbing about his account.  Most unsettling of all might be what nobody disputes — that police officers were willing to trust somebody like him in the first place.”

Another informant who turned on his handlers in this way was Alex White, the Atlanta informant who blew the lid off the police killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston and triggered a federal investigation into Atlanta police practices.  See the New York Times Magazine feature here.