Informants

In this episode I will talk about law enforcement's use of informants.  

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Have you ever seen an old movie where they show a outline of a body in chalk? Is that a real thing? Do police actually do that? Do you wonder how police maintain their composure when dealing with an irate person or one who calls them names and cusses at them? Can officers carry any type of firearm they want? Hello and welcome to Inside the Criminal Process, a podcast where I'll discuss and explain the criminal justice system in America using real-life examples and true crime cases. My name is Scott. I'm a 29-year veteran law enforcement officer and an attorney. I've worked in various law enforcement roles throughout the years and have taught criminal justice classes at the college level. Today I'm going to talk about informants, something most, if not all of you have heard about, but may know little to nothing about. First, I did want to add some information about something I mentioned in the last episode. I mentioned that medical people, I mentioned something about medical people pronouncing death. I know this may seem obvious, but it becomes important when it comes to homicides regarding time of death, condition of the decedent, etc. So doctors can pronounce death over the phone, and that was common when you had paramedics on scene and a victim that had no vital signs and was wasn't responding to treatment, or someone who had obviously been dead for a while. And those are the calls where you get calls from family members and they ask the police to go check on their loved one because they haven't heard or s heard from them or seen them in a while. And you go there and you discover that the person has passed away. So the legal terminology or standard for pronouncing death is that there has got to be an irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory function or an irreversible cessation of all brain function. So I think in most cases, though, doctors are pronouncing death in person, like at a hospital. I was present in an infirmary once when a nurse practitioner pronounced somebody dead, and I didn't know he couldn't legally do that. One of the doctors came in and was talking about the patient, and I told her that the nurse practitioner had pronounced him dead. And she gave me kind of an odd look and said he doesn't have the authority to do that. So she put on her stethoscope, was listening to the person's chest, she rolled her eyes and said, He's not dead, and I'm not going to pronounce him dead at this time. So she actually did about 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes later. She came in and uh went through the same process and then ended up pronouncing him dead at that time. And that person was expected to pass away. There was a DNR or do not resuscitate order. That's basically a directive that instructs healthcare providers not to perform CPR if the patient's heart or breathing stops. A DNR doesn't mean that all medical treatment is stopped. It's just that they just can't perform CPR. So they can still receive standard care like pain management, medication, oxygen, IV fluids, etc. So let's move on to our discussion about informants. So there's many names. Cops have many names for informants. CIs, which depending on who you talk to, either stands for cooperating individual or confidential informant. And I think the feds have both those designations, but there's different criteria for each one. Some people refer to them as snitches, rats, narcs. Some much older names are Stool Pigeon, Fink, Stooley, Canary, to name a few. Cops love to make up nicknames or special words for people. And they love to use acronyms as well. And I've mentioned that in a previous episode. And when I think of the when I think of the police acronyms, I think of a funny story about when I worked at the task force. Someone asked who FNU LANU was and why he or she kept showing up in the reports. So one of the FBI agents explained that FNU stands for first name unknown, and Linux stands for, you got it, last name unknown. And uh so we all got a big laugh out of that. The person that asked that may or may not have been me. For those of you that don't know, here's how task forces work. Since the feds don't typically interact daily or regularly with street-level criminals, they establish task forces and ask local law enforcement to give them people to work on the task force. They're known as task force officers or TFOs, and they're sworn in and given federal arrest authority for federal cases. I think we were sworn in by the U.S. attorney in our Federal Circuit. Uh he or she has the power to convey arrest authority on the local law enforcement. It was a task force that was managed by the FBI and staffed by FBI agents assigned to the local field office. The Fed usually offer an incentive to local law enforcement to assign officers or an officer to work at the task force. Incentives can be things like federal money they share in the seizure of assets that comes from any of the cases they work. Those agencies have somebody that has direct access to federal resources. The feds pay the overtime costs for the TFO. And the feds may give a spot in the FBI National Academy to the to the one or or several of the agencies that are participating in the task force. So the NA, the National Academy, it's a program in Quantico, Virginia, run by the FBI for law enforcement leaders. Agencies like to send their leaders there. They feel it gives them some credibility because they can say they went to the NA for training. I think it's a resume builder, and many law enforcement leaders that have visions of promoting or becoming chiefs like to have the NA graduate designation on their resumes. And I don't know anything about the curriculum or anything, but I've always wondered what the feds can convey or teach to local law enforcement about local police work. I don't know. Everyone that seems that goes there seems to enjoy it. Um, but I don't know any law enforcement leaders who attended that actually learned to be better police leaders. It seems that a lot of theories are thrown around about better ways to conduct police work. But again, the FBI doesn't respond to 911 calls. They don't typically do street-level police work. And some of the theories, like community policing, for example, which just means getting your community involved in assisting the police. In my experience, those don't seem to prevent a lot of crime. Uh the communities that really need community policing aren't typically interested in assisting the police. And the communities that like the idea don't typically need community policing or have high crime rates. So anyway, I digress. Task forces are meant to address major crime, organized crime, gang violence, major drug activity, etc. Uh, if you've ever seen that series, The Wire, I think it started out in in eight on HBO. It's a very accurate depiction of how task forces work. I recommend it if you haven't seen it. Uh, it's a great show. They uh I don't think it was a federal task force, but um but I remember watching it. I was at the task force when that when it was running, and I watched the whole series, and I remember thinking how realistic it was. And uh it was funny because one of the groups that we were investigating, we had a uh Title III wiretap up on them, and we were listening to their calls uh without them knowing about it. You have to get a court order for that. And they were two of the guys were talking about, hey, did you watch the wire last night? The guy's like, yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty cool. You know, I'd wouldn't that be wild if that was gonna, if if they ever did that with us, and they had absolutely no clue. I thought that was a a a moment of crazy, crazy irony right there. Um, so federal task forces, um, they get here's another acronym for you, OCDIF, OCDETF. They get OCDEF money, and that stands for Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. And the investigations start with intelligence regarding criminal activity, agents and analysts put together a comprehensive file with information to support an investigation. And the file goes through many steps of review by supervisors and management at the federal level before the OCDF funds are approved. The task force I was on was focused on organized crime and gang activity. Uh, the feds had to have enough information about the group that we were going to investigate to convince the various levels of supervisory and management people that that an investigation was was going to be worthwhile. Once the funds are approved, you could start an investigation. Investigations included, like I like I mentioned, Title III wiretaps. Um and Title III is just the the US code that governs the wiretaps. And those, again, like I said, you have to have that's it's kind of a last resort, and you have to write a pretty detailed affidavit to get the court to approve a wiretap. There's lots of surveillance that goes on, which is where the task force officers do most of the work. Um you use informants in these investigations, you plan and execute operations, basically to help establish and prove a RICO case. And I've mentioned RICO, it's another acronym. Obviously, I've mentioned it before, and it stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. And hopefully, what the goal is the investigation would result in numerous indictments, which is eventually, which is hoped to eventually dismantle the criminal organization. Convictions under the RICO Act provide for enhanced criminal punishment and civil action. That's where the money is in the seizures of assets gained by the criminal activity. You hear about these cases every once in a while. The one that comes to my mind uh is a massive seizure that I saw on the news in Miami, I think, where the crime boss had millions of dollars worth of personal and real property that was seized by the feds and converted to go into the fund that would help fund these further investigations. And the difference between personal and real property, real property is is like real estate and buildings and structures on the real estate, something that basically doesn't move. Um and then personal property is vehicles, jewelry, uh, stuff of value, anything that that actually can be moved. So informants are a pretty major component of these investigations. At least they were at the task force I was assigned to. The whole theory around using informants was that it's easier to get someone who's already in the inner circle of the of the gang or the criminal uh organization than trying to infiltrate the organization. And and uh you probably have a better chance of eventually dismantling the organization by using by using the um informants rather than risking having uh an undercover officer be identified. So how does one become an informant? Well, when I worked at the task force, one way is that the task force officers or federal agents review arrests and bookings into the jail. The city police department had a basket at the headquarters building that had arrests and booking reports that were available to news agencies and and the public, and people could peruse the reports and see who was arrested for what. And I'm sure they still do this, but it's probably all online now. You don't have to actually go to the records division and go through the go through the arrests and bookings from the night before. And by the way, the term booking refers to the process used when you're putting somebody in jail. Basically, you document all the personal information, the probable cause for their arrest, you take the fingerprints, take mud shots, etc. So some officers had contacts at the jails that would notify them of arrests involving large amounts of money, drugs, weapons, or any other arrests that might indicate organized criminal activity. Um, that was one way of identifying people that might be able to assist as an informant. Officers or agents would go and and visit these people in jail and offer to help with the present charges in exchange for assistance with an investigation. Basically, you're asking them to act as a spy. Uh, it's usually worked best with convicts that were known members of a gang or a criminal enterprise, then you had a better chance of actually being able to get somebody into that gang or criminal enterprise, obviously. So another way people could become informants was for them to contact local law enforcement and officer their s offer their services as an informant. They'd usually try to bargain and then usually exaggerate their abilities or the seriousness of the crime that they could help with. Basically, they're dangling carrots in front of cops and trying to get help with the charges, either getting a dismissal or a plea bargain for the present charges that they're facing. And um we we had a saying at the task force, basically, it's snitches wind up in ditches with stitches, but the first to squeal gets the deal. And that was a pretty common, uh, pretty common saying amongst the the criminals as well. So you've all heard of the cases where an inmate or detainee reached out to law enforcement because his or her cellmate confessed or talked about the crime he or she committed. And then uh, once the police are interested, there's an initial screening process. It's much more intense with the feds, but most local agencies have policies regarding signing someone up to be an informant. It's usually more profitable to be an informant for the feds just because they have a lot more money to spend. And then the initial screening consists of like gathering criminal history, a review of the person's criminal history, a review of previous information they've provided, or previous times that they've served as an informant, their age, their alien status, relationship to the target of the investigation, motivation for providing assistance, risks of using the person, reliability, truthfulness, substance abuse history, do they have relatives in law enforcement, et cetera? It's a pretty involved background process that they go through just to try to make sure that they're this is actually a good idea. In my experience, informants are notoriously unreliable. Uh, it's rare to get someone with a clean record that reaches out to assist law enforcement with a case. Lifetime criminals typically don't hang out with reliable, credible, respected people. And I would say that most of the informants we've worked with were either convinced into becoming an informant or reached out to law enforcement to negotiate a deal. For example, I'll give you help building a case against so-and-so if you dismiss the current charges or get a lighter sentence for me or offer me a good plea or something of that nature. So some basic facts regarding informants. Uh, some criminals act, some criminal acts within the performance of their assistants are authorized or ignored, but the informants can be prosecuted for other criminal acts performed during their assistance. They're not immune from prosecution. So if they don't get with their handler or the agent that they're dealing with and get basically permission to commit a crime, and it's it's not going to be anything serious, obviously. Um, but if they don't get permission for that, they are they're subject to being uh arrested and charged for any any criminal act that they commit. Most agencies, I know the the feds do an annual review of their of their confidential informants. Um I think it's good policy, and I think police departments probably should if they're not doing that. And the question comes up, what do you do if the informant is endangered? Well, basically at that point the investigation's over, and the police have an obligation to prevent or protect somebody acting on their behalf. They shouldn't be allowing an informant to be injured or killed that's that's in there doing their their dirty work for them. And informants, especially those who've acted in that capacity before, they know the certain cop that certain cops are itching to get the big busts, so they sometimes reach out to the same person every time. And so we had officers at the task force that had they had their own people that would come directly to them and offer, you know, tell them what they had to offer. One of the biggest problems with informants involves the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which is the confrontation clause that I've mentioned before. There's no such thing as a confidential informant, and the cops cannot protect you unless you're in the witness protection program. And even then, it's not like the cops can provide 24-7 protection for people in witness protection. So if a cop ever tells you, oh, we can protect your identity, no one will ever figure out who who you are, who gave us this information. That's not true. Uh especially if it goes to court and you're a vital witness to the case. Um, you know, defendants have a right to know who's accusing them of what, and they have a right to confront those those those people in court. So if it goes to court, the person that you ratted or snitched on is is going to find out who you are eventually. I personally didn't like working with informants. And when I say informants, I'm talking about these people that have an agenda. They're looking for something in return for the for helping or giving information. Um, they're typically unreliable, untrustworthy, and they lack integrity. So when I dealt with inmates a lot, it wasn't uncommon for them to request a meeting with an investigator and start the meeting with a general statement that they have great information. They're only willing to provide it in exchange for something that will benefit them. And and somebody like that is completely different than someone who has knowledge of a crime or criminal activity and wants to give it up out of the goodness of their heart because they don't want to see somebody get injured or killed or become the victim of some other heinous crime. I had an inmate once that reported another inmate had a cell phone. And the inmate told me that the man was going to use it, he was gonna fake some type of medical emergency so that he'd get transported to the hospital. And during the transport, he was gonna pull out the phone, call a group of people that were gonna come and run the ambulance or the van off the road, attack the officers and the ambulance drivers, and help this person escape. So the guy told me, I said, Why are you telling me this? He said, I just don't want to see, I don't want to see anybody get hurt. And this guy actually had time left on his sentence, and he could have easily said nothing or tried to get something out of us in exchange for the information. But he truly was concerned that somebody was going to get hurt or killed. And that other inmate did have a cell phone. When the officers tried to get it, he smashed it and crushed the SIM card or the SD card, one of those. So there was nothing to help us identify what his plan was, and he was only charged with possession of the phone, which is a felony in this state for the very reason that the that the other inmate reported. You can't have somebody with the ability to have secret conversations with people outside the prison because they can plan major crimes without ever being discovered. And that's the biggest reason inmate phone calls are recorded. And I I'll cover this in a future episode. I'll go into more detail about that. So the the several issues that I that I'm aware of that involved informants in cases that that I either heard of or was involved in. Uh, we had an informant that was wired, that was in a car that did a drive-by shooting. There was an informant that was complicit in robbing one of the targets of the investigation. They robbed him of their of their uh money and drugs. And then we had uh there was an FBI agent here that was being strung along by this informant that was in prison that was promising to give him all these bodies that were buried throughout the United States. And and this guy strung this agent along for years, and they never provided, never discovered a body. Um, but this guy would take him, take him food, and they'd get him out of the prison and drive him around. It was it was ridiculous. Everybody could see that this guy was being strung along, except for the agent. So moving on to today's questions, chalk outlines. I'm not sure what the origin of this is, but if you watch the old detective movies, you may see a dead body or an outline of a dead body in chalk. I think it's probably done long ago to assist investigators with the location and position of bodies. I know cameras have been around for a long time, but the ability to immediately see the photograph is fairly recent. So I think it was probably just a reference point for the cops because the body had been removed either by the coroner or the ambulance personnel. I've never researched it though. So uh, but I can tell you I never learned how to do it or or why we would do it. How do police maintain their composure? This just comes with experience. Almost daily, police are dealing with difficult people. Uh, when they respond to a call, there's usually at least one person that doesn't want them there. And as I've said before, police are human. They can get their buttons pushed, and it's so much easier to let somebody call you names and be a jerk than to argue with them or cuss back at them. I just used to tell myself that the miserable person had to live with their miserable selves and I was only going to have to deal with them for a short time. Don't get me wrong, I'd I lost control at times and said things that were inappropriate. I was written up for using the F-word several times. But with time comes the ability to handle ignorant people appropriately and just ignore their insults. Uh, I've seen some pretty funny responses by cops to people being jerks. Oh, we were dealing with this guy one night. He was a real, real jerk. He got in the officer's face and demanded, name and badge number. I want your name and badge number. The cop pointed to his name tag and said, My badge number's on the badge. If you can't read or count that high, you're out of luck. We all got a big laugh out of it. It angered the guy. The guy complained, and the officer ended up getting a verbal or written reprimand. I can't remember which one. So can police carry any firearm they want to? Agencies usually have a list of approved firearms, usually 45 caliber, 40 caliber, 38 caliber, or 9mm. Those are the most common service weapons for police to carry. Some agencies allow officers to carry 380s off-duty. The agencies I worked for had a specific list of calibers, makes and models of firearms that cops were authorized to carry. And that was usually based on the ammo provided by the department and just a general historical knowledge of what had worked in the past. So there was a special class for people who wanted to carry 45 caliber 1911 style firearms because there's an extra safety you have to learn how to operate. And they carried those firearms. We called it cocked and locked. The the hammer was locked to the rear and the safety was on. So you had to you had to get used to drawing that and hitting that safety before firing. So that's it for this episode. As always, thank you very much for listening. In the app in the next episode, I'm going to talk about um investigations in prison and jail settings. And until then, take care.