DEATH UNDER COVER

At a particularly dismal moment in Martin Scorsese's "The Departed,"
a disgusted undercover cop mutters, "It's a nation of rats." Not
quite. But the film and the recent flap in the Northeast over
t-shirts that demand "Stop Snitchin' " are calling attention to a
part of the legal system that critics say has gotten out of control.

While it's impossible to get accurate counts due to the inherent
secrecy of the practice, moderate estimates place the number of
informants working for police agencies in the U.S. in the hundreds of
thousands.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court OK'd the use of confidential informants
50 years ago, the practice has become a primary tool of the so-called
war on drugs. As one court noted:

"Without informants, law enforcement authorities would be unable to
penetrate and destroy organized crime syndicates, drug trafficking
cartels, bank frauds, telephone solicitation scams, public
corruption, terrorist gangs, money launderers, espionage rings, and the likes."

Critics counter that the practice has become a dangerous public
policy, compromising the integrity of police work, endangering both
informants and innocents, eroding confidence in the rule of law
enforcement, and often producing bad information.

The Little Rock Police Department and the Pulaski County sheriff's
office would not disclose the number of informants in their files.

The North Little Rock Police Department said it currently has 51
informants working with its narcotics unit. The Maumelle Police
Department reported having 18 confidential informants, 10 males and
eight females, though four of those have been "disqualified."

No statewide figures are kept. Keith Rutledge, the state drug
director, said that if regional drug task forces are using
informants, it is done -- and paid for -- "at the local level."

The way informants are handled varies widely, and that, too, is
shrouded in secrecy. All four of the police agencies mentioned above
stress that they make no promises to arrestees that the penalties
they face will be reduced in exchange for cooperation.

All four reported, however, that if that person agrees to cooperate,
information about his or her helpfulness may be conveyed to the
prosecuting attorney. This takes the form of letters or
recommendations that are also confidential. An informant has to trust
the police.

"We tell you what you're charged with and give you a phone number to
call," said Sgt. Robert Mourot, who heads the Street Narcotics Unit
for the Little Rock police. "Once you bond out of jail, you can call us.

"If you ask, 'What are you going to do for me?' we say, 'What are you
going to do for yourself? You got yourself into this spot. It's up to
you to get yourself out of it.' "

Mourot said that if a person opts to become an informant, there are
no guarantees. "All we can do," he said, "is document what they did."
Police in North Little Rock, Maumelle and at the sheriff's office
said they followed similar policies. What happens at the prosecutor's
office is similarly opaque.

Critics of the expanded use of confidential informants see the
interface between police and prosecutors as a kind of legal black
hole, in which discretion with regard to using law-breakers meets
discretion with regard to charging them.

John Johnson, chief deputy prosecuting attorney for Pulaski County,
said, "Being a confidential informant is just an agreement between
you and the police."

He added, however, that on receiving a report from police about a
confidential informant, "We make a charging decision. We don't always
charge. The options we have are to charge a felony, to send it back
for more investigation, to reduce it to a misdemeanor, or to mark it
DNF, 'Do not file.' "

Johnson noted that prosecutors consider many factors, including
letters from teachers and employers, as well as information from the
police. He explained, "There's just all sorts of communication that
we have in trying to be just and be sure that the punishment fits the
crime, but also the person who commits the crime."

A growing number of legal scholars see the practice of releasing some
criminals to catch others as having unforeseen corrosive effects. For
many, the most disturbing aspect of the process is its secrecy.

The presence of criminals acting, in effect, as secret agents for the
police fosters distrust in certain communities and may lead to an
increase in violence.

Lt. David Hudson, who oversees the Little Rock Police Department's
two narcotics squads, said, "People who give us information do so
willingly. They know the risks of cooperating with the police."

But other city residents might not know the risks they incur by
having informants in their midst. Since informants' identities are
secret, it is impossible to know how many, if any, of the murder
victims in Little Rock last year were killed because they were found
- -- or believed to be -- acting as police informants.

Secrecy limits the public's ability to weigh the cost of using
informants against their liabilities. Each of the four departments
mentioned here was asked how many arrests last year could be
attributed to its use of informants. Only Maumelle answered, reporting "five."

Without being specific, the LRPD's Hudson insisted that the use of
informants has "decreased the level of violence" by helping police
clean out houses harboring drugs and weapons. "We've made
neighborhoods a lot safer," he said.

Johnson, on the other hand, acknowledged, "I can tell you that I've
prosecuted cases where someone was killed because they were suspected
of being a snitch."

The lack of checks and balances is exacerbated by the lack of public
records illuminating police and prosecutors' decisions regarding
informants. As standards blur, with some people going to prison for
crimes and others going to work for police, some scholars fear that
the line between what's seen as lawful and unlawful is blurring as well.

Trust lies at the heart of the contract between police, the courts
and the public. The problem with informants is that they are,
essentially, betrayers of trust. And any agency that works with them
gets tainted by association.

Suspicions about informants reflect on the agencies that use them.
Secretive policies, while understandable, heighten, rather than
dispel, those concerns.

As awareness of the costs of informant use has risen, so too have
demands for some kind of accountability. Release of data on the
number of informants being used in an area, along with the types of
crimes for which they face charges, would not compromise an informant
program, but could allow at least minimal public oversight.

The procedure for handling informants that's given to North Little
Rock detectives starts out with a warning:

"The use of informants in law enforcement is an evil necessity...,"
it begins. "It is most important to remember that an informant works
as an extension of law enforcement, and detectives are cautioned to
ensure that anytime an informant is working for them that the
constitutional rights of all individuals are protected."

The preface reminds detectives of the need to avoid entrapment and to
corroborate, as much as possible, statements made by an informant. It
concludes: "Two important items to remember when utilizing informants are:

"1. They should never be trusted.

"2. Their motive should always be considered."

That last is good advice for detectives. It may also be a good word
of caution for every community whose police rely on informants.

As another cop in "The Departed" said to an informant who was working
for him: "I got a problem. I run rat fucks like you, OK? I don't like 'em."