OFFICERS' ARRESTS PUT SPOTLIGHT ON POLICE USE OF INFORMANTS

It is sometimes said that snitches are the lifeblood of police work.
The question is: Are they also a poison?

Formally known as C.I.'s, for confidential informants, they are a
detective's best friend. They act as eyes and ears. They serve as
secret tipsters. They take the police, by proxy, to the dangerous and
privileged places where badges cannot go.

At the same time, they present problems of administration -- and
sometimes of temptation -- to those who uphold the law. Petty crime
is often tolerated in exchange for information. Detectives can be
duped by an informant's agenda. While cases of corruption are rare,
it is fairly common to have more "give" in this delicate give-and-take.

The issue of confidential informants was thrust into the spotlight
last week by news that four narcotics officers in Brooklyn had been
arrested, in a case that involves accusations of paying informants
with drugs seized from dealers the informants had pointed them to.

The officers are not suspected of making any illegal profit, and one
law enforcement official has said police officers' trading of drugs
for information in the pursuit of arrests could be described as
"noble-cause corruption." The practice would, however, shatter police
policy, break the law and, in the view of police commanders and
prosecutors, erode the integrity of officers.

The scandal led the Brooklyn district attorney's office to seek the
dismissal of more than 80 drug cases, and 100 more are under review.
Besides the arrests -- of a sergeant, a detective and two officers in
the Brooklyn South narcotics bureau -- six additional officers were
suspended and several others were placed on modified or desk duty,
barred from doing enforcement work. Four supervisors were transferred
and a new commander was assigned to the Police Department's Narcotics Division.

Confidential sources are generally recruited and managed in secret,
and their numbers are hard to determine in large police departments
like New York's. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to
its budget request for 2008, maintains more than 15,000 secret
informants; the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to an
internal audit from 2005, has about 4,000 at a time on its payroll.

The use of informants has been attracting attention in various
jurisdictions. In July, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings
on informants, prompted by the fatal shooting by the police in
Atlanta of a 92-year-old woman in a drug case involving an informant.
A New York assemblyman has proposed a bill to increase oversight of
informants and in effect restrict their use.

The informants themselves have been public targets. A Web site,
whosarat.com, is devoted to exposing "rats of the week," witnesses
who cooperate with the government. There is even a street campaign to
convince people not to become informants. Popular T-shirts show a
stop sign imprinted with the words "Stop Snitchin'."

The list of what informants do for the police is long and varied:
They infiltrate criminal groups that investigators cannot personally
approach; they vouch for undercover officers trying to establish
credibility on the streets; they identify safe houses, stash houses
and cellphone numbers; they help set up surveillance and, in the
process, save the police countless hours of work and significant
amounts of money.

"With confidential informants we get the benefit of intimate
knowledge of criminal schemes by criminals, and that is a very
effective way to investigate crime," said Daniel J. Castleman, chief
of the Investigative Division of the Manhattan district attorney's
office. "It's no secret that people conduct criminal activities not
alone but in combination, and if you can flip someone involved in the
criminal scheme, it makes it much easier to investigate and to prosecute."

To avoid problems, it is standard practice in police departments and
federal law enforcement agencies to closely vet and watch informants
- -- a process that one official in the New York field office of the
Drug Enforcement Administration called "knowing them from womb to tomb."

In the New York Police Department, once informants are approved for
use they are photographed, fingerprinted and entered into a closely
guarded registry. Any officer who deals with them is required to log
the contact in the registry, with a record of any payments made.

Of course, the habitues of drug dens and dark alleys are not known
for their honesty, and several former and current law enforcement
officers said they took care to vet their informants often and
personally, even after they were entered in the registry.

"The bottom line is you need a back door, as we say, to get in to
check once in a while to make sure they are being honest with you,"
said a law enforcement official who frequently works with informants.
Like several other officials interviewed, he declined to be named
because of the sensitivity of the issue and the secrecy involved in
using informants.

William Oldham, a former detective with the elite Major Case Squad
and a co-author of "The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who
Murdered for the Mafia," gave this procedure for keeping informants
honest on the street: Before any operation, search the informant
thoroughly. Note all money and any drugs on the informant's body. Put
on the recording device, if one is to be used. Hand over the marked
money for the drug buy, making sure it was photocopied in advance for
serial numbers. Try not to lose sight of the informant during the
deal. Search again when the informant returns.

Mr. Oldham said his own choice in dealing with illegal drugs was to
use, in order of preference, an undercover officer, an informant
working in exchange for lightening a sentence, and, only as a last
resort, an informant who was working for the cash.

"There's no real upside to a paid informant," he said. "If they're
working for the money, their heart's not really in it."

Beyond logistical concerns, there are moral questions surrounding the
use of informants. It is legal to pay an informant with money rather
than drugs, but is it right? What if he uses the money to buy drugs?
What if he gets high and commits another crime? What if he overdoses,
perhaps fatally?

The four officers arrested in the Brooklyn South case stand accused
of paying their informants with drugs, an allegation that stunned one
former undercover officer currently assigned to a precinct in the
district. He said it was relatively easy to secure money from the
department to pay informants.

"You index it under who you got it from," he said, "and then just
voucher it." A lawyer for one of the officers has said the officers
were merely trying to make drug arrests and were not being accused of
trying to steal for their own benefit.

The American Civil Liberties Union maintains a Web log, titled
Unnecessary Evil, tracking news coverage of informants, especially in
drug cases.

According to news reports cited on the blog, the authorities in New
Jersey decided in November not to prosecute a police detective who
impregnated a drug informant in 2005. The same month, a police
department in South Carolina was found to have been paying an
informant to participate in drug deals even as a local sheriff's
office was chasing the same man for crimes he had committed while on
the payroll. And according to The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, a
federal judge there freed 15 men from prison last week, ruling that
their convictions were based on the testimony of a government
informant who lied on the stand.

"The practice of using confidential informants in the war on drugs
has its own special pathologies," said Alexandra Natapoff, an
associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She
said the frequent use of informants can degrade other weapons of law
enforcement, like wiretaps and undercover work. In extreme cases, she
said, it can result in "the police relying on criminals to tell them
who their targets should be."

At the same time, the dangers of informing are felt in the
communities where the cooperators live. Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol,
a Brooklyn Democrat, said that the police are relying on informants
so heavily in some neighborhoods that residents have become
suspicious of one another, giving rise to the "Stop Snitchin'" backlash.

"This kind of informing stuff that is going on in the ghettos of
today is not unlike what had gone on in the ghettos of Warsaw and
Eastern Europe and East Berlin," Mr. Lentol said.

He proposed a bill in Albany last year to give defense lawyers more
power to challenge an informant's testimony, prohibit or require
court approval when prosecutors drop serious charges in exchange for
testimony, and require that the police file annual public reports on
their use of informants. The bill was not voted on last year but was
again referred to committee this month.

"All of these snitches have stopped people from wanting to cooperate
with the police because nobody knows who to trust," Mr. Lentol said.
"It's like a community poisoning."

While most law enforcement officials would oppose restrictions on the
use of informants, they acknowledge its pitfalls. "It's like playing
with fire," said the law enforcement official who frequently works
with them. "Fire, in certain times, is good: if you have to burn
something out, kill it, delete it. But if you let it get out of hand,
it can destroy the village."