Police Internally Split on Confidentiality Issue
Thanks to Scott Henson from Grits For Breakfast for passing along this important story on a battle raging within the St. Louis police department. Rank-and-file police are refusing to provide information about their snitches to their own police supervisors and city police officials. Here's an excerpt:
Worried about liars in their ranks, city police officials are demanding that up to 20 officers tell bosses details about their confidential informers. But the St. Louis Police Officers Association has won a temporary restraining order to block the inquiry, pending a hearing in court next week. The organization says the probe would jeopardize informers' lives, officers' careers and public safety. At issue is whether officers have attributed fabricated information to confidential informers to obtain search and arrest warrants. Police brass acknowledge in court filings that they believe "one or more" officers "have included false information in affidavits" for warrants, and say the investigation is aimed at stopping "the concerns of police abuse and violation of civil rights."
Ironically, one of the officers' arguments against holding a public hearing is that if informants are called to testify, they will lie. These being the very same informants that police rely on to get the warrants in the first place.
The fact that street cops are at odds with their own police officials on this question reveals some deep dynamics about snitching, including what I call the culture of secrecy surrounding the entire practice. Police and their informants are heavily dependent on one another--police need information while offenders need protection against punishment. Police will often go a long way to protect their sources, famously from defendants and courts, but often from prosecutors and even sometimes from their own police supervisors. This does not mean that police handlers are necessarily corrupt: handling criminal informants inherently means doing unsavory things like ignoring their crimes, bending the rules, sometimes providing addicts with cash for drugs. However, the culture of secrecy makes illegal police conduct that much easier. See this NYT story on Brooklyn police who supplied their informants with drugs. Kudos to the St. Louis police officials who are trying to make the process more accountable and transparent.
Comments
Wow, this is pretty big.
Personally, I trust cops to tell the truth about as far as I can throw them, which isn't very far.
It's been demonstrated that cops will lie through their teeth and their fellow officers will also lie to back them up, so long as the lies are considered (by the officers) to be for 'noble cause'. Tragically, we're not talking about the brightest people here, Cops don't seem to have much difficulty convincing themselves that people are guilty of whatever they want them to be guilty of. You couple that with rubber stamped search warrants courtesy of some unidentified informant... and you have a 4th amendment abuse factory.
And these are just the 'good' cops! we haven't even started with the actual 'bad' cops yet.
So, it looks like the new Chief in St. Louis is looking to clean up shop! Go Dan Isom!
I'm going to want to follow this story.
Thanks for writing this! I'll be sending you more clips, for sure. I see lots of stories on this topic that don't fit on Grits because they're out of state, etc.. This one's almost iconic. I think that happens a lot with CIs and search warrants.
To the question of whether police officers are using information they falsely claim has come from informants in order to get search warrants: what is it that stops defense attorneys from challenging at trial the admission of evidence gathered with those search warrants? I knew that search warrants were granted pursuant to tips from informants, but I had always assumed that those people would ultimately have to testify in court -- possibly before being whisked into witness protection. Or alternatively, that the legitimacy of the source could be verified by the information if by its nature the information could only have been privy to a real insider, which would belie the concern that the tip was fabricated.
Clearly, I am confusing the issue somewhere.
Brian,
IF the case goes to trial, meaning the defendant doesn't throw it away on a plea bargain, and IF the defendant has competent defense... then yes, the dubious nature of the ill gotten search warrants can come to light.
Those are 2 big ifs.
It's no accident that the majority of drug cases like this are directed against those with the least likelihood of mounting a credible defense in court.
Couple that with the fact that the SAME people control funding for both the Prosecution and the Public Defender's office and you get a pretty unbalanced playing field. Hint: The Prosecution gets all the funding.
I think this really should be looked at from the snitches perspective, If more people know about what their doing the likelyhood that some dumbass from up high will swoop in and get them jailed or killed. While I agree that at least the supervisors should know about every snitch that their officers have, that should be it. Theres just one problem with that though, how much do the officers trust their supervisors? At the end of the day do you really believe that city officials have everybodys interest in mind? A lot of them wont think a second about furthering their own goals, officer and snitch be dammed.
The defense can and. if a cse is not quickly subject of a plea agreement, usually does challenge the admissibility of evidence seized by police.
SUccessfuly challenging a seizure conducted under auspices of a search warrant is difficult, though.
A search conducted pursuant to a warrant is presumed reasonable and the burden is on the defendant to prove it violates the 4th Amendment and/or a state counterpart.
A warrant is tested for probable cause initially by a court's determination of whether within the "4 corners" of the affidavit submitted in support of the application probale cause can be found under the totality of the circumstances.
Assuming if accepted at face value the assertions in the affidavit would establish probable cause and the defense's argument is that the assertions are false, a defendant mush show more than that falsity to win a motion to suppress.
Searches under warrants the applications for which are later shown to be inaccurate are commonly upheld and the evidence admitted. First, the revieweing court will first decide whethewr if excluding the false information sufficient factual averrments exist to satisfy probable cause. If so, the search evidence is admitted.
Second, even if the revieweing court finds the exclusion renders a warrant defective due to failure to establish proable cause, in many cases the search wuill still be upheld under the Leon good faith standard (basically that the cop executing the warrnat believed he he had a vaild warrant at the time of the search).
To get past the "good faith" standard the defendant has the burden of convincing the court that the cop was not acting in good faith and either actually knew of the defect or willfully disregarded information that a reasonable person would have relied upon to question the warrant's validity.
If you have a case where you can show that the police officer lied to the court issuing the warrant, the intentionally false information was necessary for probable cause to exist, then you have a defective warrant where the good faith exception won't save it. Proving of all that is not easy. Things can get even more difficult at times because the affidavits in support of probable cause are frequently not provided by the same officer who executes the search.
Even more problematic for the defense is where we are looking at warrants where the statements of an undisclosed informant provide, in whole or in part the basis for probable cause averrments as to why the informant should be considered credible are required but they are often generic statements such as "this informant has previously provided accurate information to police that has been corroborated.
Often that part of the picture is true -- the informant has done that. The cop, tough simply fails to include information that might cause a reasonable person to be more suspicious of the informant's credibility.
Not many suppression hearings are won when the ultimate argument of the defense is that the cop should have told the court issuing the warrant all the bad stuff about the informant.
I'm glad the debate is stirring, cases like this will only help the cause. Cops using snitches create "untriable cases" and they know this--they know that most of these cases will end in a plea, so why would they be concerned with the fine details and TRUTHS. When I was in middle school/high school I remember learning about how "corrupt" the police were in communists countries...then they would talk about "officer Joe Friendly" here in America. Times have certainly changed. If the informant system isn't corruption I don't know what is. Cops and investigators spend more time setting up and committing crimes then they do preventing them. The man hours that they put into cultivating an informant, following leads, survellence, and setting up controlled buys is staggering! And all of this on testimony of people interested in one thing and one thing only: a get out of jail free card. Mix that self-preservation with a little police intimidation and you have someone who will do anything, say anything, and set up anyone that you want him to. I swear these cops could make Mother Teresa committ a crime if they had the right informant to help them do it.
I'm going to watch this St. Louis story closely--I hope it gets more attention...nationwide.