Here are two stories about alleged corruption involving confidential informants, one in Pennsylvania and one in Kentucky Both questions beg the question as to who was supervising these officers? These cases are far from unique. If you look across the news media the pattern of behavior is easy to see. Officers are allowed to meet informants (human sources, HUMINT) with limited, if any,oversight with regard to their activities. Officers are allowed to meet alone with informants and male officers are allowed to meet female informants with no female officer present. It is a recipe for disaster.
Managing informants is a high risk business. Officers are very vulnerable to the threat of corruption. If you think it is not happening in your department you naive or very very lucky. Unfortunately many Police Chiefs just have no idea of the number of risks they are running. Fortunately, they don’t have to be. All they have to do is reach out to where that knowledge is available.
For example imagine that either of these two agencies had a software management system for their informants and there were records of every contact with the informant, where it took place and who was present. Imagine that every meeting was recorded and uploaded to that system straight after. Would that help prevent what has happened. Imagine that cost you about the same as a patrol car.
Imagine that your officers were selected and trained properly for that role. Imagine that the training dealt with identifying risks, corruption and ethics. Imagine you had properly trained supervisors that could identify the warning signs of corruption. Imagine that these same officers were trained to bring you more and better intelligence while managing the risks to your agency. Imagine that this training would only cost you a few thousand dollars. Not even near the cost of a lawyer to defend these cases let alone pay any lawsuit.
At HSM Training we have seen these problems manifest time and time again. We care about doing things right. We are here to help. We spend a lot of time sharing information. we take learning from one agency and share it with many. we don’t need to make the same mistakes time and time again.
How can we help you? +44 7739 370 969 info@hsmtraining.com
It is easy to criticize but if we do we have to build again. As part of our commitment to the professionalization of informant management with any agency we mention in our blog we will audit your informant management system at no charge for our time.
