Huston Police have come under a lot of pressure from a botched drugs raid with many questions being asked over their use of informants. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for agencies to find themselves up the creek seemingly without a paddle.
If you are a Chief of Police and find yourself in this position here are a few tips.
Bring in a qualified expert who can do a comprehensive independent audit and find out what went wrong and why. Make sure they know what to look for.
Listen objectively to what they say.
Fighting a public backlash is futile. Protect the sources identities and methods. Give up the rest.
Say sorry.
Then get somebody to fix what was wrong so it is less likely to happen again.
But without looking I can guess this is what you will find was wrong:
Your procedures for managing confidential informants are incomplete and create many vulnerabilities.
Your staff have not been trained properly. Minimum to bring an officer up to speed 10 days and you must train supervisors.
Your record keeping is flawed. Unless you are on a purpose built informant database you are way behind in the game.
Managing informants costs money. You either invest up front or you pay a lot more later. If you are already in a bad place get in touch we can help make sure it wont happen again.
