We would like to offer some commentary on a story about Calls To Abolish Warrants Based On Information From Paid Informants following a CBS (2) story. To give some background the case under review was a warrant that was executed at an apartment owned by Anjanette Young. The allegation is that her apartment had been wrongly identified and that she was subjected to degrading treatment by the police involved. While not going into the specifics of this warrants execution we need to address a number of points raised in the call by Chicago City Council Black Caucus in relation to information from informants. These are

Abolishing the practice of issuing warrants based solely upon the use of paid informants.
Keeping a database of reliability of sources used for search warrants, to see patterns of erroneous information.

With regard to the first point: warrants based solely on information from confidential informants is an essential part of police work. Very often the only way to penetrate serious and organised crime is through the use of informants. What should happen is that information is gathered from an informant (human source) and then processed into intelligence BEFORE being given out for use. The processing involves grading the information to check both the credibility of the source and the veracity of that specific piece of information. This should be done by officers independent of the investigation and detached from the source of that information. This requires a good intelligence management system. [Whether and informant is paid or not is immaterial. It is naive to think payment makes a difference.]

With regard to the second point:All police departments should have a database to manage all informants. If they don’t they should not be managing informants. Problems with individual sources will become readily apparent if the database is purpose built for the task. Managing confidential informants is a high risk business,

Accountability is an essential element of public trust. It would be very simple to audit this case and examine how and from where the information was received and how it was processed before we send officers to carry out a search.

All the required structures are detailed in our book Human Sources: Managing Confidential Informants

We also explain how information from all informants should be used to obtain a warrant.

We can point you in the right direction regarding an effective informant database.

And if you want any more help in any regard to managing informants just email us on info@hsmtraining.com We are here to help