Another story of poor informant management. This story relates to informant management that resulted in a Chicago police officer being sentence to seven years imprisonment. This story is not about one bad cop, it is about a broken system for managing confidential informants (Confidential Human Sources, HUMINT, Covert Human Intelligence Sources , CHIS) Similar things happen on an almost daily basis because the police services do not have in place adequate structures to manage confidential informants safely, ethically and effectively. Officers are left exposed because they do not get the training they need to protect themselves and others.
Below are details of a process that eliminates the chances of such behavior occurring. [We use the term source throughout to refer to what many call a confidential informant.] The goal in this process is always to increase the quantity and quality of the intelligence produced and that it is manged effective and ethically. The raw information is put through a process that reduces the potential for cognitive biases and individual errors to degrade the information. What we have is a process that will stand up to any judicial scrutiny and that produces intelligence of a standard required by any court.
The six steps that ensure the integrity in exploiting intelligence from human sources.
Information is collected by a trained Source Handler, working in a Dedicated Source Handling Unit who is independent of the investigation.
It is written up and submitted to an Intelligence Unit through a trained supervisor (a Controller) for quality assurance.
The information is then independently processed and evaluated by trained intelligence officers in the Intelligence Unit against an agreed set of values.The intelligence produced meets the standards required by USA case law.
The intelligence is then stored in a central Intelligence Repository where the original cannot be altered.
It is then disseminated to an Investigator who decides what they want to do with it based on the independent evaluation.
The intelligence is then used in an accountable way such as to get a search warrant with the results fed back to the Intelligence Unit and ultimately back to the Dedicated Source Handling Unit
As can be seen, the information must pass through the hands of many trained professionals before it can be used. At each step, the officer involved is accountable for their actions and the entire process is documented. This negates the risk of an officer using information for personal or professional advancement. It protects the rights of citizens and protects the life of the source.
Had this occurred in the case above the criminal conduct of the officer involved could not have happened. Similar cases have happened in other major police departments including Houston and Philadelphia. It is a major problem across the USA.
Full details of how to establish the structures needed are contained in our book - HUMAN SOURCES: Managing Confidential Informants. It tells Police Chiefs how to build safe and secure systems to manage confidential informants. We are here to help you and unlike your defense lawyers we are not billing by the call. That’s why we wrote the book. The knowledge is there. If you want help just ask.
Email: Info@hsmtraining.com
Call +44 7739 370 969 (Yes its a UK number - but we do know what we are talking about.)
