Here is a story of three careers destroyed because of the failure to manage a confidential informant safely. The FBI are the USA’s most prominent law enforcement agency. This case begs the question as to what happened to facilitate the mismanagement of this informant. Be under no illusion this is not just one officer acting badly - it is a failure of systems and processes.
Managing confidential informants is high risk. Officers need to be trained properly. A couple of hours on line does not cut it. Supervisors need to be intrusive in their supervision. They too need to be trained for the role. The agency needs to have comprehensive procedures in place as to how informants are managed. The Attorney General’s guidelines fail to address many of the risks.
Often in law enforcement he risks in informant management are not openly acknowledged and even where they are the knowledge does not exist within the agency on how to effectively manage these risks. The fact that this happened with an FBI agent is unfortunate as this is the agency that many other agencies would turn to for help and guidance in this difficult field of law enforcement.
If you want help in setting up good structures to manage informants or you want the best training you can get in relation to managing informants please get in touch info@hsmtraining.com or call +447739370969.. We know the business. We can help.
