Finally, the report of the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants in Victoria, Australia has been released. Needless to say after and inquiry that has lasted nearly two years, a scandal that has lasted a minimum of five and a cost to the public purse of at least 40 million AU Dollars it is a big report.

It takes a while to go through the report but it is well worth the journey. There is a lot to learn. In brief Victoria Police decided to use a lawyer (Nicola Gobbo) as a confidential informant (human source). She reported on some of her clients many of whom who were involved in high level organised crime. She supplied high grade intelligence over a number of years leading to numerous seizures and convictions. That is the up side. The down side is that the risks in using a lawyer as an informant were not properly managed. The potential benefits seemed to out weigh the risks and everything was fine until her identity was compromised, arguably through negligence.

Once it became public knowledge anyone she had represented claimed innocence and wanted a retrial. She had been involved in about 1000 cases.

While previously for good reason we refrained on commenting on this case, now that all is in the public domain there are a few points worth drawing attention to particularly in regard to the recommendations. While this report affects only the state of Victoria legislatures and Police Commissioners in other Australian states would do well to reads the report and take on board the recommendations made. A failure to do so leaves them very vulnerable in the event of other incidents of poor informant management coming to light.

First: the state legislature should put in place legislation that dictates how and when all informants should be managed. This legislation should include addressing issues of human rights.

Second: Informants should only be managed by specially trained officers working in dedicated source management units. This is a big change for many agencies in Australia and will entail at least one agency reversing its recent decision to move away from Dedicated Source Management Units to adopt what they refer to as an American Model (Think free for all with any officer allowed to run any source with no or minimal training.)

Third: each law enforcement agency needs adequate structures and procedures to ensure full accountability with regard to decision making.

I would suggest that any officer managing confidential informants ( human sources, covert human intelligence source, CHIS, HUMINT) reads the report. Unfortunately the one thing it misses is the psychology that is likely to have played a part in the flawed decision making. What happened was predictable and it was predicted. To understand why the warnings were ignored you have to understand the psychology at play with all those involved.

In reading the report just remember those involved here were not bad people. What happened in this agency could happen in any other agency who do not have the systems and training in place.

And as for why Ms Nicola Gobbo did what she did, that is a whole other discussion pertaining to psychology. Learning that will help any one involved in managing human sources manage them better and more safely.

At HSM Training this is our business - we are here to help. Just lift the phone and ask.