Some people don’t learn . You just can’t make up informants. Here is a story from Smithfield Rhode Island about a 600k lawsuit based on information from an informant .
In essence the officer obtained a warrant based on an informant who no one met.
I was asked yesterday has to what makes confidential informant (Human Source) training provided by HSM Training different from other providers. I wasn’t quite sure where to start. Then it dawned on me that it doesn’t actually start with us, it starts with the customer and what they need. And what they need is not always what they want.
Here is a story about the compromise of a list of informants names from Nevada’s Record Courier. A worker in the state’s information technology department, was able to open the file containing the names, addresses and even photos of the informants. If informants are being managed properly this should not be possible. It is negligence on the part of the agency managing the informants. We are putting people’s lives in great danger.
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.
Well here is a different take on a an unfortunately all to common tale of allegations of inappropriate sexual relations between a police officer and a confidential informant. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that allegations of serious corruption relating to informants and Philadelphia police department have come to light. This article discusses options to remove the risk of such allegations/and events.
Many of our readers in the USA will be familiar with the case in Chicago of Anjanette Young, where police executed a warrant on her apartment to search for a gun. Without going into all the details of what was done wrong, it has now cost the City of Chicago $2.9 million in compensation for Ms Young. This was an expensive day out for the Chicago Police Department. We can stop the same thing happening to your agency,
Confidential informants, human sources, humint, confidential human intelligence sources, CHIS, choose your terminology but the problems in managing people giving information to the police are well known and rarely change. There are ways to manage them these people that protect the person, protect the public, protect the agency, protect the officer, and protect the rule of law. Unfortunately, for some agencies, adopting the necessary measures just seems like something that is too difficult to do .
A story from the Chicago Tribune relating to the impact of the misuse of confidential informants. (CHIS, HUMINT, Confidential Human Sources) Two officers were convicted of offences relating to the misuse of informants and now questions have been raised over many of the cases they have been involved in. this article details how to make sure this does not happen in other police departments and gives an indication of the costs involved.
The report of the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants in Victoria, Australia has been released. This article gives some of the background to the case and addresses some of the main recommendations of the report. The report establishes best practice for all law enforcement agencies in Australia and contains a lot of learning for those outside Australia that are involved in managing informants.