On confidential informants:

have been a criminal lawyer in Canada for 7 years; my first year of
practice was involved with drug prosecutions, but I have been a defence lawyer since.

I wanted to make a couple points about the “informant”, and the idea that information died with the officer. I am increasingly convinced that many an “informant” referred to in an affidavit to obtain a warrant is entirely fictitious – who will ever be the wiser?

Nevertheless, it should be the protocol of any police force to document their informants; this doesn’t necessarily mean that their names are kept, but the handler-informant relationship is documented – why wasn’t that done here? Moreover, aren’t officers obliged to keep notes? Although the officer may have died, his activities in investigating and obtaining this warrant should have been noted in his notebook – this should include his observations of the traffic in and out of the residence. I have often found it fruitful to demand production of an officer’s notebook, and contrast the observations of foot traffic into a suspected drug den with what was said in the officer’s affidavit. This whole notion that critical information died with the officer makes no sense to me, assuming he was following standard police procedures with respect to notes and informants.

Another reason informants are usually documented is that they are *paid*. The only reason an informant would provide information without payment is if the cop has a squeeze on him – holding the prospect of arrest/prosecution over their head for their own criminal behaviour if they don’t flip on someone else.

As for the reliability of an informant, you touch on an important issue: shouldn’t the fact that little if anything was found at Maye’s residence impeach the reliability of the informant? You would think so. However, the converse is likely true. In my experience, *any* drugs found during the execution of a warrant bootstrap the reliability of the informant for that warrant. This is so even if they are looking for coke and find pot. In other words, if an informant is described as having provided reliable information that led to 3 previous warrants where arrests were made, and on the basis of that statement a warrant is issued to look for 2 kg of cocaine – but in the search the cops only find a half a marijuana joint, the next time the cops use that informant in a warrant application he will be described as having been proven reliable 4 times in the past, with 4 warrants issued on the basis of his information, leading to arrests in all 4 instances. It is a total sham.

Nearly every botched drug raid I’ve looked into was initiated based on information collected by a confidential informant.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 at 8:40 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Cory Maye. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.