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Snitch links on the way out the door
I'm leaving town this morning to attend the ACLU national staff conference in Park City, Utah, where I'll get a chance to talk about confidential informant practices, aka, "snitching," as part of a panel on police reform (regular readers know I'm a half-time employee at ACLU of Texas). I'm taking the laptop, but blogging may be light while I'm gone. Here are a few new snitching-related links I ran across while reviewing for the event: - Marketing Betrayal: I'd missed this NPR item from January on the Stop Snitching movement. While decrying witness intimidation, correspondent Siddartha Mitter also blames a "justice system that's hooked on imprisonment and incrimination when communities need safety, investment and healing." He quotes Loyola law professor Alexandra Natapoff, a Grits favorite thinker on the subject, calling the informant system "a government-sponsored market in betrayal and liability." That's a great line and a powerful concept. Where are all those law and economics cats in academia when you need them?
- Rat Hall of Fame: The Illinois Police and Sheriff's News has this odd tribute page on its website to informants who helped bring down the Italian mob.
- "That's how it goes when friends turn to foes." This rap video depicts protagonists murdering a snitch who participated in a robbery but later turned in his partners.
- Riches for 'illegal' snitches? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Dimitri Vassilaros proposes turning illegal immigrants into snitches against their employers to solve the immigration problem. With fat rewards for informants (he suggests $50K plus citizenship for the whole family), businesses would quickly stop employing ineligible workers for fear of being ratted out. That could be right, but if so many people think amnesty is rewarding illegality, what would the same folks say about THAT idea?
See also these prior Grits posts about snitching:
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11 comments:
Yawn...
Not much to post with the Task Force offices gone ('cept the dopers are having a field day in our area).
You need an new hobby!
I hear illegal immigrants are looking for a spokesperson who isn't afraid of telling tall tales.
It's true, with the task forces gone, the level of police corruption in the state dramatically declined - but I wouldn't say there's nothing more to write about. I've just been occupied at the event I'm attending.
Oh and all those dopers were there when your task force was running - y'all were in business almost 20 years and had almost ZERO impact, by your own admission, or how could there still be that many dopers left for you to beef about.
Back in the blogging saddle Thursday, for those who aren't too bored by the content.
Heheh,
I guess it's a telltale sign when the only activity in your blog comes from you and I sniping...
Lie #1
with the task forces gone, the level of police corruption in the state dramatically declined
I would LOVE to see some evidence in support of this claim! Not just anecdotal, of course.
Lie #2
Oh and all those dopers were there when your task force was running
Since you absolutely cannot offer proof of this, I'll fill you in on why it's not true. Criminalization suppressed, while enforcement controlled, the sale of drugs. With little of the former and less of the latter, simple criminals (small time dopers) have no fear of dealing on a much larger scale. A repeat of the 1980's? Thanks again, Scott Henson!
Lie #3
y'all were in business almost 20 years and had almost ZERO impact, by your own admission
Really?!? An amazing statement. I never said we had almost zero impact. And as we (in local law enforcement) are clearly seeing, without the former suppression and control activity is picking up quite nicely.
Lie#4
or how could there still be that many dopers left for you to beef about.
Repeat of lie #2. They have little to fear. Drugs have become more available for the user, street use has increased, and so have the burglaries.
Again, a big thanks to the victor, Scott Henson! Making drug dealers safer, one Texas county at a time!
Oh, and your blog isn't boring...it's just not exciting enough reading anymore, unless I can't find a "Law and Order" episode somewhere on T.V.
It has been a little quiet around here, maybe because a) I haven't been blogging this week, and b) my readers know better than I do not to feed the trolls.
Having documented more incidents of task force corruption than you can shake a stick at, most recently this one, I feel little compulsion to repeat myself except to add that the GAO has said drug cops are generally the most vulnerable class of law enforcement to corruption.
As for the dopers - I've studied task force grant applications over the last five years or so, and EVERY year the task forces claim the problem is WORSE than the year before, and getting worse into the foreseeable future. If the tactic was working, after nearly 20 years you'd think drug busts in those jurisdictions would decline. Instead, the opposite is true. It just didn't work.
Look, face it: you tried, you failed, the politicians recognized it and spent the money somewhere else. Move on already. It's time to try a different approach.
Sheesh. I didn't "try" or "fail" anything of the sort. I worked narcotics, and had fun doing so. I'm just hangin' out here, illuminating your silliness when the fancy hits me. You know, I can't find "Law and Order" anywhere.
I do, however, find it interesting how you misinterpreted grant applications. I'm sure it was unintentional...umhmmm. The grant apps never asked anyone to calculate or estimate the rate of local drug activity. What was asked for was an estimate of productivity for an office. The fallacy used by you and your kind was equating that productivity with drug distribution trends. A lie used to justify your cause.
Nice.
Almost forgot. Your documentation of Task Force corruption is laughable. The exact number escapes me now (watching Bill Maher) but I seem to recall having personal knowledge of more than 70% of the Task Force cases you referenced in your published task force tirade, and finding glaring inaccuracies in more than half of those. Which means, for those of you Sheeple who eat what Scott is serving, you used fiction to justify your cause. Not the same as a lie, because ignorance can be claimed.
Nice.
@anonymous the ex-task force cop: You tried to reduce narcotics trafficking through the task force model and you failed. The problem worsened every year on your watch (while generating case after case of police corruption statewide), so they took the money away to spend someplace more productive. I understand why you'd be defensive, but that's what happened. Get over it.
You tried to reduce narcotics trafficking through the task force model and you failed.
Absolutely false. Trafficking was reduced, suppressed and controlled.
The problem worsened every year on your watch
This is a lie that cannot be denied. Your statement is based on your; 1.lack of understanding of the grant applications, or 2. your willingness to misuse facts for your own agenda.
while generating case after case of police corruption statewide
You recount what? About two dozen cases in the last 19 years? "Case after case" is pure fallacy. I'd wager we would find a higher rate of criminal activity in, say, the Catholic Church.
so they took the money away to spend someplace more productive.
Not true. "They" will continue to spend the money somewhere in law enforcement, wherever sits the new trend. Anti-Terrorism most recently.
I understand why you'd be defensive, but that's what happened.
My defense is only of hard work that was effective. My driving force is your lack of accuracy and any semblence of the truth.
Get over it.
You can either print the truth or censor me. Shedding some light on your misinformation happens to please me for the moment.
My, we ARE defensive, aren't we? Only a hit dog hollers, I guess.
Keep telling yourself everything the task forces did worked REALLY well. Then go back to watching Law & Order reruns - at least there reality won't get in the way of your ideological predispositions.
Nice "Rather-esque" comeback. But in the end, under the microscope, that's all you have to offer.
Less substance than a cheap chicken fried steak.
You've not made one fact based claim and since your comments misrepresent my research (it was 19 cases in about 3 years, and many more since) nothing but your shrill say-so refutes anything I said. What is there to respond to?
Grits,
Can't help but get in the middle of this because the exchange has meaning, especially since anonymous is a cop.
Cops, especially local and state cops, have a culture of officially reporting in reports the same way this cop responds in this blog.
To some neutral reader, the cop sounds intelligent, informed, and responsive but to someone who follows the argument, it's clearly sophism which leads me to my point.
They write official reports exactly the same way with boilerplate, go-by language that they know needs to be in a report. The report sounds good and they're careful not to let the facts get in the way of a good sounding story.
The hidden video camera will one day have the same effect on law enforcement as DNA. It will reveal the differences between what they report and what really happened. My only hope is this Anonymous cop is one of the first victim's.
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