Legal Commentary

Confidential Informants Used Heavily in Philadelphia

By TChris

It took the death of a 23 year old woman to convince the Florida legislature to consider a weak response to law enforcement's addiction to (and often loose supervision of) confidential informants, particularly in drug investigations. The Philadelphia Inquirer reminds us of a different deadly outcome in Atlanta that started with an informant's lie.

TalkLeft has often discussed the damage that informants do to individuals and families, to law enforcement agencies, to privacy rights, and to the criminal justice system and the society that depends upon it to operate fairly. The Inquirer reports allegations about Narcotics Officer Jeffrey Cujdik's relationship with an informant in the context of a larger issue of crime policy: law enforcement's nearly unregulated reliance upon police informants.

As to Cujdik: [more ...]

Cujdik worked undercover for the Narcotics Field Unit, but he depended on confidential informants to make drug buys. His 186 search warrant applications since 2006 nearly all relied upon information supplied by confidential informants. Cujdik's "most productive informant," Ventura Martinez, alleges that Cujdik "repeatedly fabricated evidence to obtain warrants."

According to sources, FBI and Internal Affairs investigators are now looking at Cujdik's work with at least four informants, and suspicion has spread to other members of his squad. Philadelphia's public defender has sought to overturn 53 convictions allegedly based on tainted searches.

If that's true, the problem is not so much that Cujdik relied too heavily upon informants: Cujdik is just a dishonest cop. But maybe police officers assigned to narcotics squads have more difficulty recognizing the truth than other officers. Deputy Police Commissioner William Blackburn oversees the Narcotics Unit. He says "Narcotics is a different animal."

"It requires real good officers. It's a delicate assignment. A lot of people, it's just not for them."

The "delicate assignment" does require a special kind of officer, although not quite in the sense Blackburn intended. It requires an officer with a heightened sense of credulity, one who can stand behind his unreliable sources and even vouch for their credibility.

Despite the work done by informants, the head of the city's police union said many officers regard them with contempt.

"Any confidential informant is bad per se," said John J. McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, who worked 10 years as an undercover officer. "They're not the most credible people."

If only the courts would allow it, McNesby should be compelled to appear as an expert witness in every case where a conviction depends upon a judge or jury believing that an informant is credible.

So why would a dutiful officer who is skeptical of informant credibility rely upon informants at all? According to Blackburn, it's better to put informants at risk during buys than to risk the lives of undercover cops. Of course, Blackburn hopes that his officers will minimize the risk to informants, but he's "looking at the welfare of the police officer first."

Blackburn's explanation depends upon the unstated premise that the life of the 23 year old woman who "got in too deep" in Tallahassee is less valuable than the life of someone like Jeffrey Cujdik. If it's so important to make risky drug buys, shouldn't the trained professionals who get paid to assume the risks associated with law enforcement make them, rather than recruiting frightened and desperate and often drug addicted individuals who feel pressured to take risks they would ordinarily avoid?

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 29, 2009 (boomark / email).