Confidential informants have become a key element in drug law enforcement. In the case of Cory Maye in Prentiss, Mississippi, police were able to obtain a warrant to enter Maye's home after a confidential informant told them that drug activity was happening there. On the night of the raid, Maye, likely believing that he was being robbed, fired a shot at officer Ron Jones, killing him. Maye was tried for the officer's murder and sentenced to death row. Other than the remnants of a smoked joint, there were no drugs in Maye's apartment. He was not a drug dealer and had no criminal record.
The identity of the informant was only known by one person, officer Jones. However, once people like Radley Balko and others began to shine new light on this case recently, some of these secrets were revealed. Officer Jones had a phone number written on his hand at the time of his death. Private investigators followed up on that lead and were able to indentify the informant. His name is Randy Gentry, a middle-aged white Mississippian with a long history of drug abuse and bigotry. After being contacted by an attorney trying to appeal Maye's death sentence, Gentry flipped out and left a racist tirade on his answering machine. Balko writes:
If it was well known around town that Mr. Gentry is a raving racist who "hates niggers," why did the police continue to use him as an informant in cases against black people? How many times has Mr. Gentry been described in a search warrant affidavit as "credible and reliable" when it's now quite clear that not only should police have known that that's not the case, but even the man's own brother doesn't consider him to be either? How many black people are in jail based in whole or in part on the word of Randy Gentry? How many more peope like Randy Gentry are serving as confidential informants -- in Mississippi or anywhere else?
These aren't rhetorical questions.
More recently, the incident in Atlanta where an elderly woman was killed in a shootout with police describes an even uglier way that confidential informants are used as a pretext for drug raids. According to the police report, a man named Fabian Sheats told police that a large amount of cocaine was being sold out of a house on Neal Street in Atlanta. The resident of that house was 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston (some reports say she's 92). Johnston was so afraid of the neighborhood she lived in, she had bars on her windows and kept a gun for protection.
According to the police, they sent a confidential informant to the house in the three hours between Sheats' accusation and the raid and that the informant purchased drugs there. When the police raided the home, Johnston fired her gun at police, they returned fire and killed her. No cocaine was found, only less than 2 grams of marijuana (1 gram = 1 paper clip). As with the Maye case, the identity of the informant who went to Johnston's residence was supposed to remain a secret so that he could continue to be used by the Atlanta police department to make other undercover buys. However, a man named Alexis White came forward saying that he was a longtime informant and that the police had asked him to lie about having made a drug buy at Johnston's residence. Looking at the timeline and the inconsistent stories coming from Atlanta police, it's starting to become fairly obvious that no confidential informant ever purchased drugs at Kathryn Johnston's home.
These two cases demonstrate the main reasons why people become confidential informants for the police. In the case of Randy Gentry, it was a way to further his eliminationist desires towards the black community in his town. For people like Fabian Sheats and Alexis White, it's a way to avoid lengthy sentences by cooperating with police. This latter phenomenon is the main motivator behind the "Stop Snitching" movement in inner-cities. While it's easy for many to look at that trend as evidence that black communities excuse criminal behavior, seeing how the Atlanta police operated in this case illustrates how informants are generally not honest people who stop crime, but instead desperate and unreliable people out to save their own ass.
As bad as these two examples of confidential informants are, the story of a confidential informant used by the Department of Homeland Security in El Paso tops them all. I first mentioned this story back in September after it was posted at the Speakeasy. At the time, I didn't explore it in depth, but Narco News kept the story alive, and the Guardian investigated and produced their own very thorough recounting.
After years of making no progress in the drug war by solely arresting low-level drug dealers, federal anti-drug groups like the DEA have become convinced that the only way they can succeed is by getting the leaders of the cartels. In order to do this, though, they began using informants in more elaborate ways. In the case from Juarez (which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso), an informant by the name of Guillermo Ramirez Peyro (nicknamed "Lalo") was used to infiltrate the drug cartel run by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The problem with this new approach is that in order for a informant like Lalo to get close enough to someone like Fuentes to bring him down, he has to get his hands pretty dirty.
Lalo had no problem with that. In June of 2003, he was arrested driving a haul of over 100 pounds of marijuana into the United States. The DEA 'deactivated' him but the Immigration and Customs Executive (ICE) branch of the Department of Homeland Security kept him on as a source. When he killed a Mexican lawyer in August of 2003, he was wearing a wire supplied by ICE. The ICE officials in El Paso were alarmed by this, but higher-ups within the Department of Justice refused to stop using Lalo as an informant. All this time, Lalo was also being paid for his work. In all, he was paid $220,000.
Over the next 5 months, Lalo participated in a dozen more killings, including a completely innocent El Paso resident named Luis Padilla, a father of three who was legally living in the states. At the time of Padilla's killing, a DEA agent and his family barely escaped a kidnapping attempt at the hands of cartel members close to Lalo. After this happened, folks within the local DEA office became aware that ICE was still working with Lalo, so DEA agent Sandy Gonzalez wrote to his counterparts in ICE to complain. As a result, the head of the DEA, Karen Tandy, apologized to ICE officials and pressured Gonzalez into an early retirement.
Today, Lalo is in prison in the United States, which is a better fate than if he were to be sent back to Mexico. He was a person that the American government paid to murder people so that he could get closer to the real prize, the head of the Juarez drug gang. The fact that capturing Fuentes would do absolutely nothing to stop the overall drug economy means nothing to the people whose paychecks depend on furthering the myth that there's some silver bullet that will get rid of all drugs.
A look at how confidential informants are used within the drug war is long overdue. Just this week, there was another case in Texas where 33 cases from a recent drug sweep were dismissed because it was discovered that the informant was lying. Canadians have their own informant scandal similar to the Lalo case with someone named "Big Mike", who committed a number of crimes while embedded with the Hell's Angels. It's one thing to waste money in a futile attempt to protect American citizens from their own decisions. It's another thing altogether to be content with having innocent people killed in pursuit of a goal that everyone knows is impossible.
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In the news this week...
Bills were introduced this week in the House and Senate to allow for research into mycoherbicides, biological agents that are intended to eradicate drug crops, but will likely unleash an environmental disaster. Senator Joe Biden, who co-introduced the Senate bill, edited it so that the research must be conducted within the United States, but the overall bills, which reauthorize the ONDCP, are still far from perfect.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a legal resident who was set to be deported after an arrest for a drug crime.
The Drug War Chronicle takes an in-depth look at what we can expect on drug policy from the 110th Congress. They also have a very full roundup of corrupt cop stories from the past week.
Al Sharpton is calling for Congressional hearings to discuss the recent spate of incidents where police have killed civilians in carrying out drug law enforcement.
Kari Huus writes about the meth offender registries popping up on the internet for several states.
Glenn Greenwald plans to aggressively pursue the Lalo case, which will hopefully give the innerworking of our disastrous drug war some much needed attention in the blogosphere.
Arnold Trebach has a new book out called "Fatal Distraction: The War on Drugs in the Age of Islamic Terror."
Jim Holt writes about "soft paternalism" in the New York Times Magazine, a subject with which I tend to disagree with more hardcore libertarians. I believe that for hard drugs like cocaine, heroin, or meth, any decriminalization scheme must have a way for people to put themselves on a state-run list that keeps them from being able to obtain it from whoever is licensed to dispense those substances.
Eric Sterling writes about how the war on drugs fails our children.
The November Coalition has added some new graphs on the makeup of our bloated prison system.
Jim at Vice Squad discusses dealing with free speech and intoxicating substances. Drug Law Blog discusses the idea of using Recreational Use Labels for types of substances where recreational use occurs (like cough medicines). Rob at To The People demonstrates how far the media in this country is from understanding any of this.
The Drug Czar is still trying to get students to pee in a cup, but it's too expensive to test for steroids.
Shaun Mullen and Paul Silver write about the War on Drugs at The Moderate Voice.
Whig points out the big difference between cannabis and trans fats.
Web designers are needed for a major medical marijuana effort being launched soon.
A recent shooting near Seattle caused some local commenters to suggest that not enough people are in prison. This is missing the big picture.
The lawsuit brought by three California counties claiming that they had the right to enforce federal laws regarding medical marijuana is now officially dead.
A medical marijuana group from the Coachella Valley in California are suing the state's Attorney General for using federal law to override state medical marijuana laws.
The Utah man sentenced to 55 years in jail on drug and gun charges will not have his appeal heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A former Denver Bronco was arrested on drug charges.
North Dakota farmers will be able to apply for a license to grow industrial hemp starting on January 1, but will not able to actually grow it legally unless the federal government acquiesces on their ban.
As Mexican drug cartels lay low for the holidays, Texas Governor Rick Perry says that building a wall along the border is not a serious solution to the problems.
In Houston, a U.S. Border Patrol agent was sentenced to 14 years in prison for smuggling drugs and people into the U.S.
An appeals court in Florida ruled that the 25-year sentence given to Richard Paey, a paralyzed man who illegally tried to obtain pain medicine, was not cruel and unusual. Pete Guither talks about the problem with determining what is cruel and unusual. Jacob Sullum has more.
DEA head Karen Tandy took a break from covering up the murders of innocent people to write in the Orlando Sentinel that we have to err on the side of putting doctors in jail because there was one bad doctor out there.
Radley Balko continues to discuss the Kathryn Johnston case. He mentions that some audio released from the night of the raid mentions that a person from the house was apprehended, but that has not been reported anywhere else. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also printed an editorial from him. Cynthia Tucker also has a good editorial urging the police to use this opportunity to change tactics in fighting drugs. Even in Utah, people are asking the right questions.
A University of Pittsburgh study provided more evidence that the marijuana gateway theory is bogus.
New Jersey is set to become the final state to allow needle exchange programs.
Officials in New England are hoping to learn from the rest of the country in how to deal with meth, which is becoming more prevalent in the northeast now that larger Mexican cartels control the supply.
Peter Christ of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) writes to defend a Vermont prosecutor who recently spoke out against the war on drugs. Eric Sterling adds his thoughts.
The Liberal Party in Canada is inching closer to a sensible policy on marijuana.
Mindelle Jacobs in the Edmonton Sun says that mandatory minimums are a mistake and that we should legalize drugs.
An Ottawa police officer pleaded guilty to stealing crack-cocaine.
In Germany, €50 notes are starting to disintegrate from drug users who snort meth.
The NATO supreme allied commander says that Afghan's opium production is bigger than just the Taliban.
Chinese officials interrogated six well-known Taiwanese entertainers who were suspected of using marijuana.
Schapelle Corby's lawyer is threatening to reveal information about her if her family doesn't stop criticizing him.