How police reliance on confidential informants in Colorado carries risk

[phill4paul]

"in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to be confronted with the witnesses against him."

The tip was as good as they come.

A confidential informant told police that a probation officer was selling heroin and meth out of a tiny courthouse in southern Colorado. The woman said she had bought drugs from the officer three times. Trinidad detectives arrested Danika Gonzales, a seven-year employee of the probation department, and charged her with four felony drug counts.

Gonzales, then 38, lost her job. The informant pocketed $3,085 from her work with detectives.

The tip, it turned out, was too good to be true.

Gonzales, who was the informants former probation officer, was accused of selling meth and heroin from the courthouse, but police failed to corroborate the information and charges against Gonzales were dropped. Gonzales lost her job and has now filed a lawsuit against the city.

Information from that informant and another created the basis of 40 drug cases that later proved to be little more than lies. Gonzales, who was once the informant's probation officer, saw her charges dropped, as did other defendants. But the informant was not charged for lying to police, and the detectives faced no sanctions for failing to verify her information.

"Because the use of informants is so unregulated, the public almost never learns about it until something goes terribly wrong," said Alexandra Natapoff, a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Police and prosecutors say the problems that come with reliance on informants are outweighed by the benefits.

Informants provide the backbone for hundreds of drug investigations each year. With the ability to move in and out of the criminal world, informants — who often are criminals working for cash or deals from authorities — provide investigators with information they couldn't obtain otherwise, police say.

The use of confidential informants became a central issue in one of the most heinous crimes in Denver history, after an informant helped police arrest three men in the stabbing deaths of five people.

Demarea Harris was working as an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when he and three friends walked into Fero's Bar and Grill in October 2012. Harris says he saw the other men start stabbing the victims in an alleged robbery that spiraled out of control.

He has never been arrested or charged, and his role in the crimes remains a mystery to the attorneys representing Dexter Lewis, who faces the death penalty for the attack. Brothers Joseph and Lynell Hill were spared the death penalty in exchange for their testimony in Lewis' upcoming trial.

Detectives testified that Harris told them inaccurate details and inconsistent accounts of what happened, yet defense attorneys have not been allowed to question him because ATF has blocked their requests for information about Harris.

http://www.denverpost.com/informants...o-brings-risks

[tod evans]

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