{"id":11145,"date":"2012-09-04T02:38:34","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T09:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=11145"},"modified":"2012-09-04T02:38:34","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T09:38:34","slug":"the-throwaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/04\/the-throwaways\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Throwaways”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Yorker<\/i> excoriates cops in a long (must read) article about how they treat their snitches. The title says it all: “The Throwaways.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Informants are the foot soldiers in the government\u2019s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty per cent of all drug cases in America involve them, often in active roles like [dead young snitch, Rachel] Hoffman\u2019s. For police departments facing budget woes, untrained C.I.s provide an inexpensive way to outsource the work of undercover officers. \u201cThe system makes it cheap and easy to use informants, as opposed to other, less risky but more cumbersome approaches,\u201d says Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a leading expert on informants. \u201cThere are fewer procedures in place and fewer institutional checks on their use.\u201d Often, deploying informants involves no paperwork and no institutional oversight, let alone lawyers, judges, or public scrutiny; their use is necessarily shrouded in secrecy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can get us into the places we can\u2019t go,\u201d says Brian Sallee, a police officer who is the president of B.B.S. Narcotics Enforcement Training and Consulting, a firm that instructs officers around the country in drug-bust procedures. \u201cWithout them, narcotics operations would practically cease to function.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article by Sarah Stillman tells it like it is, right down to making it pretty clear the whole war on drugs is about local cops profiting from federal money — and not much caring who they put at risk to get it.<\/p>\n

Almost makes you feel sorry for the snitches. At least the naive young ones profiled here, who lost their lives to the cynicism of police, all for nothing.<\/p>\n

(Tip o’ hat to Jim Bovard<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Yorker excoriates cops in a long (must read) article about how they treat their snitches. The title says it all: “The Throwaways.” Informants are the foot soldiers in the government\u2019s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty per cent of all drug cases in America involve them, often in active roles like [dead young snitch, Rachel] Hoffman\u2019s. For police departments facing budget woes, untrained C.I.s provide an inexpensive way to outsource the work of undercover officers. \u201cThe system makes it cheap and easy to use informants, as opposed to other, less risky but more cumbersome approaches,\u201d…<\/p>\n

Continue reading“The Throwaways”<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thuggery-and-bad-law","category-war-on-some-drugs","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}