Alexandra Natapoff
Appearances
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
Regular people who do not spend a lot of time around the criminal system would just be absolutely flabbergasted and shocked that we permit this kind of thing to happen in a modern constitutional democracy.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
I have heard so many stories, stories of violence, of exploitation, of corruption, of deceit. And yet... As hard as I am to surprise, every once in a while a new story will come along, and I think they got me again. I can't believe that this actually happened.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
In the end, we are asking the criminal system to rely almost entirely— on the accuracy and integrity of a single police officer's word. We have permitted the practice to be so confidential and secretive with so few checks and balances.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
It is very, very rare, for example, for a judge to require a police officer to prove that the informant is reliable, that they actually said what they allegedly said, or even that they actually exist.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
And in effect, in the informant world, we throw all those protections out the window. We don't give people lawyers. We keep everything secret. We permit individual officers and law enforcement officials to cut deals off the record, in secret, on the street, in dark alleys, in their own cruisers. That is not actually the way our criminal system is supposed to work.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
The use of informants is problematic for so many reasons. First, they're unreliable. We have seen so many wrongful convictions that flow from the use of criminal informants.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
As a result, we have left millions of vulnerable people completely unprotected. from the pressures and the exploitation and coercion of law enforcement. Young people, children, people with substance abuse disorders, people with mental health issues, people afraid of deportation, sex workers, people who don't know their rights, people who are afraid of police.
Spotlight: Snitch City
EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”
We give these individuals almost no protection from the threat of an individual law enforcement officer threatening them with arrest, with jail, with prosecution if they don't cooperate and don't provide information.