Anthony L. Fisher on Confidential Informants
2016-09-10 · Guest: Anthony L. Fisher (Associate Editor at Reason.com) · 11:39
Predatory use of confidential informants in law enforcement
Bob Zadek and Anthony L. Fisher discuss the predatory use of confidential informants by law enforcement, specifically focusing on the tragic case of Andrew Sadek. Sadek, a North Dakota college student, was coerced into dangerous undercover work after being threatened with decades in prison for minor marijuana sales. The conversation highlights the lack of oversight for multi-jurisdictional drug task forces and the life-threatening risks posed to untrained civilians.
Topics: Confidential Informants, War on Drugs, Andrew Sadek, SEMCA, Law Enforcement Oversight, Drug-Free School Zones, Criminal Justice Reform
Speakers: Bob Zadek — Host Anthony L. Fisher — Associate Editor at Reason.com
The Modern Draft [00:18]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, it’s Sunday and it’s the Bob Zadek show. Thanks so much for listening. We are the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. This show of ideas, not attitude, proudly and always. Thanks so much for listening. 424-BOB-SHOW to call in at any time. 424-262-7469.
Remember the draft? The draft was—for those of you not old enough to remember—the draft was a system by which young American males were required to provide military service. A dangerous occupation. They had no choice. Their freedom was denied to them. If they were of a certain age and qualified medically, they were required to carry a gun and be shot at and often killed. That regretful period of American history is hopefully behind us.
Or is it? Today, the draft still exists in an insidious and somewhat secretive fashion. But yes, it exists. The draftees are not every single young American, but are selective young Americans who are called, as you will learn during the next hour, CI, or confidential informants.
What does this system of confidential informants have to do with the draft? I’m glad you asked. To help us understand this dark technique used by the American police establishment, I’m happy to welcome back to the show Anthony Fisher. Anthony is the associate editor at Reason.com. He is an accomplished television and video producer. He first appeared on my show many years ago for his fine work on the Occupy movement—remember that? We’re happy to have Anthony back this morning. Anthony, welcome to the show.
Anthony L. Fisher: Thanks, Bob. Good to be back.
Defining the Confidential Informant [02:54]
Bob Zadek: Now, Anthony, I started off with a somewhat sinister introduction, equating the system of CIs or confidential informants to the draft. Of course, most listeners are not so aware of the phrase “CI” or “confidential informant,” and for sure, if you agree with my analogy, they are not aware at all of the relationship with the system of CIs to the now-eliminated system of the draft. So first, what is the system of CIs in America? And explain that, if you will, with your wonderful work you have done on the life of Andrew Sadek. Now, I should mention that’s Sadek with an S—same spelling as my name, except I have a Z—but obviously no relation. So Anthony, welcome to the show this morning, and what is a CI and why do we care? And then lead into the story of Andrew Sadek.
Anthony L. Fisher: Okay, so a CI is a confidential informant. They are most often people who have been either arrested of crimes and are—or they’ve got reason to cooperate with the police. They are compromised in some way legally, and they are tools. It’s tough to refer to human beings as tools, but they are tools and they are vital tools for police. And it’s not an immoral thing that police may arrest someone or detain someone and say, “Listen, you can get out of this. You can get basically a get-out-of-jail-free card if you cooperate with us and provide us evidence of other people’s crimes,” whether that means wearing a wire, working undercover, whether it means making drug buys on behalf of the police. The confidential informants are not exclusive to drug law enforcement, but are probably most common in drug law enforcement.
The Case of Andrew Sadek [05:01]
Anthony L. Fisher: And the thing that—the reason the Andrew Sadek case mattered is because it’s one of a disturbingly large amount of young people who have run afoul of the law—non-violent first-time offenders—who are being compelled to work as confidential informants. And another reason why it’s so important to know the details of this case and to advocate for greater oversight or reform is that most of the time these completely overwhelmed young people are scared to death at the possibility of losing their freedom for either the rest of their lives or a good amount of their young lives. And so they agree to work as confidential informants without telling their parents, without consulting a lawyer, and—most disturbing of all—without the proper training to deal with the work that requires being a confidential informant.
Bob Zadek: Now, the story—Andrew’s story—is compelling because it adds a human, real face to your opening discussion of CIs. When one hears the use of CIs in the abstract, it’s easy to say, “Well, they did something wrong, so screw them. And if it makes law enforcement more efficient, that’s good for everybody. Maintaining public order is good for everybody. So who cares? It’s Andrew’s own fault; he shouldn’t have broken the law.” But so that’s a very tempting attitude to adopt if you don’t have a human behind the discussion. So tell us the story of Andrew Sadek and what caught your attention.
Anthony L. Fisher: I discovered this story—a colleague of mine had just briefly noted it on the blog after picking it up somewhere, probably a local North Dakota publication or TV network put it out there—that this young man, 20 years old, good student, by all accounts a good son, a dutiful son, but you know, like a 20-year-old college kid, as many 20-year-old college kids, including our current president, will do, they engage in some casual marijuana usage. And he sold two bags of small amounts of marijuana to another confidential informant.
Bob Zadek: So he sold marijuana to what to him was another student. It was a fairly, in his world, commonplace transaction among people who knew each other. There was no organized crime element. It was two guys on a college in North Dakota doing what to them was a pretty everyday and not noteworthy transaction.
Anthony L. Fisher: It’s not really much different than say somebody at your college buys a case of beer and you break them off a six-pack. You know, that’s pretty much the extent of this. It’s not like he was involved in any sort of, like you said, organized crime or serious heavy drug trade. But the police and the drug task force that ensnared him did. Now, this is an important distinction too, and I’ll try to explain it as quickly and clearly as I can.
Lack of Oversight: SEMCA [10:01]
Anthony L. Fisher: There is no accountability, or at least there was at the time, there was no accountability for the drug task force that was known as SEMCA, which was the Southeast—I don’t even want to screw up the acronym—but it’s basically a bunch of local law enforcement entities in Southeast North Dakota who only answer to their own board, which was made up of officers, senior officers of those same law enforcement agencies. So they literally answer only to themselves. At the time, they didn’t even answer to the North Dakota Attorney General. So there was no chain of command here. There was no way of knowing that—there was no review of these policies. And there was no one to say, “Hey, do we really need to take this kid who sold a couple of tiny bags of marijuana and make him a confidential informant?”
So that’s important to note. But what’s also important to note is that in this interrogation, the officer handling his case encouraged him—encouraged him to go deeper into the drug trade. He encouraged him to make more contacts than he already had and to find drug dealers who were dealing in harder drugs than marijuana.
Bob Zadek: So now what’s happening is—and I want to be sure our friends out there understand this morphing. The morphing is from somebody who’s going to walk around a college campus in jeans and try to trick his fellow classmates into dealing in marijuana, which is sort of not that dangerous, perhaps. He now is becoming a narco with no training and with all of the danger that comes with it. Anthony, we’re going to go to break in a few seconds for a two-minute break. This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking to Anthony Fisher.