New York Police Spend Millions Buying Information
New York Police Spend Millions Buying Information
In a report released by the New York Police Department (NYPD) following a public records request and a subsequent lawsuit, it was revealed that in the last six years the NYPD has paid out at least $18 million to informants and other public reward programs for information ranging from graffiti-related crimes to murder.
According to the data, the vast majority of the money, about $16.5 million, went to confidential informants, with the remainder going to programs such as Crime Stoppers, Operation Gun Stop, and an anti-graffiti campaign.
Payments to informants range from $10-15 for minor crimes to $22,000 for unsolved homicides. Robbery cases pay about $1,000 and, on average, informants are paid $1,700 for rape cases. The top dollar amount paid out was $32,000 for the attempted murder of a police officer.
Gregg Roberts, executive director of the New York City Police Foundation, said most of the people providing the information are close to the criminal world themselves and might be motivated to provide information to get rid of competition or exact revenge on people they have conflicts with. "I have no problem with that," Roberts said. "If we take a murderer off the street, I'm not all that concerned with the source.
Police and prosecutors are generally free to decide how much they want to pay and what kind of people they want to cut deals with, said Alexandra Natapoff, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "United States law confers almost complete discretion on the police to create, use and reward informants in almost any way they choose," Natapoff said.
A new bill introduced this year in the New York State Assembly would require more transparency in the use of informants by requiring police and prosecutors to file yearly reports detailing how often informants are used, the number of arrests and convictions secured each year as a result, and the type of rewards or benefits given to suspects who agree to become informants. The bill, however, was not taken up in the 2014 legislative session, which ended in June.
Source: www.nytimes.com