Ten things you might want to consider when auditing your Confidential Informant Management System

In a previous article we highlighted the need for audit of the systems for managing confidential informants.  Here at HSM training we believe in providing solutions so we are giving you a few points to set you in the right direction.

For many agencies the task of managing confidential informants is a task that is routinely carried by their staff on a daily with little apparent need for checking as to how well the system in place is actually functioning.  A mindset will often prevail that as long as things appear to be operating without a problem then there is no need to potentially upset the apple-cart by actually checking to see if they are. All too often anyone that suggests such an action is perceived as working to some personal agenda or inferring that the staff are doing something wrong. Carrying out an audit of how confidential informants are being managed within an agency involves looking at the informant management system as a whole and examining how individual informants are being managed on a case specific basis. I often find that within any agency’s confidential informant processes there are often good things and bad and while finding the good is always reassuring finding the bad has left many a Chief with a few sleepless nights.

‘Ten things’ that should make you think about carrying out an audit are:

1.       It is better to do your own audit now, rather than such an audit being carried out in the public domain. It would not be the first time that an agency’s methodology was subject to public scrutiny as a result of judicial proceedings or public pressure.

2.       You will find wrong-doing. The extent of such wrong-doing will vary from minor failings in record keeping to potentially criminal wrong doing. It is better for all that corrective measures are quickly put in place for the minor issues and that any major ones are expeditiously investigated.

3.       You will find misinterpretation and misunderstandings of the agency’s informant policies. Many police policies are poorly written and open to misinterpretation, this leaves the agency, its members and the public vulnerable.  Finding short-comings in policy at an early stage means that corrections can be made before harm results.

4.       You will find people that are being managed as if they were confidential informants but that the officers involved have never properly documented as such. This is one of the major origins of risk with regard to informant management.

5.       You will discover which officers are being productive and which officers are merely talking the talk when it comes to managing informant.

6.       You will find confidential informants that are being productive and which are merely talking the talk.  You may also find a few informants that your agency really should have nothing to do with because they are very likely to cause harm to the agency in the longer term.

7.       You will find significant amounts of information submitted from informants never gets to where it needs to go to and istherefore not properly auctioned by the agency. When something does go wrong there is very little that will make an agency look quite as bad as the discovery that there was information available prior to the event that could have prevented the event.

8.       You will find where informants can be much more effectively managed and tasked against identified priorities.  Those managing informants need to take cognizance of the limited resources available to law enforcement and be more circumspect in the time and effort that are expended in managing confidential informants.  Few agencies manage their informants in a proactive way that meets the well recognized principles of intelligence led policing.

9.       You will find inconsistencies, often significant ones, in the way informants are paid or rewarded across the agency.  If there is more than one person responsible for financial management of informant rewards then there is very likely to be a difference in what is being paid out , to who and for what. If you find that there is not an efficient way of tracking informant money across the agency then be prepared for the worst.

10.   If you find the potential problems before they are real problems then you will have a much happier Chief and you will have done a professional job.

People are often reluctant to undertake an audit out of fear for what they may find or because of the hostility with which such an undertaking may be met.  If carrying out an initial audit it can be well worth well to examine all the agency’s informants and decide which ones are worth reregistering and which ones the agency should cease contact with; starting again in this way means that the agency is at significantly less risk than before such an audit. Start with an initial audit of the informant management system and then pencil one in on an annual basis. If you find that audit is all but impossible because the agency’s informant records are all over the place well that is the first thing you may want to speak to the Chief about the problem.

Assessing the source of intelligence in intelligence reports

Has the UK College of Policing got it wrong on evaluating intelligence?

https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/intelligence-management/intelligence-report/#source-evaluation

It is with reluctance that I would critique policing policy but a read through the UK College of Policing guidance on intelligence reports begs comment. Remembering that this is the guidance for all the police in the UK it is worth reading with a critical eye.

Under the heading of "Intelligence report"  we find the comment "The source of the information can be either the name and address of the person providing the information..."   

Comment 1: A completed intelligence report should never contain any details of who has provided the information from which the report is constructed. It should contain a unique reference number that links back to the original information submission. At all times the origin of the intelligence should be as well protected as possible. What they are suggesting here has implications under Article 2 ECHR  and the right to life. What is suggested in the guidance should not be considered as a reasonable measure to protect the life of someone giving information in confidence to police.

Under the words source evaluation we have:

"Source evaluation:  1. Reliable  2. Untested  3. Unreliable."  

Comment 2 This is the lazy option and a very dangerous one. The excuse often given for abandoning the previous matrix was people didn't understand it.  People didn't understand it because it was not trained to them and because supervisors did not supervise the quality of reports.  Reducing it to three values makes little sense.  What about the person who is reliable sometimes? Are they different from someone who we think is malicious in their reporting? These things matter. These evaluations help decision makers make good decisions and these are bad values. One wonders who or what was the driving force to change them particularly given the lack of consultation and the fact that many forces can't use them because of IT issues. 

There is much more to be said about the quality of this guidance but reading through it I am rapidly losing the will to live. There is so much in it that is flawed and poorly written. UK policing deserve better.

 I could write a book on the issues around information submissions and intelligence reports - actually I did - so if you want to know how manage this process in a much safer and efficient way than this have a read at the book:  Managing Intelligence - A guide for Law Enforcement Professionals. 

Or contact:  HSM Training for further information about our training. 

Ten things that should be done to address civil liberty issues when working with intelligence

Concerns around intelligence gathering activities by law enforcement are always of concern to citizens. In some cases one only has to mention the word ‘intelligence’ and people have visions of an Orwellian state. When it comes to intelligence led policing and activities associated with it, the public have a right to keep a watching eye on what law enforcement are doing but for the most part the average law abiding citizen has nothing to be concerned about. Law enforcement has neither the interest nor the resources to go prying into an innocent person’s life.

However, when it comes to preserving public order and investigating crime there is always the potential for the engagement of civil liberties and law enforcement agencies must have in place structures to prevent the civil liberty violations. The topic of civil liberties is by its very nature a broad one which can impact a citizen in many ways. These include matters pertaining to freedoms of association and travel (both of which are engaged if law enforcement carry out any form of surveillance on a person), to the right of an accused to have a fair trial.  When a law enforcement agency adopts an ‘intelligence led policing’ approach there will always be an engagement with civil liberties but this does not mean that there will be a violation of civil liberties provided the agency has in place the structures to avoid such.

1.       The agency must have in place a process to manage all covert activities where the civil liberty issues arise. Separate but similar processes will be required for activities such as undercover operations, surveillance, interception of communications and managing a confidential informant. In some instances legislation may require that a warrant is sworn. The authorization process is intended to complement, not replace such a requirement.

2.       An officer should complete a written application prior to carrying out any operation likely to have an impact on the civil liberties of any person. This application should include a summary of the matter being investigated, how the person whose rights will be engaged is linked to that investigation and the nature of the activity that is proposed. This application should be forwarded to an officer of an appropriate rank whose responsibility it is to authorise such activity. This would normally be someone of captain rank or equivalent.

3.       The application must show why the activity that is proposed is necessary to achieve the aims of the investigation. In order to prove necessity the officer must state why other less intrusive and more traditional means of investigation have failed or are likely to fail. The application should include a detailed risk assessment including risks to both the public and any confidential informant that is involved.

4.       The authorizing officer should examine the application and set parameters for the intelligence gathering operation. These limits should include the nature of the activity that is permitted and the duration of that activity.

5.       Where the nature of the activity is more intrusive a higher level of authorization should be in place.  This would be required for example in deploying an undercover officer into a place of worship or where a juvenile confidential informant is used.

6.       The agency must keep comprehensive records of all operations. These records should be kept in a central location. Officers should not be allowed to keep records pertaining to intelligence collection under their own control.

7.       All records should be kept to evidential standards. Given that the primary goal of most intelligence gathering operations will be to ultimately bring the perpetrators to trial, all records with regard to operations should meet evidential standards. This ensures a citizen’s rights to a fair trial.

8.       At the termination of the operation all records should be examined to ensure that any intelligence collected has been legally collected. This review should also ensure that the maximum amount of information has been processed into intelligence and is stored legally.

9.       There should be regular audit of all covert operations to ensure that the agency is not unlawfully engaging civil liberties. Audits should be carried out by a person independent of the operation.

10.   Statistical data relating to the nature of covert operations and the results of those operations should be readily available at any time, for the head of the agency. Monitoring what is being a done, by whom and what it is achieving is just one way of reducing the risk of officers being drawn into situation where citizen’s rights are violated.

When it comes to an agency adopting an intelligence led policing strategy, these simple steps ensure that a law enforcement agency has adopted a proactive approach to addressing civil liberty issues that provides reassurance to the citizen’s it has undertaken to protect. Furthermore, It is always worth remembering there are always defence lawyers out there willing to exploit any vulnerability to gain an acquittal - cases should not be lost because of poor law enforcement processes. The steps mentioned above significantly mitigate the risk of cases being dismissed purely because of an alleged civil liberty violation.

HSM Training and Consultancy work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies on an international basis addressing civil liberty issues in the intelligence environment and can provide expert testimony in related cases.

Independent Auditing of Informant Management

  Here is a story of a police department potentially in trouble.  http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article121045333.html

The time to get someone to audit your informant policies, methods and training is before something bad happens. There is nothing to fear from an independent audit provided you chose the right person to do it. In fact it goes along way to protecting your agency. Leaving it to after a bad event is akin to bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. 

Any good audit will cover both the way you manage your confidential informants and the way the subsequent intelligence is managed. Managing confidential informants (human sources) is a risky business and few agencies have the internal expertise to audit their system effectively.  Setting aside the obvious biases likely to occur with an internal audit, auditing an confidential informant management system requires both breadth and depth of expertise. 

Many agencies choose to keep their proverbial heads buried in the sand fooling themselves that everything is OK and that they are legally and ethically compliant. This attitude has little validity. if you are a Police Chief make sure you are asking the right people lots of difficult questions about how your agency is managing confidential informants (human sources) and think about getting an independent audit.

Police Training, Human Rights and getting the basics right.

When it comes to providing good training to law enforcement there is always one critical aspect to decide: What do you include and what to leave out? The very nature of law enforcement means that there is always a huge amount of material to teach, and a limited amount of time in which to deliver that training. Deciding what must be included in training and what we can afford to leave out can be very difficult. It is relatively rare for there to be a public discussion on what was or what was not addressed in police training, however, this is discussed in an article in the UK's Guardian newspaper. 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/13/british-police-trainers-ignore-human-rights-abuses-bahrain

The discussion focuses on an agreement between The UK's College of Policing and Bahrain's Ministry of Interior and relates to the supply of training by the College.  Setting aside the fact that any clear link to covert training, as mentioned in the news article,  is far from apparent, this should not detract from the learning that can be obtained from the content.

The issue of real interest is why any mention of 'Human Rights' was omitted from the agreement between the two parties. [It should be noted that the  said agreement remains confidential and that in order to discuss the article content, one has to accept that what the Guardian has said in relation to its content, is accurate.]   The concern raised in this article is that there was no mention was made of Human Rights content in the training agreement . If that is correct it is a serious omission.

There are a number of core themes that should run through all police training regardless of what is being trained and to whom. These include:

  1. Human Rights.
  2. Ethics. 
  3. Diversity.

These topics should be covered in the training objectives for any course, both implicitly and explicitly. They are essential content for all police training. All UK police training should include these, as should any training that is being delivered outside the UK but paid for by UK taxpayers.  Any trainer delivering training on police course should be tested on their knowledge of these subjects, before they are allowed to deliver the training. Unfortunately this does not always happen.  Even if the trainers do include human rights content, they often omit to write down that their training includes some essential aspects, for example, human rights. 

There are two lessons for those involved in police training, to take away from this article:

  1. Include human rights, ethics and diversity in all police training.
  2. Write down they will be included  and how the training will include them. 

It is unfortunate , given the fact that UK policing leads the world in many of these subjects, that such a simple omission, such as that referred to in the article, can over-shadow all the other good that UK police training has achieved especially internationally.

If you are a police trainer, or  involved in curriculum development for police training, and have any questions about how to integrate human rights training as a core theme please get in contact with us. 

Managing confidential informant funds

It is 2016 and the days of paying confidential informants without having a system which can be audited should be long gone.  Floyd County Sheriff's Department in New Albany, Indiana were audited recently in relation to managing funds relating to confidential informants. The audit should raise concerns with any one reading it given the substantial sums of money involved.

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/g5016006.pdf

There are many reasons why money used to pay confidential informants needs to be highly regulated. Here are a few.

  1. There is a very high risk of officers becoming corrupted when dealing with confidential informants. Allowing them access to money without there being in place a strict regime just creates an environment, where it is much more likely to happen. The temptation and opportunity are a recipe for disaster. 
  2. If there is not a strict policy on managing informant money it is very tempting for senior officers to "divert" that money to other projects and not what it was allocated for.
  3. If there is not a rigorous regime it is far to easy for someone to make false allegations about the officers that are using the money.
  4. The Sheriff or Chief needs to be able to see  exactly how much was paid,  who was paid and what the agency got for that money. This requires comprehensive records of every payment the dates the times and who paid it, who authorised the payment and why.  This goes a long way to ensuring objectivity when deciding how much to pay a confidential informant.
  5. If there is not a clear audit of payments it can raise serious doubt about the veracity of any information obtained by the confidential informant. This can more problems down the line when it comes to disclosure, particularly if the informant is for some reason going to be used as a witness. 
  6. These funds come from taxpayers. Taxpayers are entitled to have a proper accounting of how their taxes are spent. This does not mean that these records should be made public. On the contrary to do so would jeopardise the life of informants. What is required is that all the records are kept in one place where a suitably qualified person can audit them and provide reassurance to the public. 

If procedures are not in place for the strict control of confidential informant finance it is a clear indication to any professional involved in this type of work that the agency has failed to manage the risks associate with managing confidential informants and as such they are negligent. In short the agency should not be managing informants. The risks are too great. The idea that an officer can access money in this way is reminiscent  of the times when a drugs detective got a handful of cash for  "walking around money". Those times should be history. 

There is software to manage confidential informants and if any agency wants advice and guidance on how to put adequate systems in place please feel free to contact us. We will help where we can.

Confidential informants, undercover activity, negligence and lawsuits

Oh dear… the lawyers are coming…

For a senior police officer it is the stuff of nightmares. There has been an incident of some sort and now the lawyers want to paw through all your records pertaining some sort of undercover activity which your agency has been involved in. The incident may have involved the deployment of an undercover officer, or it may have been a surveillance operation or have involved the use of a human source (confidential informant). While in many cases the lawyer may be seeking only to get an acquittal for their client, unfortunately, and all too often nowadays, it is more likely to be that the lawyer is pressing a lawsuit against the law enforcement agency because some form of harm has come to their client. 

For the Chief of the agency it is not always obvious what the lawyer will look for and how the agency will be left vulnerable. Fortunately, no matter where you are in the world, the things that will cause the agency problems are very similar. At HSM Training we are regularly asked to carry out audits to find out what could go wrong or what has gone wrong.  We are telling you now, so that you can fix them BEFORE something bad happens (and before a lawyer raises them in court).

There are three things that will always lead to problems if they are not well established within any agency. A failure to have these in place will lead to negative events and are most likely to result in the agency being the wrong end of a successful lawsuit. They fall under three headings:

1.       Legislation, Policy and Procedures

2.       Training

3.       Records

It goes without saying that if you are not adhering to legislation as a law enforcement agency you are going to be in trouble. However, law enforcement agencies look at legislation in a very narrow way, for example they do not even consider that workplace safety legislation will apply to their covert operation and therefore they breach that legislation. Agencies fail to have policies relevant to the work they carry out. Policy is a public statement of what the agency intends to do and an explanation in general terms as to how they will do it. This informs the general public that the agency is undertaking the named activities and gives them an idea of the controls that will be in place. If you don’t have a public policy, then it looks like you are hiding something. Where there is national policy that should be adhered to. Procedures are different from policy. Because of the secret nature of covert activities these documents should not be made available to the public. They should be exempt under freedom of information as they expose law enforcement methods. Procedures are a standardised series of actions taken to achieve a task so that everyone who undertakes the task does in an agreed and consistent way to achieve a safe, effective outcome. Procedures have a lot of detail. They say exactly who will do the work and they detail the processes for how that work will be carried out. Generally speaking, where agencies fall down is lack of comprehensive, well written procedures that are reviewed on an annual basis and where compliance with them is intrusively and rigorously enforced by managers.

Whatever role an officer is undertaking they need to be selected and properly trained for that role and certified as being competent for that role. Details of how the officer was selected, and the training they have received, need to be recorded including both the content and duration of the training and the results of any form of assessment. Officers need to receive regular updates in their training and should be signed off one an annual basis as being competent for the task in question.  All officers regardless of rank, involved in the relevant task, must be trained.    The level of training required will come down to the risks involved with the nature of task being carried out. If someone might die, you are going to need a lot of training. If an officer is not trained properly, it is negligence to have them doing the task. There is no excuse such as not having the money to train them.

There need to be comprehensive records of all aspects of the activity being undertaken and these should be kept in one centralised location. Ideally they should be on a computerised secure system. [For covert activities if the computer system is not of sufficiently high security, stick with paper. Do NOT use your standard records management system that you use for patrol.] If the agency has not identified all the records that should be kept and if they are not all completed properly it is going a long way to suggesting either wrongdoing or negligence.

Having examined any agencies policy and procedures, their training and their record keeping it takes an expert minutes to identify if the agency could have done things more effectively. The expert then presents their opinion to the court. It is then up to the court to decide whether that amounted to negligence and whether or not that negligence resulted in harm to a person.

It is perhaps worth noting that in some jurisdictions the mere existence of the risk of harm to a person constitutes a criminal offence under health and workplace safety legislation! If you want advice, ask us or wait for the lawyers to ask.

Ten things that should be taught on an entry level HUMAN SOURCE MANAGEMENT course

Managing human sources (confidential informants) is often perceived as a task that any officer can do and that every detective should do. However, despite significant evidence of the importance of training for officers involved in this role many agencies provide only the minimum, if any training, and then wonder why it goes horribly wrong. Even in the state of Florida in the USA where training for officers managing human sources (confidential informants) is a legislative requirement (following the death of Rachel Hoffman) officers there, often receive only the most nominal training.  Managers, often untrained themselves, do not understand the difficulties in managing a human source (confidential informant) or cite the excuse of not being able to afford the cost of training as the reasons they don’t provide it for their staff.  Where an officer has not been properly trained, allowing that officer to manage a human source (confidential informant) is negligence on the part of the law enforcement agency. Training should be delivered by a qualified person, delivered against a minimum set of standards and delivered to all staff involved, regardless of rank. Those supervising the management will require additional training.  An introductory level human source course for an officer beginning to manage human sources will take an absolute minimum of one week to deliver. If staff are getting any less than a week no expert would considered them to be properly trained. [Note: this week of training is dedicated exclusively to managing human sources (confidential informants) as opposed to a one hour lecture included on a narcotics course!]

As a guide we have included ‘Ten things’ that should be taught on an introductory level, human source (confidential informant) management course. These are:

1.    Civil liberties and human rights. Using human sources will always engage civil liberty and human rights; officers need to be aware what these issues are and how to justify their actions.

2.  Ethics and morals. Managing human sources is fraught with ethical and moral dilemmas. Only by training officers in ethics can these matters be effectively addressed.

3.   Corruption. Unfortunately, all too often officers involved in managing human sources become mired in corruption. Understanding the psychological process involved helps reduce the chances of the officer falling victim to this.

4.  Risk management. There are significant risks in managing any human source. Officers need to be trained how to identify, evaluate record and manage the relevant risks.

5.   Legislation and the agency’s policies and procedures for managing human spources. Officers need to know the relevant legislation and need the agency’s procedures explained to them.

6.    Record keeping. Officers need to know what records to complete and the time frames for completion of those records.

7.      Field-craft. Keeping both the officers and the human source alive involves equipping all with the skills necessary to make contact and meet safely.

8.     Debriefing. Many officers have only the most rudimentary of skills when it comes to eliciting the maximum amount of information from a human source. Training officers in ‘relevant’ interviewing skills maximises the amount of information gained. Some common interview techniques currently in use are totally counter productive for this arena.

9.       Writing information submissions. Officers also need to be taught the difference between information and intelligence. Many officers do not know this and as a result do not know how to write comprehensive and accurate accounts of the information they receive during a meeting. This results in inaccurate information being submitted or in the worst case, acted upon without any centralised control.

10.  Psychology. Teaching officers even the most fundamental aspects of the psychology involved in managing human sources will increase the source's productivity and increase the control over that source, thus helping keep everyone safe.

While this article leans towards a USA perspective the content of any course anywhere is the same.

The term "HUMAN SOURCE"

If we want to discuss anything, it is always good that there is clarity regarding the words we will use. As this blog will regularly discuss ‘human sources’ let us start by defining a human source.

A human source is: “a person who has been deliberately recruited and is managed to collect information to satisfy an intelligence requirement.”

This definition of a Human Source was developed during research by Reid and Buckley and carried out as part of a UK Home Office funded research police award beginning in 2000.

In essence what we are going to talk about is ‘informants’ and whether you call them covert human intelligence sources (UK term) or confidential informants (USA terminology) or anything else, depending on what your role is and where in the globe you are, the term we will use is HUMAN SOURCE.

There were a number of reasons why the term of a human source and the associate concept were developed during that period of international research. These include:

1.       Human source is a neutral term which does not carry with it much of the negativity that is normally associated with other terms such as informant, snitch, snout, rat, etc.  All too often people involved in providing information that prevents crime and saves lives are vilified and pilloried. While this may be understandable if someone is involved in crime, as a general rule, speaking in derogatory terms, about a human source is uninformed and prejudiced. It is also unprofessional when derogatory comments about human sources are made by anyone involved in criminal justice, be they prosecutors or law enforcement officials.

2.       Human sources are a ‘source of information’. Law enforcement needs information to combat crime and protect the community from terrorism.

3.     Human sources are human. If one knows and understands how human beings function, then one can better manage a human source. Unfortunately, some people seem to think that human sources are in some way less than human, or different from any other human on the planet.

4.       Managing a human source, as one would manage any other human relationship, ensures that all involved are treated with dignity and respect and in an ethical way.     

We will explore what we mean by the words ‘intelligence requirement’ in a later blog but for now we will take it as a given that human sources would only be used where the Police Chief has identified that the information they are providing, helps address their identified policing priorities. But if you can’t wait you may want to look at our publications. 

 

Seven things every Police Chief needs to know about Intelligence Led Policing

Here are a few basics that any Police Chief needs to know when making decisions about implementing Intelligence Led Policing.

1.       Information and intelligence are two different things. If your intelligence staff don’t know the difference, you may want find staff who do.

2.       Intelligence led policing is not about making pretty pictures with your crime data. Unless you are using information gathered from both overt and covert collection your picture will always be a distorted one.

3.       An analyst is a specialised role. They should be able to work with crime data and intelligence and should have access to both. Recognise and reward their expertise. Too many sworn officers fail to understand or recognise their worth.

4.       Make sure you have fully accountable processes for all your collection activities. You must have authorisation processes to sanction collection and that address privacy,  human rights and civil liberties.

5.       Train your staff. How will they know about intelligence, if they have not been taught? And that includes your managers!

6.       Be wary about what people tell you computers can do. There is some good software out there, but software is only a tool, not the answer. Rarely will criminals post their intentions on the internet.  Information collected on the internet is only a help.

7.       Intelligence led policing works – if you understand it and do it right. If you need help just ask.

If you want to know more about Intelligence Management in law enforcement check out our publications.