The article in the latest Chronicle about two people being indicted on witness tampering charges for outing a snitch is very interesting.
It seems that things have become so bad that law enforcement officials can't seem to be able distinguish between snitches and concerned citizens who want to see justice done. The difference is very simple. A snitch receives a benefit in return for their testimony and therefore has an incentive to lie. The concerned citizen is motivated by morals and the only benefit they receive is knowing they did the right thing.
Those who serve up others in order to save themselves, should rarely be trusted, and jailhouse informants should never be.
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You got that right
I was ratted by a "concerned citizen" who had mulitiple arrests that included grand larson. He was concerned about doing more time for another crime. He was a friend of a person that knew him a long time and thought he could be trusted. I got all his information on my own and he and his probation officer know it. A later search found his criminal record wiped clean in both maine and florida (about a yr. later). Hmmm.... He knew little about my hydro grow and fabricated 90% of what he said. It does'nt take much anymore. This is no longer a free society for you and I.
www.pissedoffpothead.com
I'm sorry that happened to you
The way snitches and CIs are used in modern criminal justice is sickening. It is disturbing that accomplice testimony must be corroborated, but snitches are just "trusted". It should definitely be the other way around. Many people don't understand that the war on drugs affects everyone, whether you use, sell or do neither. It has basically taken the presumption of innocence out back and beaten it to near death. Catherine Austin Fitts's essay, "Narcodollars for beginners" in Under the Influence is a great primer on how this happens.
Police state tactics
I wonder why it doesn't seem strange to ordinary citizens that our government and police departments routinely do all the things we used to sneer at Eastern European Dictatorships for.
Fear of crime
In today's society, people who have no experience with crime or the police aside from media accounts are given a distorted view of what's going on. Most people will never be a crime victim, and when it does happen it's more likely to be a non-violent property crime. Local news networks and prime-time TV push this scary image of psychopaths and lunatics running the streets. In that kind of environment, the role of the police becomes glorified.
People become more and more willing to accept egregious behavior from law enforcement.
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