Police Informants: ‘Snitch-ocracy’ Gone Wild?

The informant’s secretly recorded tapes--exhibits 7A and 7B, as introduced by the prosecution--incriminated the four “gangstas” charged with the attempted murder of a Bronx police captain.

The defendants listened closely as the tapes were played in a pretrial hearing. As the sound of their “confessions” filled the courtroom, recalled defense attorney Lynne Stewart, two of the defendants began laughing.

“Both of them said, ‘That’s not my voice,’ ” Stewart recalled. They were right: an FBI expert soon determined all the “voices” belonged to informant Julio “Tuco” Caraballo, a career criminal with a rap sheet longer than the 10-minute tape.

The doctored tapes provided by the would-be impressionist led to the swift release of three of the defendants on the eve of their April trial. (The fourth was already doing time on an unrelated case.)

“No one has ever heard an informant story that comes up to this level,” said Stewart, attorney for one of the suspects. “This guy was a real grifter.”

Yet in the ever-expanding brotherhood of CIs--lawspeak for confidential informants--tales of sweet deals for bad guys with worse intent are fairly commonplace.

The legal world is rife with stories of informant abuse: the mob turncoat who fatally stabbed a coke dealer while under federal witness protection, or the crackhead crook who tried to ruin a decorated detective in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Altruism is rarely an informant’s motive; self-preservation generally works. Caraballo hoped to duck drug charges and a lengthy jail term when he went to work for police.

“There are many more informants than ever before,” said Gerry Lefcourt of the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “They cut deals to save themselves. And they have to make evidence up if they don’t have it.”

Why?

Draconian sentencing statutes with mandatory minimum terms have encouraged more criminals to testify, defense lawyers say. Judges have no room for discretionary sentences; they can only show leniency if the prosecutor requests it in a form letter called a 5K-1.

“Every informant wants that 5K-1 letter,” said veteran criminal attorney Ron Kuby.

Informants, in many ways, remain the lifeblood of law enforcement. Not even the harshest government critics advocate their elimination.

Informants helped take down the American Mafia, played key roles in infiltrating white supremacist groups and militias, and assisted in cracking the World Trade Center bombing case (where the source collected a reported $1 million).

But some critics, including an ex-federal agent who handled scores of informants during a 25-year career, complain that the current system--which has grown into a multimillion-dollar government business--has been warped.

“Criminal justice has now turned into a snitch-ocracy,” Kuby said. “There is wholesale reliance on the worst people, with the meanest of motives, to secure justice for all.”

Kuby’s observation comes from experience. In 1995, Malcolm X’s daughter Qubilah Shabazz was arrested for allegedly hiring a hit man to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in revenge for his alleged role in the 1965 assassination of her father.

Shabazz was implicated by informant Michael Fitzpatrick in return for a $45,000 payment. But Fitzpatrick had a history.

Once a bomber with Rabbi Meir Kahane’s violent Jewish Defense League, Fitzpatrick turned on his cohorts, became an informant and was relocated to Minneapolis. Once there, he had three trips to rehab for cocaine abuse. He was facing drug charges when he opted to “flip” against Shabazz, a high school classmate.

Federal prosecutors offered 40 taped phone calls between Fitzpatrick and Shabazz. The defense noted that 38 of them were initiated by the informant. Entrapment, shouted Shabazz’s lawyer (and Kuby’s late partner), William Kunstler, describing Fitzpatrick as “evil and immoral.” Even the case prosecutor labeled Fitzpatrick a “very unsympathetic” witness.

Faced with Fitzpatrick’s credibility woes, prosecutors struck a plea bargain to keep him off the stand. In 1997, a judge simply dropped the charges against Shabazz.

Yet Fitzpatrick’s story was no anomaly.

Nicholas Mitola was a New Jersey mobster who flipped in 1987, testifying against his cohorts in the Lucchese crime family. The Witness Protection Program moved him to Spokane, Wash.

Once west, Mitola returned to his old ways: gambling and dealing drugs. On Feb. 20, 1991, after a cocaine buy went bad, Mitola fatally stabbed a drug dealer and stuffed his body into a car trunk.

Mitola did barely 28 months for the slaying before his release on Aug. 13, 1997. He then opened an espresso company that never produced a single cup of joe, using it as cover for a $5-million-a-year gambling ring, authorities said.

In a twist, Mitola was indicted March 8 with the help of an informant--his estranged girlfriend.

In another humiliation for law enforcement, a Fortune 500 executive was shot by members of a federal task force’s SWAT team during an early-morning raid on his San Diego home in 1993. A confidential informant had told authorities that the 45-year-old executive had 5,000 pounds of cocaine in his garage, with four armed Colombians guarding the stash. There was no other corroborating evidence.

When the gunsmoke cleared, the invading feds recovered nothing. The executive survived three gunshot wounds, sued the federal government and collected $2.75 million.

A more recent case involves Zaher Zahrey, a decorated undercover detective in Brooklyn with 11 years on the job. A drug-addicted serial mugger, looking to beat a life sentence, implicated him as a member of “the Supreme Crew,” a murderous drug gang.

Worse, a police investigator was on tape promising the criminal, Sidney “Bubba” Quick, “a very, very, very sweet deal” if he could further implicate the policeman.

Quick soon did. Based solely on his testimony, Zahrey was indicted on multiple corruption charges. He was jailed for six months pending trial, separated from his wife and three children.

A Brooklyn federal jury acquitted him in five minutes on June 27, 1997. His career derailed, Zahrey now works a beat at the police tow pound and awaits resolution of a wrongful-prosecution lawsuit against the city.