If this note from the editor does not want to make you read on, then I don't know what will:
Editor's Note: The article that follows is incomplete. That is not normally something we do. Usually we make our work as complete as possible. In this case, we are hobbled by legal restrictions.
The story is about a man who became an RCMP informant and was eventually enrolled in the Witness Protection program in spite of ample warning that he was an unreliable liar.
This individual went on to commit a heinous crime. We can neither describe the details of the murder nor the current identity of the killer.
The Globe and Mail publishes this story today in conjunction with The Ottawa Citizen, a highly unusual act in itself, and one which speaks to the importance the editors of the two newspapers place on this matter. Greg McArthur and Gary Dimmock researched and wrote this story at The Citizen. Greg is now a reporter with The Globe and Mail. For legal reasons it was modified jointly with The Citizen after he left.
Both Greg McArthur and The Citizen have been waging a legal battle to publish it for the past six months. A court ruling yesterday allowed us to tell this part of the story.
But this is more than just the story of an individual gone bad. It is an issue of public policy. But the blanket legal requirement of the Witness Protection Act against ever disclosing the identity of a person accepted into the program — no matter how awful his subsequent actions — inhibits our efforts to not just tell this story, but to examine the RCMP's role in this affair.
The problem with informants is that they generally are making deals to get themselves out of trouble. They are inherently unreliable and the police make them more so by looking the other way at other crimes and by providing money (and the like) in exchange for useful information. The point is that the information has to be useful and the cops are not discrete in giving enough information to the informant that he can make up the useful parts.
While not exactly on point, this is an opportunity to post on something I witnessed in court yesterday. A judge was sentencing a very young person who had been involved in a robbery with people at least ten years his senior. The crime certainly appeared to be an instance where one set of drug dealers went to steal money from a second set of drug dealers and ended up at the wrong address. The kid had been in custody for some months and was clearly a bit of a dupe in the whole thing ... forced to stand lookout. He had entered a plea of guilty but had declined to name the others involved. The judge demanded from the kid that he name his mentors and advised the accused that there was more to accepting responsibility than just pleading. I was a bit shocked.
If I had been asked I would never have advised the kid to become an informant. Firstly, there are inherent dangers in being an informant. That's why there is a protection system. It is why informant's names are blacked out on informations, informants are given numbers and often even complainants are not named. Secondly, once you inform, the cops own you. They don't leave you alone because once you're a snitch, you're always a snitch. Instead of being left alone, the kid will have the cops watching his every move in hopes of getting more information. The cops are not afraid of a few strong arm tactics in this regard and the kid will find himself hanging out with people he may not want to associate with.
Informing is rarely, if ever, a good move. Better to do your time and straighten out your act.