The city of Tallahassee, Florida, has approved a $2.6m settlement after the parents of Rachel Hoffman sued the city for negligence leading to the death of their 23-year-old daughter in 2008. Hoffman had been arrested for minor drugs offences and agreed to act as a confidential informant for police in order to get leniency in her sentencing. Unfortunately, the drugs sting went disastrously wrong, ending up with Hoffman being shot dead by the drug dealers that the police were trying to incriminate.

Since these unfortunate events, the state of Florida has introduced “Rachel’s Law”, requiring law enforcement agencies to provide specialist training for confidential informant handlers and implement better safeguards.

Some law enforcement agencies have taken the example of Tallahassee very seriously, implementing robust management processes to reduce the risk associated with confidential informants. However, other agencies still need to take a more proactive approach towards ensuring that informants are used more carefully and intelligently. Rachel’s Law is a good step forward in improving US practices regarding informants, but there is still more progress to be made. Let’s hope that other states take some of these lessons on board and that every effort is made to enhance the requirements under Rachel’s Law to ensure that opportunities for risky practices are further removed.

A confidential informant is murdered, the truck he was driving is buried in a wall, a Sheriff’s Deputy is shot by another police officer and four people are injured in a collision with a school bus.

This sounds like the plot of a car chase in a blockbuster movie. Unfortunately it was all the result of an undercover narcotics operation that went badly wrong in Texas last week.

As reported by KHOU, undercover officers from Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), Houston Police Department (HPD) and members of the Drugs Task Force were following a truck being driven by a confidential informant. The truck was loaded with at least 300lb of marijuana and the law enforcement officers were following it in order to arrest the drug dealers who would receive the delivery. However, whilst en route several other vehicles suddenly appeared, showering the truck with bullets and killing the confidential informant. A gun battle that followed, with officers firing back at the hijackers killing one of them, while another one was hit twice by a patrol vehicle. In the confusion a plain clothes HCSO deputy was allegedly shot in the leg by a HPD officer who didn’t recognise him. A patrol vehicle responding to the scene added to the chaos by colliding with a school bus, injuring the two drivers and two other people.

It is not clear whether the hijackers were intending to steal the drugs shipment or just assassinate the confidential informant. What is clear, however, is that the law enforcement operation certainly did not go to plan, despite law enforcement succeeding in arresting four men accused of storming the truck.

The whole case raises issues over confidential informant anonymity and protection, risk management and deconfliction. When dealing with narcotics and unpredictable drug dealers, mistakes can happen. I just hope that law enforcement went through proper procedures to assess the risk associated with this particular operation before they embarked upon it.

The importance of ensuring informant reliability is currently being demonstrated in federal court as four men are accused of plotting to attack US government officials.

As reported by 11 Alive, the court heard recordings of the men discussing their targets. However, defense lawyers are arguing that the recording have been taken out of context and that they were recorded by an unreliable confidential informant with “a series of legal troubles, including two recent charges of child pornography and child molestation”.

In such cases, corroboration of evidence is crucial – given the seriousness of the charges and the allegations against the informant, one has to hope that the prosecution has some good corroborative evidence up their sleeves.