But police must keep them secret informants have been murdered in Minneapolis after their identities were revealed. He said informants are only one piece of an investigation, and they may possess invaluable information that police can’t obtain through other means. Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said both the Moore and Shepherd cases were under internal review. Instead, prosecutors dropped the charges. In a Hennepin County case last year, a judge ordered prosecutors to disclose details of an informant in a sealed affidavit, following allegations that Minneapolis officer Andrew Schroeder fabricated where he got a tip that led to drug charges for a man named Cedric Shepherd. In Rochester, drug-user-turned-informant Matthew Klaus overdosed after making police-sanctioned heroin purchases, igniting a push at the Minnesota Capitol for policies to stop police from exploiting informants. In Texas, Houston police are besieged by a scandal that began with an officer lying about a tip from an informant that led to a fatal gun battle with two residents. As the homicide rate climbed in Minneapolis over the past year, detectives have frequently cited confidential informants in reports as key to making arrests.īut lack of accountability also can lead to abuses of power. They can be valuable to helping solve crimes. Informants trade intelligence to police, often for money or mercy in their own criminal cases.

But that secrecy can make it impossible to tell how effective informants really are. In order to be effective, informants must be shrouded in secrecy. The case exposes the inherent conflict at the heart of confidential informants as a tool in American policing. “We think that the confidential informant in this case may not have existed,” said Tanya Bishop, one of Moore’s public defenders. Chief among the questions that unraveled the case: Did Minneapolis police officer Tony Partyka embellish key information from a trusted informant - or worse?

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