First, working with the police as an informant doesn't come with many guarantees, but there are some rough rules of thumb: You can rely on the prosecutor dismissing a charge for every two arrests of equal or greater value. Get busted for possessing and intending to distribute cocaine? You'd better be able to help the police bust two other coke dealers. Two-for-one is a great deal whether you're talking about felonies or Little Caesars pizzas, which is why cops are so willing to work with young ne'er-do-wells like our source.

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"We'll even take ruffians and no-goodniks."

But already you can start to see how messed up this is. For one, the police now have motivation for you to stay in that criminal life -- the moment you go straight, they lose their leverage and your valuable connection to the underworld. If you watched The Wire, this might not be a big surprise. It sounds exactly like how the Baltimore PD used Bubbles:

HBO
AKA the most beloved heroin addict without his own name on a star in Hollywood.

Think about it: If the only interaction you had with bad guys were ones that resulted in them all getting arrested a few weeks later, how long would it take them to figure it out? No, it only works if they know you're part of the scene, which means you're going to be routinely doing the things that your tips are getting other people busted for. You can get caught doing heroin and truthfully say, "I'm doing this for justice!"

And if you're wondering ...

Did you think we were being over-dramatic with our Sopranos example up there? After all, those guys were the mafia, our guy was just taking down his local coke dealer. Well, let's look at the case of Rachel Hoffman.

Hoffman had barely committed a crime -- in 2008 she was selling small amounts of pot on the side while working on her master's degree. Rather than lose out on her student loans and start her career with a criminal record, Hoffman decided to work with the police, because obviously they wouldn't put a young woman charged with a minor drug offense in a deadly situation. Surprise! They would, and Hoffman was murdered once the dealer they set her up with spotted the wire. This happens with uncomfortable regularity. The police are sometimes held accountable, like when Kentucky officers lost track of an 18-year-old informant who was then abducted, tortured, and killed, but the informant really just has to hope the cops are good at their jobs and/or give a shit about the CI's life.

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"He might be in trouble, but it's League Night. What do you want to do?"

That is the context someone like our source is all too familiar with when they start down this road. So, how do they get a CI to push themselves further and further into a dangerous criminal network without outright threatening or coercing them? In our source's case, the answer was simple ass-kissing:

"The agents are good at stroking your ego. 'Oh man we haven't had anyone get inside this group before.' You don't know whether it's true or not, but they are good at playing you. They know what makes a person tick. They know when to say the right thing. And they also know they have you by the balls."

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"Also, we just want you to know that you have, by far, the nicest balls of anyone we've worked with."

And speaking of balls, next came the wire.

"The wires today are about the size of a matchbox. ... The mic is just a little cord. So you've got this taped to the bottom of your testicles and you're hiding the mic behind the button of your jeans. It makes for uncomfortable moments with a federal agent."

And really, what could possibly go wrong? But even after bringing home a big bust, our source wasn't done. A good informant is hard to find, and if you show any aptitude for clandestine work, you can be sure ...

Our source reported that he found himself enjoying the work the longer he did it, feeling like a "secret agent" and liking the feeling of working for the side of law and order for once (This is an incredibly common motivation among CIs). And at that point ...

"[The dealer] calls me on the phone says 'I'm only gonna deal with you.' But the undercover agent says, 'I gotta see it, I gotta see it,' and I'm like, 'dude I know what fucking heroin looks like.'"

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"Perfect. Three syringes' worth, please."

Our source was used to drug dealers who occasionally freak out, and have very strict rules about who they'll see in a "business" setting. Our source's new "partner" and his fellow cops weren't as used to this. The original plan had been to just follow the dealer after the buy to do a bust at (hopefully) the stash-house, with our snitch nowhere to be seen. The police didn't wind up having the patience for that, and just busted them right in the McDonald's parking lot where they did the initial buy:

"Next thing I know, the SWAT team rolls up in four vans and they bust out the windows we're in, bust out the windows she's in, and pull her out -- really scratched her up when they did that. It was fucked up. ... That led to me really distrusting the feds. I'd told myself, never again at that point. Quitting was easier said than done, though."

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And "Turn in your needles and testicle tape recorder" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

The thing is, our source never got off the heroin. In fact, his work with the police just made getting his fix safer and more affordable than ever before. In other words ...

As we mentioned, being a CI isn't just about getting out from under your criminal charges -- the police aren't above issuing cash payments for "services rendered":

"I was ready to quit after that disastrous bust, but right after it wound down, the local cops called me and said, 'hey the feds just dropped off the money for you,' so I go meet them, get a couple thousand dollars. I'm like ... well, shit. That's really not that bad. From the info, they took down the whole organization, these two busts lead to about eight."

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There's a fine line between "I want to do my civic duty" and "I need rent money."

And it's not just money. While the police are expressly forbidden from paying informants in illegal drugs, like a lot of other "expressly forbidden" things, they simply turn a blind eye to it:

"They make you sign a contract, say if we catch you stealing drugs, you'll be in lots of trouble. But that's just paperwork. How it really works is you skim a little off the top, and if the three grams they bought weighs out to 2.6, no one asks any questions. Say you're doing a $300 buy. You'll put $260 of it in one bag, and give that to the cops, and keep $40 in another little bag for yourself. They're aware of it. Hell, there were times I'd go to the same dealer twice in a day -- once to buy some heroin for the cops, and once to buy it for myself. At this point, you keeping up good drug buying helps the police, so they aren't about to get onto you for it."

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Although when even your dealer starts to worry about your habit, you've got to tone it down a little.

And ... that's pretty much the most succinct summary of the War on Drugs you'll ever find. The police are tasked with eradicating drug use. So they arrest drug users, use them to bust dealers, and pay the users enough money to continue their addiction, thus helping to fund more drug dealers. The wheels of drug commerce keep turning unabated, everyone getting their cut along the way, no one with any motivation to actually solve the problem. But hey, at least we get a lot of good TV shows out of it.

Robert Evans wrote a whole book about trying ancient drugs, A Brief History of Vice. You can pre-order it now!

For more insider perspectives, check out 6 Unexpected Things I Learned From Being a Drug Dealer and 6 Realities of Cooking Illegal Drugs (Not Seen on TV).

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