Boston Globe's Spotlight team investigates the role of confidential informants in 'Snitch City'

The Boston Globe's Spotlight team has a new podcast out that explores the role of confidential informants in the work of law enforcement.

The podcast "Snitch City" focuses on the confidential informant system in the Massachusetts port city of New Bedford. They find the system is opaque at best and rife with abuse, but also vital in the war on drugs.

Dugan Arnett and Andrew Ryan, reporters on the team, join host Robin Young in the studio.

Here & Now reached out to the New Bedford Mayor’s office for a response. Jonathan Darling, spokesperson for the City of New Bedford, responded:

“As the mayor indicated in his previous statement, he is committed to ensuring the safety of New Bedford’s residents, and to the constant improvement of every city agency, including the police department. Toward that end, and without any external impetus, the city has engaged nationally renown policing experts to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the department’s operations. This began long before the Boston Globe began its coverage, and this work is continuing. If the Boston Globe’s reporting reveals additional areas that require further analysis, the administration will follow through on it.

“That said, the police department takes issue with the assertions made by the Globe, and has set up a link on its website called 'For the Record' that offers material facts concerning the allegations. The Globe insinuates that the police department had not been forthcoming with information or been sufficiently responsive. The City has faithfully complied with the legal process for providing public records in response to voluminous Globe document requests, and the Globe has pursued no appeals with the Secretary of State challenging the City’s handling of its requests, though it had the opportunity to do so.

“Most importantly, it should be noted that the Globe reached out to the chief for a response to its impending story, including allegations of personal misconduct over 25 years old, a week before its heavily touted podcast was set to run. It gave the chief two days to respond, at a time when he was out of the country on a long-planned vacation. No reasonable person could have issued an informed response under these constraints. The department can share the email exchange with the Globe that reflects just how deeply unfair this was.

“Any reasonable person should ask, as a threshold matter, whether it is appropriate for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, which purports to hold itself to the highest journalistic standards, to label an entire city — one that is not part of Greater Boston — as 'Snitch City.' The tabloid-esque label is as misleading as it is condescending. New Bedford is not the crime-ridden city the Globe so blithely depicts; in the last decade violent crime has fallen 58%. The city has the highest bond in its history, is the seafood capital of America, has raised its high school graduation rate from 58% to 82%, has ushered in over $1.2 billion in new port infrastructure — and much more. It does not match the tired old stereotypes that the Globe has so casually advanced.”