Duration: 4 hours

Course Description
Working with Informants can be very challenging. An officer needs to keep in perspective that the person he/she is relying on for critical information may themselves have a serious drug problem and committed violent crimes. Regardless of their situation, an informant is a valuable tool when conducting investigations.

This course is designed to teach an officer how to utilize the information provided by informants to successfully complete an investigation. The following topics involving the handling of informants will be presented:

1. Keeping an informant confidential.
2. Depending on the informants situation, there are different methods of handling them.
3. Building reliability of the informant.
4. How to corroborate the information that an informant provides.
5. Not permitting an informant to run the officer.
6. Common problems that arise when utilizing an informant.
7. Safety issues.
8. How to maximize information provided by an informant who doesn't want to actively participate.
9. How "Not" to let an informant ruin an officer's credibility.
10. Know when to say "No" (Some people just need to go to prison).

This course will help provide an officer with various techniques to cultivate a reliable and productive informant. This course will also help an officer realize when an informant is lying or trying to manipulate them.

This course will help an officer prepare themselves to deal with unexpected critical situations that arise while conducting Narcotics Investigations. Some topics discussed will be Buy/Bust shootings, informants getting injured, vehicle chases, informants being robbed during a Buy/Bust and loosing your informant and/or undercover officer. This course will provide ideas to help officers handle the unpredictable situations that arise and provide various operational plans to help prevent these obstacles.