University of Alabama police

Many University of Alabama students say that the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force's practice of using students as confidential informants breeds distrust between students and the law enforcement officers tasked with protecting them. (Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com)

Ryan never imagined he would one day be a snitch.

The soft-spoken University of Alabama student was watching a movie with a couple of friends at his off-campus house in Tuscaloosa one evening in late 2012 when a team of plainclothes West Alabama Narcotics Task Force officers knocked on his door.

They were there to serve a warrant to search his home, as he had been outed as a drug dealer by a friend and fellow UA student the task force had "turned" and used as a confidential informant. Little did Ryan know, he would soon be turning on his own friends at the university.

Ryan had fallen victim to the controversial and relatively new police tactic of recruiting college students accused of minor drug offenses to execute risky operations like wearing audio recording devices to undercover drug buys and turning in their suppliers.

Experts and critics say the practice amounts to a legal and ethical black hole where law enforcement agencies skirt and sometimes break the law in order to boost their arrest numbers by taking advantage of naive youngsters, all under the aegis of the War on Drugs.

But police say that it is a vital and highly effective tool in the ongoing effort to combat drug abuse on campuses and streets across the nation.

Ryan - who spoke with AL.com on condition of anonymity because he promised the task force he would never tell anyone about his activities as an informant - watched as officers proceeded to search his apartment, eventually finding about a quarter-ounce of pot and two or three marijuana pipes. He says they then handcuffed him to his dining room table and threatened and intimidated him until he agreed to work as an undercover drug informant for the task force in exchange for not arresting him.

"It was a lot of threats, just trying to scare me, and I was 19 at the time and I had never even had a speeding ticket," he told AL.com at a bar in Birmingham, where he asked to meet in order to avoid being overheard in Tuscaloosa discussing his informant work. "They were yelling at me and saying if I didn't help them they were going to screw me and my friends over. I had to get, like, four or five people for them."

A 'broken' system

Law enforcement agencies across the United States have used confidential informants to help solve crimes for generations. Studies show that to this day the vast majority of drug cases are built on the backs of confidential informants.

But the deployment of the practice on college campuses - which has emerged publicly as a widespread tactic over the past decade - has come under heavy fire in recent years in the wake of multiple high-profile deaths of students who had served as confidential drug informants.

Controversy over the practice was reignited this year after a Buzzfeed investigation into the use of University of Mississippi students as confidential informants preceded the institution of reforms of a local drug task force and the resignation of the officer at its helm.

Experts and advocates say that deploying students to conduct undercover drug buys and other high-risk operations invites violence, breeds distrust between students and the police that are tasked with protecting them and often oversteps important legal and ethical boundaries.

One of the key accusations commonly levied by critics of the practice is that it violates or comes perilously close to violating students' rights to counsel, due process and other constitutional and legal protections. Law enforcement advocates counter that people who have not been arrested and are simply being questioned by police do not have to be Mirandized and that they have fewer rights than an arrested individual.

Betty Aldworth, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based national advocacy group Students for Sensible Drug Policy, rejects that argument. She believes that students are often not aware of their rights when interacting with law enforcement, and that police perpetrate a "gross violation of [students'] rights" when they exploit that vulnerability by misleading and intimidating them until they agree to be informants.

"The problem is that when they are in that situation, they don't understand that they have a right to a lawyer, that they don't have to talk to police - whether or not they are under arrest," Aldworth said in a telephone interview with AL.com.

"The entire confidential informant system is broken in that sense, and especially when it comes to young people, because police assume, often correctly, that young people are going to be too terrified to assert their rights, if they even know them in the first place."

Capt. Wayne Robertson, commander of the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force, declined to comment on the issue of his unit's use of students as confidential informants, referring inquiries to Lt. Teena Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Tuscaloosa Police Department.

The task force - which is made up of officers from the Tuscaloosa, Northport and University of Alabama police departments and representatives of the offices of the Tuscaloosa County sheriff and district attorney - is based at the headquarters of the Tuscaloosa Police Department, which plays a key role in the unit's operations.

"We don't tell how our informant program works," Richardson said during a brief phone interview earlier this month. "Confidential informants are essential to investigations to obtain information that can't be obtained anywhere else ... Even the information that comes from a confidential informant, you still have to verify and confirm that the information is reliable."

Chris Bryant, a spokesman for the University of Alabama, declined to comment on the use of UA students as confidential informants or to facilitate an interview with a school administrator or official about the topic, instead providing a short statement via email.

"Like all universities, UA is concerned about the national problem of substance abuse, and we will continue to cooperate with local law enforcement agencies to help ensure the safety and well-being of our campus and community," the statement read in part. "One of our top priorities at The University of Alabama is the safety and well-being of our students."

'A scene in the movies'

Going undercover to gather incriminating information about the "four or five people" the task force demanded Ryan "get" would prove to be a risky task with far-reaching repercussions that follow him to this day.

He became known at UA as a snitch, and was threatened and ostracized by a number of students caught up in an infamous Feb. 19, 2013 drug raid - an operation of unprecedented scope for the task force, which arrested 61 students and 13 non-students across Tuscaloosa that day.

Several of those students told AL.com that they and others believe they were only on the unit's radar because Ryan "narc-ed." They spread word that he may have turned on them, and Ryan said his reputation has never recovered.

"It was stupid. It was just, like, minor weed stuff and I felt horrible about it. They made me buy, like, small amounts of weed from people," he said. "I had to meet them first - the police - and they would follow you and make sure you did everything right. It was just like a scene in the movies."

Ryan explained that task force officers would wire him up to record audio and then send him into the homes and cars of fellow students, most of whom were friends and acquaintances whose names he offered up as part of his arrangement with the drug unit.

He would purchase a gram of marijuana from them and then take the pot to the police, who would confiscate it with the intention of using it and the audio recordings as evidence against the students who sold to him.

A couple months later, Ryan recognized some of the people he had exposed to police scrutiny among the names of those who were arrested in the Feb. 19, 2013 raid.

"I hated doing it. It's not me. I wouldn't do it again," he said. "It's not worth all the shit. I'd rather have to get my record cleared and pay a fine and get in trouble than do all that."

'The only way'

Though officials were unwilling to discuss the task force's undercover drug informant program, the direct link between information obtained by undercover student informants and subsequent arrests is detailed repeatedly in court documents.

"On February 4th and 6th, 2013, a confidential informant working with the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force purchased marijuana from [a UA student in] Tuscaloosa, Alabama," a complaint filed with the Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa County states. "On February [19th], 2013, agents executed a search warrant on [the student] at his residence, and seized marijuana and digital scales."

And the task force has spoken in the past about the importance of its confidential informant program. Robertson's predecessor at the helm of the narcotics task force, Capt. Jeff Snyder, called informants "the lifeblood of what we do" in 2004, the Tuscaloosa News reported at the time.

Robertson spoke about the unit's confidential informant program in June, though he did not specifically address the use of college students in undercover operations.

"The only way I can reach the top is through people [the task force arrests]," Robertson said, according to the Tuscaloosa News. "And the only thing that could make this guy cooperate is the fear of losing something."

The task force spent nearly $50,000 in funds obtained via civil asset seizure to pay confidential informants and execute controlled drug deals in pursuit of drug investigations in 2014, according to documents obtained by AL.com earlier this year.

Robertson confirmed that the drug unit pays informants during an interview with Alabama Dateline earlier this month.

"A big part of our budget comes from paying them, but it's worth it," he said. "We have to start at street level, and what we do is we give people an opportunity to help themselves, and not only help themselves but to help the community."

'Target on your back'

Scott had just cracked a second tallboy can of beer when several West Alabama Narcotics Task Force officers arrived on his doorstep in Tuscaloosa in the winter of 2008/2009. The fifth-year UA student had been buying an ounce of weed at a time and typically just sold it to his friends, charging them enough to cover his personal pot habit.

The officers told Scott - who spoke to AL.com on the condition of anonymity - that they knew he was a drug dealer. He says he later found out that a fellow student he had been introduced to by his brother was working as a confidential informant when he bought small amounts of marijuana from him on two occasions. The police had given the informant money to purchase the pot with, and they linked the bills to Scott. Now they were ready to arrest him for distribution.

"What they did is they sat me down on my couch and the [officer] says 'we've heard you've been buying pounds' and they were positive that I was a big fish. That's an unheard of amount for me so I said 'no, I have a guy who can get me an ounce but I don't know where to get a pound,'" Scott told AL.com earlier this month.

"They said 'we think you're lying.' They just tried to pile on. They said 'we have enough on you for you to go to jail for five to seven years.' Then they said if I cooperate with them they can take it all off my record."

Scott considered his options and eventually told the police he was not willing to snitch. He was immediately arrested and ended up facing six drug charges, including multiple counts of marijuana distribution.

He ended up avoiding a jail sentence and his record was expunged earlier this year after he finished many months of drug education courses, spent more than $10,000 in fees and successfully completed a lengthy diversion program.

But Scott continues to be plagued by the fallout from the experience, which made it nearly impossible for him to find a job. And he remains fiercely critical of the student informant system that he says nearly destroyed five years of his life.

"You're sort of deputizing kids who are, like, 19, and putting them in a high-risk situation," he said. "When you think about the kind of people you'd have to turn on that aren't your friends, they're the type of people you wouldn't want to associate with, and then you've got a target on your back for the rest of your life. We're figuring out in the real world that the arrests are much, much worse than the effects of the actual drugs."

'You can't trust anybody'

The level of confidence and trust UA students have both in law enforcement agencies and in one another has been severely strained by the narcotics task force's use of students as confidential informants, according to multiple students who spoke with AL.com for this story.

Jacob, an Alabama student who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity, was arrested on multiple marijuana charges during the Feb. 19, 2013 raid based on information obtained via the use of a student informant wearing a wire. He believes the student informant program is out of control.

Many UA students live in fear that their friends will narc on them, Jacob says, and he has largely isolated himself from the school's social scene, refusing to go to most parties or bars in order to avoid potential interactions with law enforcement.

"It still happens now with the turning. Since they got a couple people to turn, those people that they collect from those turned people, they ask them to turn. It's just growing," Jacob said while sitting on his front porch two blocks from the UA campus. "It's ridiculous; you can't trust anybody. They're creating just this big culture of people turning on each other."

He also believes that convincing college students to inform on one another generates unnecessary anger and resentment. He and several other students arrested in the 2013 raid were raging mad at the student they believe turned on them.

"Everyone in that holding cell wanted to slash his tires, piss in his gas tank and skin him dry. He had a lot of death threats in that room," Jacob said.

Concerns like these are fueling an escalating national discourse over whether student informant operations are doing more harm than good.

William Dinkin, a former prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney at the Virginia law firm Stone, Cardwell & Dinkin, has experience defending college students who have been propositioned to become confidential informants. He said he believes the practice is deeply flawed and in need of sweeping reforms.

Not only is it dangerous to deploy students in undercover operations, Dinkin says, it may sometimes be illegal.

"At some point, if you've got an informant working really hard and constantly calling people and trying to coerce them to do something they usually wouldn't do, they're getting really close to entrapment," he said via phone. "Why are these guys out there trying to create criminals out of everyday students who are out there experimenting with marijuana or whatever it may be, and in a sense fostering a market?"

'An arrest is an arrest'

There are burgeoning efforts at the national level and in some state legislatures to try to reign in or eliminate the controversial use of college students and other young people as confidential informants. Florida and New Jersey have passed laws restricting the practice, and U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, said earlier this month that he is working on federal legislation to enact similar reforms nationwide.

But observers and experts like Lance Block, a Florida lawyer who has represented the families of five confidential informants who were killed - including three who were college students at the time of their deaths - and who has emerged as perhaps the nation's leading critic of confidential informant operations, say that more needs to be done.

Block believes the problems with informant programs stem largely from the direct link between the number of arrests law enforcement agencies make and the level of government funding and grants they receive.

"There's no distinction between arresting a drug lord or arresting a college student who has a couple of joints. An arrest is an arrest and there's no question that it's important for law enforcement, in order to maintain funding or increase the level of funding for drug enforcement," Block told AL.com.

"The key thing is statistics drive funding, and the more arrests, the more need for funding - or at least that's the myth. And police can increase the number of arrests even though they're small-time drug offenders. That's the driving force behind using confidential informants."

Aldworth agrees that law enforcement funding is a key driver of the use of students as informants. But she says that there needs to be greater public awareness of the reach and negative impacts of the practice, no matter why it is being employed.

"I think that parents in particular would be shocked to learn that their children and their children's friends are exposed to this kind of system while they're in college in particular," she said.

"If people understood the massive scale of this system, they would be advocating strongly for controls on law enforcement, but because students are told 'don't talk to anyone,' people just don't know how big this system really is."

The names of all the students quoted in this story have been changed to help protect their identities. This exclusive report on drug culture on university campuses is the third in an ongoing AL.com series.

This story has been updated at 6:50 p.m. Dec. 31, 2015 to correct the date of the Feb. 19, 2013 raid.