Can my identity be kept confidential if I want to assist law enforcement?

Honest federal agents, honest police officers, will tell you that drug crime arrests take place, not because of great agent work or police work, but because of informants, because of snitches, because of chivatos, as they’re called in our Cuban community. The fact of the matter is if you elect to cooperate in order to save yourself from very harsh sentences, and you do so with the advice and counsel of an experienced criminal defense lawyer, your identity will almost certainly be revealed at some point in the case. It is extraordinarily naïve to believe that the police or the federal agents will not at some point release your name, because the rules are that at a certain point, cooperators’ names are released. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time, and there are certain provisions for keeping informants’ names confidential, but generally speaking, you should assume that your name will get out there as an informant or a cooperator or like law enforcement likes to call you, a cooperating individual.

By Jeffrey S. Weiner, P.A.