Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.When Daniel — not his real name — was in his early teens, he got involved in gangs and spent time in juvenile detention for drug dealing, assault and gun possession. Then, aged 19 and newly out of jail, he was pulled over by police in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Observing Daniel handing drugs to his passenger to hide in her clothing, officers arrested him and strong-armed him into making a deal. He agreed to become a police informant, an arrangement that would be brief and confidential. Except that it didn’t work out that way. The work went on for months, with police reminding him that if he didn’t co-operate he would go straight to jail. Then an officer let slip to a local criminal that Daniel was working as an informant.In Snitch City, a gripping new podcast about the police informant system, we hear from Daniel — or rather an actor, reading Daniel’s words. After being confronted by a gang associate, he denied being an informant and was asked to participate in an attack on a rival gang to prove his loyalty. He did the job and ended up back in prison for his efforts. Talking to Snitch City’s host, Dugan Arnett, over the phone from jail, he says he now lives in daily terror of being exposed as a rat.Arnett is a reporter for the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team, known for its exposés of corruption and abuse (as depicted in the Oscar-winning 2015 film Spotlight). Focusing his investigation on the city of New Bedford, where police are engaged in a fierce battle with the illegal drugs trade, Arnett has spent two years penetrating the world of criminal informants who, he says, “are the backbone of nearly every drug investigation in America”. Their involvement, he argues, grants police expansive powers, with scant transparency or supervision. “The stakes can be life and death,” Arnett says, “and no one wants you to know how it really works — not prosecutors, not judges, not police and certainly not the informants themselves, who can pay dearly for co-operating with cops.”Despite these obstacles, Snitch City — now on its third episode — is a remarkable piece of reporting, and not just because of Arnett’s ability to get people, including informants and ex-officers, to talk. It tells of police drunk on power, informants hung out to dry and officials closing ranks to protect their own. Arnett also takes his microphone outside to talk to locals and get their perspective on the city’s drug and policing problems. The tension of this multi-layered, expertly crafted series lies not in exposing the bad guys but in seeing what the so-called good guys do to get results — and the extraordinary damage left in their wake.Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
