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 \u2014 not his real name \u2014 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\u2019t work out that way. The work went on for months, with police reminding him that if he didn\u2019t 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 \u2014 or rather an actor, reading Daniel\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team, known for its expos\u00e9s 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, \u201care the backbone of nearly every drug investigation in America\u201d. Their involvement, he argues, grants police expansive powers, with scant transparency or supervision. \u201cThe stakes can be life and death,\u201d Arnett says, \u201cand no one wants you to know how it really works \u2014 not prosecutors, not judges, not police and certainly not the informants themselves, who can pay dearly for co-operating with cops.\u201dDespite these obstacles, Snitch City \u2014 now on its third episode \u2014 is a remarkable piece of reporting, and not just because of Arnett\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 and the extraordinary damage left in their wake.Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u2014 not his real name \u2014 was in his early teens, he got involved in gangs and spent time in juvenile detention for drug dealing,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":251144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-251143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251145,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251143\/revisions\/251145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}