The Informant Quandary (Part II)

Tragically the unlawful methods used to convict Pratt had indirect, and lingering, social consequences. A recent History Channel documentary revealed that many disaffected African-American teenagers in Los Angeles had looked to Huggins and Carter for guidance and structure in their lives. The murder of these two men left a leadership vacuum that Pratt did not have time to fill, since he was arrested a year after Huggins and Carter’s deaths.

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Filling this vacuum was fifteen-year-old Raymond Washington, who would ultimately found the gang known as the Crips. During the ensuing years, hundreds of African-Americans would lose their lives due to conflicts with rival gangs or internecine rivalries within the Crips, and hundreds more would become innocent victims of gang violence.

FBI documents, including a memo dated November 29, 1968, would later reveal that the Bureau had intentionally exacerbated tensions between the BPP and “US.” Therefore it appears that a “black nationalist” group headed by the founder of Kwanzaa, and the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world, were directly responsible for the murders of several members of the BPP, and indirectly responsible for the violent, gang-related deaths of countless African-Americans.

Informants are sometimes prone to actually encourage crimes or violence. This way they can get paid for informing on the very crimes and violence they helped to create.

During the late 1960s, an informant named William O’Neal infiltrated the Chicago Chapter of the BPP. During this time the FBI was endeavoring to undermine the efforts made by Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Illinois BPP, to create a “Rainbow Coalition” of political activists from all races. Hampton needed the support of an African-American group known as the Blackstone Rangers. O’Neal covertly worked to deny this support by creating confrontations between the Panthers and the Rangers.

Ultimately O’Neal would provide the FBI and Chicago Police Department with a sketch of Hampton’s apartment. This culminated in a police “raid” where both Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were killed. O’Neal was subsequently paid a “bonus” of three hundred dollars for his “information.” He committed suicide two decades later.

Finally, there is the “snitch” jacket, which is used by law enforcement to falsely label someone an informant. A target of this tactic was William Albertson, a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

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