He’s flipping crazy
If you hold off on reporting this arrest for a couple days, we’ll give you an even bigger story. Help us out a little. We’re trying to get the guy we arrested to flip.”
I probably heard a version of the above from a law enforcement officer no fewer than 100 times during my decades as a newspaper crime/courts reporter and an editor overseeing crime and courts coverage. Usually I would agree to wait to report the arrest of a low-ranking person in a crime organization for two reasons: I wanted the bigger story for my newspaper, and I wanted the bigger bad guy being pursued through the flipping of the suspect to be caught.
Here’s something you probably don’t know: Such arrangements between cops/prosecutors and news organizations happen frequently.
Here’s something else you probably don’t know: Cops, prosecutors and news people, specifically cops/courts reporters, are often friends, or at least friendly, for a couple of reasons. First, these folks often find themselves involved with the same cases, so they’re in contact often. And second, cops, prosecutors and news people are generally seeking the same thing: justice. They may disagree on how that justice is pursued or meted out, but justice is what they all want.
More than a decade after I left the daily news business, I still consider many law enforcement officers/ prosecutors I worked with, and sometimes battled with to get information, friends. One of the reasons we became and have remained friends is I tried to be cooperative in instances when they asked me to hold a story for a day or two so they would have a better chance at hooking the big fish. If I thought it was the right thing to do for the community, I would do so.
The fact is flipping happens daily in the justice system and has for generations. Lower-level criminals are arrested and offered lesser sentences if they provide evidence prosecutors can use to pursue those at the top of a criminal enterprise. That means law enforcement officials can arrest the top dogs, seriously damage that criminal organization and even put it out of business.
So when Donald Trump says flipping should be made illegal, he, as is so often the case, is horribly wrong and has no idea what he’s talking about. Without people turning state’s evidence, criminal organizations would flourish all over the country.
One Trump oft-stated, worthy goal is to wipe out the notorious MS-13 gang. If that’s going to be happen, some flipping will have to be done.
What’s not surprising is that, according to reports, Trump himself, in order to avoid prosecution, flipped on a tax-evasion matter in the 1980s and provided evidence against a jewelry company with which he had done some nefarious business. Yet with his underlings and associates now flipping on him in cases involving election fraud and, it appears, tax evasion and maybe other things, Trump, our narcissist-in-chief, wants to outlaw flipping.
And like the mob bosses he tries to emulate but isn’t tough enough to ever really be, Trump refers to those who have flipped as “rats” while praising his former associate Paul Manafort, who didn’t flip on Trump (yet), as a “good man” and a “brave man.” Trump made these remarks about Manafort after Manafort was convicted last week of five counts of tax fraud, one count or hiding foreign bank accounts and two counts of bank fraud and faces 80 years in prison.
It’s truly despicable when our president defends criminals, attacks the law enforcement tactics that get crime bosses into prison and, in general, acts like a two-bit hood.
But flipping bad and good is a frequent occurrence in Trump’s America, isn’t it?