The Writer and Their Informants

There is an old police saying: "Good informant, good case. Bad informant, bad case. No informant, no case."

In a criminal investigation, the police need to be resourceful when gathering information. Often police are faced with the fact that they don't have much to go on. They have no eyewitnesses and they don't have much in the way of evidence. One of the things they do in a case like this is rely on informants. If you have ever seen Starsky and Hutch, you know those fictional officers often turned to their informant, Huggy Bear. He consistently gave them some crucial piece of information that helped them solve the case. That's TV, but the principle is true in the real world. Informants are critical in law enforcement, but they're actually more of a last resort than a first one.

Now with the Internet, we see a new type of informant. And often, the person doing the 'informing' is the subject of the investigation. Many cases have been solved because the person who committed a crime actually posted a video of it on YouTube or bragged about it on his or her Facebook page. Virtual informants. This 'crowd sourcing' is being used more and more by police -- both state and federal -- and also by a wide variety of other agencies looking for information. You've used it yourself if you've ever 'googled' anyone on the Internet.

Do you use informants in your stories? If you're writing a crime story or even a romance, you probably have some kind of informant. Who is yours? If you don't have an informant in your story, do you think your story would benefit from adding one?