Introducing Spotlight: Snitch City

Pushkin.

Hey listeners, it's Jake So Today we're sharing the first episode of this brand new podcast, Spotlight Snitch City. It's produced by the Boston Globes Award winning Spotlight team. Snitch City brings you inside the secret world of police informants through one small city right at the forefront of America's

Before we begin. This story includes strong language, Please take care when listening. It's a warm summer night in twenty eighteen, and there's a strange situation unfolding a board a scalloping boat, Doctor, New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Not one accordlane.

We can earncy, yes, but you know that no proner to be on this boat.

The caller says, there's an intruder on board.

And you say that someone on your boat, and that not to be on the boat.

Whereat therest In New bb Massachusetts.

The caller is a fisherman on the Little two, a boat docked for the night along the city's waterfront, and he said the call comes in at about nine to thirty. Some crew members are sleeping, others are making final preparations for the next day's fishing trip down the Atlantic coast, when suddenly there's a loud banging on the door and a frenzied man pushes his way inside.

Does he have many elevens on him?

Yeah, he has set the tide.

He's dressed in all black, his eyes are bloodshot, and he has a gun there.

I don't know what's going on.

The scene is chaotic moment, and the dispatcher's trying to figure out what's going on.

It's a he said, but he doesn't have the wars.

The fisherman is telling the dispatcher that the guy on his boat claims he's a police officer.

So you think he's lying.

He's not an officer.

No, but you guys have a badge said, he's security something.

Around this time, a call goes out to police radios across.

Town control to all units, do I have anybody out at the Crystal Ice Stock We have a mail calling stating that he's speaking with somebody who's claiming to be a police officer. But he thinks that this person is lying, and could you make your way down to the Crystal Ice squarehouse just to see exactly what's going on. Room.

As police try to figure out exactly what's going on, the message reaches an officer in a nearby patrol car.

A mail identifying himself as a police officers breaking into a boat.

Here's Mark Roposo.

I think at that point I'm probably already putting two and two together.

Immediately, he has a bad feeling because he suspects he knows who might be causing the trouble, a colleague he's spent the past year trying to avoid, a young officer named George Santos. The waterfront is quiet. When Roposo arrives, he parks his cruiser, makes his way down to the dock, cautiously steps aboard the boat and into a scene that defies explanation.

And it's it's George wearing a black Marine SRT shirt, sweatpants. He's there in his own car. Let's get a gun.

Riposa's colleague, George Santos is off duty.

And I don't even think he has a radio. What is going on yet? And I'm already going on, Man, give me a break, like, why did I have to be working right now?

You know?

Dispatch? Lets the caller know.

Okay, so that is an officer. We checked, you said, yes, it is an officer.

When Roposo boards the boat, he finds a bunch of angry fishermen shouting over each other. They're convinced that this officer with bloodshot eyes is here to rob them.

He just shows up and he just says, I'm looking for drugs. I know there's drugs on the boat.

Nothing about the situation makes sense to Riposo. What possible reason could Santos have to be here?

Jud What the what the fuck are you doing?

What is this?

Well? They got drugs? My CI says there's drugs on the boat.

Santos tells Riposo he's got a confidential informant who told him that there were drugs aboard the Little Tuti. These two words confidential informant are like magic. As soon as they're uttered, a cloak of secrecy takes over. What's exchanged between a cop and a CI is known only to them, and can open doors that are otherwise closed shut. These words triple wire.

For Raposo, I'm like, and I immediately start to back out, back out of the boat, and I think, I tell George A Jorge, get out of the boat, Get out of the boat. And I tell one of the crewmen lock the boat, call these doors. Don't anybody in you.

This whole situation looks really bad to Riposo, he thinks it's a crime scene. It looks like George Santos is here using his power as a cop and the supposed word of a confidential informant to force his way onto a boat and steal drugs.

You know, is this really what's is this really happening? It look look it looked like a drug rip. It looked like a drug rip. It looked like something out of a fucking movie.

A drug rip.

Pretty much, bad guy Robin a drug dealer. That's what it is, except in this insense, the bad guy is a cop.

The cop who showed up on the Little two D that night, wild eyed, flashing a gun and demanding drugs says he was tipped off by a confidential informant, a claim he knew would grant him a police officer certain liberties is the informants are the backbone of nearly every drug investigation in America. With little more than the word of a CI, cops can launch investigations, break down doors,

It is shadowy, it is underground, and it's a game to allot of these police officers and to when they have to think like the criminal and they start acting like the criminal.

I'm Dugan Arnett, an investigative reporter with the Boston Globe Spotlight Team. I've spent the last two years in side this secret world of police informants, where the stakes can be life and death, 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

Snitch informant CI you didn't want to be labeled a rat, not around here.

In a nation addicted to drugs, police across the country have become addicted to informants, And nowhere is that more apparent than in this historic port city, the backdrop of Moby Dick, where police have been empowered to use informants to take down dealers by almost any means necessary.

If there's a have a playing field, there'd be no war on drugs because they wouldn't succeed.

You live and die in this business on informants and information.

Did I lie?

Yes? Do your officers lie?

Yes? Everybody lie?

My investigation has taken me from the docks of New Bedford, to the homes of drug traffickers, to remote parking lots where skittish cops will only meet at night. I'm going to tell you about several cases of police misconduct, all involving informants, and you'll hear from the people on all sides of this, concluding informants themselves reluctant to snitch and

All Right, dude, I'm busy today and it looks like a construction type I'm at New Bedford's waterfront with my editor Brendon, walking the docks where the fishermen made that nine to one one call.

This story begins at the sight of the little two d because what happened here is a glaring example of abuse within the confidential informant system. All right, give me a little walk the talk here, heading back to the docks, hoping to run into some fishermen throughout the day to day and see what we can find out. In many ways, the waterfront is the heart of New Bedford, and Officer George Santos was detailed of the city's marine unit. This was his territory. His job was to check boat licenses,

So, for those who don't understand or know New Bedford, how important is the industry?

How important are folks like you to the city, to the state, to the country.

Well, lou Beffort's the law I just produced in fishing port in the entire world.

He tells us he's been fishing here for fifty years.

What are you piloting today, Aaron, a boat named Max Andama, a ninety foot steal off shoal ops Crobbo.

New Bedford's fortunes have always been tied to the ocean. If you know anything about the place, it's probably that it was once the hub of the whaling industry, and in the nineteenth century that made it one of the richest cities in the world. This is where Herman Melville set off on the whaling voyage that inspired Moby Dick. Today New Bedford still has an old world feel, with

Drugs were a big problem clinics they got in the city.

Yet and you've seen it. You've noticed that, You've seen that play out of the docks.

Yeah.

Absolutely. The reason I sold my boat I was in West Pole Point. We couldn't get no help. I had to get rid of at least five or six different American kids because of drugs. They can't show up, they don't show up on time. If they show up, they're screwed up.

In this city of one hundred thousand, overdoses are routine. The local drug court is one of the busiest in the state.

It seems like there's a bit of a pill problem in New Bedford.

I mean a little bit, yeah, a little bit, yeah, yeah, real bad.

Everywhere you're god.

The search for drugs and especially pills draws a lot of folks to the docks. Santos included.

I don't know, I don't know. The yelpies are now involved.

The nick name is the people we said Pastillas because he all time looking for drops. You know. He has told me like two times he said, Hey, I'm looking for for drugs, man, I'm here for job.

You know this fisherman Tony says he's had multiple run ins with Santos, and then everyone down here knew the officer by a nickname Pastias. Pills in Spanish stopped.

You everywhere, everywhere, everywhere when they stopped when they got they stop, you know, he said, hey, Jimmans driving lines nothing, No, you put the window down and looking for pastilla?

What the fuck man, what are you fucking doing?

You know, he looking for pastilla? You know what ideas like that?

You know, see incredible moment.

Everybody is scared, you know, Tony says, Santos would pull people over and immediately begin searching their cars, squeezing them for information, and he pushed, oh, do you go to the jail. You got a lot of drugs.

Let me know who moved drug Let me know who do it.

He wants people to get the informants to it to tell him forgiving information. Yeah, that's what he wants.

Yeah, I did.

What Tony's describing is wild. Santo's stopping people without cause, searching them for drugs, and then pressuring them to become informants. But he wasn't a drug cop, and cultivating informants wasn't part of his job description. When I first came to the story, I had the same sense of how police use informants that you might. They build relationships with people who are supposedly in or close to the drug trade and offered them a pass, a plea bargain, occasionally a

You know, George is a street guy. Reputation is kind of a reckless and wild guy. He made a lot of contacts on the street, made a lot of brazen, bold moves on the street, chased people into houses, surges extraordinary amount of vehicle surges.

Before his life collided with Santos, Riposa was part of New Bedford's Police Marine Unit a dream job.

When I got the job, I was a static. I love being on the water. I loved about the job, the boats, the waterfront, the people, the fishermen. The best job in the department. In my opinion.

Working on the marine unit was pretty straightforward. Maintain relationships with fishermen and boat owners and provide security on the docks.

You get to ride around on boats in the summer, you got to take home car. You're diving, you're not dealing with you know, you're dealing with some fishermen, but you're not dealing with very difficult people.

That job is a prize, but it also required a lot of training, diving certifications, coast Guard licenses, years of experience, qualifications that George Santos didn't have.

So to my surprise, when I start hearing George's name being floated around, I can't even really believe it. He doesn't not to run the boats, he doesn't dive, he doesn't know anything we do down there at all.

Nonetheless, Santos gets the job, and almost immediately there's fireworks. One night after training exercise on Martha's Vineyard, a bunch of cops go out for drinks. Riposo says he watches Santos try to pick a fight with one of the police instructors.

And the worst of it all is well wearing shirts that say New Bedford Police like, what the fuck are you doing? We're not even in US city. Well, guests, Sylvie here, what are you doing.

Santos gets sent back to his hotel room, and from there he calls Riposo screaming and threatening to tear the hotel room apart.

Now I'm nervous now because he's in there. My gun's in there, and he's hanging out of our hotel room windows screaming, suck my dick, loud like loud.

Their boss, the marine unit supervisor, is there too, so Riposo expects some kind of fallout. The next day, I thought that was it.

I say, oh, he's done. I said this, there's no way. You know, he's not gonna be able to stay here.

But there are no consequences. And this wouldn't be the last time police higher ups let things slide when it came to Santos. Riposo says that's because the department valued one thing above all else, stats car stops, citations, arrests, These numbers are the lifeblood of modern policing. They make for good headlines, lead to promotions. Bosses can point to them to show they're getting results. And in New Bedford, nobody could fill a stat sheet like George Santos. He

The only reason George was leat is because they look at a piece of paper and if those numbers are high, that's it. It doesn't matter the baggage that you bring. Nobody cares about what you did or what rules you bent to get them at that point in time that would put you on the top.

Bring it.

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

Many officers told me what Santos really wanted was to be a drug cop, and he tried to turn his cushy marine gig into just that, searching for pills, squeezing people, and trying to build up a stable of informants.

He would mention that he was always working to cultivate informance because his real goal was to get into the narcotics, but they would never take them.

Now, drug cops are encouraged to develop informants, and they do this by finding people who are on the outs informing a relationship. Of course, it's largely one sided and fraud in a lot of ways, but still a partnership, one that shrouded in secrecy. In theory, this protects informants and their identities because it's dangerous to snitch. But the secrecy has another effect. It leaves the role of police and the rules they play by completely unknowable and opaque

There were cis who were even reporting this stuff back to certain people, and still nothing was getting done. See eyes that were telling guys in the drug unit that this kid is doing stuff that he ain't supposed to do, and it just carried on and on and on.

Around this time, another person was watching George Santos become increasingly erratic. A fisherman named Freddie Layer who's been coming into New Bedford's Port for nearly thirty five years.

I was born in Texas, raised in Mexico ninety one. I got here at the man Patusses.

Freddy's a jovial guy with long salt and pepper hair. He's also captain of the Little tut Tell me about the first time you encountered pastillas.

Honestly, he was polite and he didn't have no reason to pull us over, you know, so he's blained to me, I'm kind of a task force to combat those these opiois and peels and smuggling and dealing, you know, like he was doing a good thing.

At first, Freddy was glad to hear that someone might actually be doing something about the pill problem plaguing the docks. But then Santos pulled him over again and again and again.

So it got to the point where we'll be here for a week. We get pulled over for four times on a week, you know, trying to search for drugs and drugs and pills.

And one afternoon it all comes to a head and he.

Pulls me over. Oh, you know the drill. We got to check the car and so so he still checked the car. He said, okay, you can go.

Santos doesn't find anything and sends Freddy on his way. But soon after, Freddy's son in law, who was in the truck with him, notices something. There'd been a bottle of prescription pills AfterAll in the truck, medicine that Freddy's wife had legally, and now it's missing.

I said, what, No, he didn't, Yes, he did, Freddy, I saw him. So I opened the middle compartment and checked for the pills. The pills were in there.

Freddy speeds back to the waterfront and finding Santos park near the docks.

I mean, I was peace. I ain't gonna lie. I was peace. So I go and made it up to him and he's seating. It's like his card. He didn't don't even butter. He says, like, sitting here, what do you want talking to me like he's the big bulls or something. I said, I want my pills back. I says, those are not your pills, those are my wise pills. And she's gonna be piace on me if I don't got those pills when I get bad.

Santos says he'll give Freddy the pills back, but he wants something in return, so he's like.

Well, you're gonna help me out. He wanted to know what people is bringing drugs, and then efort I said, I, oh know nothing about it, you know.

So he steals your pills and then when you go to get him back, tries to basically turn you into an informant for him.

Yeah, that's kind of what he wanted. Yeah, like an exchange.

Say Santos wants Freddy to snitch to Freddie. It seems more like extortion than a police tactic. Either way, he has no intention of working with Santos. Eventually, he gets his wife's pills. And they go their separate ways.

Why can you do put a complaint on the police. To the captain of the police, Nothing's going to happen.

Freddie's lack of faith in the new Bedford Police would turn out to be pretty well founded. I examined countless police reports, internal affairs files, and department disciplinary records, and I can say Freddie and the other fishermen I talked to are just the tip of the iceberg. I've identified half a dozen people who say they had drugs taken from them by Santos, not seized as part of a drug arrest, but stolen. Many of their stories are remarkably similar.

George his people he would deal with specifically due to their immigration status.

Officer Mark Roposo.

They don't speak English, you know, I think in his mind, I believe less likely to complain, less likely to understand that they're being subjected to an illegal search.

Santos cast a pall over the waterfront. For decades, the docks had served as a gathering place for immigrant fishermen, a kind of safe haven where they could swap stories or blow off steam. But as his behavior escalated. Even those who never touched drugs grew increasingly uneasy. Some began avoiding the waterfront altogether, and Freddy says fishermen began to whisper about taking matters into their own hands.

It starts getting the frustration out. They start getting mad, you know, like, yeah, we should do something about him, and fum, he's just a paw. He's only one, you know, where a lot you know this, and that, you know, people was thinking, you know, about really getting rid of him.

You know, it could have just been some alcohol infused bravado. But to hear him tell it, there were honest conversations about violent revenge and around this time. Early one morning in September twenty seventeen, there was a suspicious fire at Santo's home.

His Crown Vic. The front of it just caught on fire. It was early early in the morning, four five, six in the morning.

George Santos's take home cruiser was on fire. Authorities said the blaze was likely caused by an electrical issue or equipment failure, but Riposo and a bunch of current and former officers I spoke with don't believe the official version.

He ruffles so many feathers that someone lights as well. His cruiser catches itself on fire in front of his house.

A mysterious fire, threats, illegal search, and seizures. It was all getting to be too much for Reposo. At one point, he tells his supervisor he no longer wants anything to do with George Santos.

And I said, you know, I'm not gonna be part of this. This this is not a secret. What this guy does. I flat out to on him. I'm not backing that kid up. I'm not doing it.

But Riposo is complaining about a guy who is a rock star in the department, and he quickly learns that speaking up against a fellow officer can have consequences. Riposa says it happens fast. The schedule he's had for years suddenly changes. He loses his take home cruiser, his supervisor starts to target him for minor infractions. It's clear to him that this is the price of sticking his neck out.

Okay, no problem, I'll take the hit.

Raposa's a veteran cop. He's seen a lot in his twenty years on the job, but his problems with Santos were far from over and even he couldn't foresee what was coming.

I was thinking, I can't be around the stuff. This guy's going to get him make trouble, and then I get into trouble.

The night of the nine one one call aboard the Little Totty in summer twenty eighteen, that's when the stories of George Santos, Mark Roposo, and Freddy Layer converge. So tell us tell us about that that night.

So you're you're docked well one night. Uh, it was the end of a long day for me.

Freddy was exhausted after a day aboard the Little tut captaining a crew of a half dozen, He hopped into his truck to run an errand before bed, I think.

I will live in the way.

When I got the called, it was a member of his crew, and the guy sounded panicked.

He calls me. He tells me there's a call here and now he's searching. Say, how do you how this cop looks? So he started describing me the cop I need exactly the description of Santos. And then he tells me, but he's not more on a uniform.

What What's what's going through your head when you get this call?

First of all, I'm a fed and start getting upset and mad immediately, you know. The second of all, as I am on the call, you know, I realized that he's doing this illegally and that he's not on duty, you know. So that's when I asked to call nine one one.

Don't go.

Within minutes, Mark or Poso steps aboard the little two D and tries to make sense of what he's seeing.

I mean, he's he's a cop, but he's not working as a cop. He's not really dressed as a cop. He tells us, hey, I have information in this drugs on this boat, but he doesn't call anybody about it. I see what I can grab, and I'm gonna make my way home.

It's yet another of Santos's questionable searches, another push for drugs, vague talk about informants, but this time Freddy's certain that Santos has taken it too far. As he races back to the boat, he slams the steering wheel.

He's elated, Oh I finally got you, motherfucker. Yeah. I never gonna forget that ever. Yeah, finally he made that mistake that I was kind of waiting, you.

Know, despite all the chaos and tension aboard the boat. The encounter on the Little tu d ends pretty Anticlimactically, Riposo coaxes Santos from the boat. A supervisor arrives, They tell the fishermen to lock up. Everyone goes their separate ways. Riposa returns to the station and tries to tell a sergeant what he just witnessed.

I even get a fucking piece of paper.

Night.

We're back at the station after everybody leaves, and I write drug rip. I folded him. I put it on his desk.

In the most blunt terms possible, Riposo advises the sergeant that another officer just tried to rob some fishermen of drugs. In his words, a drug writ like Freddie. Riposo is sure that the Little Tuti has to be the final straw. Both of these guys each terrorized by Santos in their own way. I think this time police can't ignore Santos anymore, and they were right.

This is an administrative interview taking place at the Office of Professional Standards of the Nuvesto Police Department. Subject of this interview is Officer George Santos, and he's accompanied by representation mister Andrew Gambissini, could you state your name for the record, Police George Santos.

I got my hands on the internal affairs file, as well as recordings of some of the interviews, including this one with Santos where he struggles to recall even basic details.

I can't recall him.

I've been on a lot of stress, understandable.

Financially, everything going on home.

I mean to expect me to remember every detail. That's why we never just ask, okay.

I've read a lot of internal affairs reports from many different police departments, and they all tend to follow a similar pattern. But the two hundred and thirty pages dedicated to George Santos and the Little Tutty are unlike anything I've ever seen. And what quickly becomes clear with each new interview is that the department's George Santos problem extends far beyond a single night aboard a scalloping boat.

I'm familiar with Santo's outside of work, so I kind of know his behaviors, so I kind of figured that it was something that I would.

Suspect for him to do.

Caitlin Sylvia was working nine to one to one dispatch when the call from the little tutty came in.

I mean, it's not a call we get every day.

It's never happened before, so I would say, hope's never come across it again.

At first, it was frightening.

I mean, she tells police she immediately had an inkling that Santos might be involved, because by then she'd already had some troubling experiences with him.

He should just come on over the radio screaming, and then when you try to raise him, you can't.

Get him, and you have no idea where he is.

She's not the only one who tells police about his misconduct. A half dozen fishermen also come forward saying that Santos took their drugs. Some said they were harassed, searched illegally, and almost all say there are other victims, people who are too nervous to speak up.

Say your name for the record. Police Michael Hussell and.

Michael Investigators also interview a former police officer who now works security at a hotel where a lot of fishermen stay. Michael Roussel tells police that Santos was illegally searching hotel guests.

They told him he could not be bothered in our customers like that.

Rousselle says he repeatedly heard stories from fishermen about a rogue cop obsessed with pills.

What I was told by the guys was that he was stopped them if they had drugs, if they had pills, do you have pills on you? And if they had pills on him, he would take the pills, give him back. A couple keep the pills. Even a couple of them had cocin heroin. He gave him the cocin heroin back, and he kept the pills.

No arrest, no chidges.

I says, look, you guys are gonna come forward.

I says, he can't do this, But they're afraid to come forward because of it.

He says, Listen, I don't know why Santos was stealing pills. After the little tuty, he was ordered to take a drug test and the results came back negative. That surprised some of his colleagues, who told me they believe he had a drug addiction. Either way, it's clear that Santos's behavior was an open secret to almost anyone working on

At some point during the June twenty first, when you contacted by yes, sir.

The audio from the police department is heavily redacted, and what time was that?

I don't want to call the exact time.

How do you contact him when you call him?

How how do you contact he calls me? We have Coughton.

Do you have his cell phone number on you?

He has different numbers.

Would you be able? Would you be willing to share your call records with the Department?

Santos's attorney jumps in no, Sir. Santos repeatedly tells investigators that his story about the CI is true, but when they try to drill down on details, he's evasive and cagy.

I'm not on if I called him that that night or he called me.

I'm not one.

When they try to push him further about his justification for boarding the boat, his answer is pretty telling.

Based upon the advice on my attorneys, I invoked my federal state constitutional rights to remain silent and declined to answer that question.

Okay, George Santos said an informant told him there were drugs on the Little Tutty, But after months of investigating the story, I can tell you there was no informant that night, at least not by any reasonable definition of the word. In fact, it doesn't appear Santos ever had any registered informants. I wish I could tell you for sure, but the Department refused to hand over that information. So either Santos invented a CI out of thin air or he took the word of an off the book source.

Even if he did, it's say a perfect world. He does have this person to the CI. They tell him, hey, we stuff on the boat. The last thing anybody's going to do is put their sweatbants on, throw a radio in their back pocket, drive their car down there, not tell anybody what they're doing, and start ransacking a boat with four or five guys in it.

In New Bedford, as internal investigators work the Santos case, officer Mark Roposo gets a letter a subpoena. Prosecutors are considering potential criminal charges against Santos, and a grand jury has been convened. Raposo is asked to testify.

So get I get the grand jury summons and I go there. I want to say, I go there to testify that day and I walk in and I said, hey, let's have a little sit down let's talk.

He's leary. For months, he'd been sounding the alarm on Santos, having his complaints ignored. Now he's being asked to breach policing's most fundamental code, to testify against another officer, to break the blue wall of silence. In a way, he's being asked to snitch. Think about it. Prosecutors are asking Raposo to work with them. It's a big step. And he wants reassurances, and.

I says, it depends what you're gonna do. Are you gonna are you gonna follow this through? And his words to me is, I'm gonna take this wherever the evidence takes me. He tells me this.

So Riposo agrees.

You know, you can't manipulate. This is a grand jury. Now you can't. This can't be manipulated. Now, this is just this is gonna go. This is this has wheels. Now, this is it. These guys are these guys are gonna have to answer now.

Still, a number of anxiety inducing scenarios play out in his head. Will he be targeted or scapegoated? Is he a whistleblower? Most importantly, Raposo wonders whether he and his family are.

Safe George at the time was erradic as can be. And this is a guy who's proficient with firearms, not only on patrol level, this guy worked on SWAP for a little while. You know, he was off the wall at this time. You know, he was really upset with with his former co workers, and I can't imagine he was upset with any of them more than he was with me.

Expecting an indictment, Riposo even makes plans to send his wife and kids to stay with his in laws.

My wife knew, you know. I confide in her and told her a lot about what was going on, and she was very nervous.

Eventually, the grand jury wraps and Riposo's worst case scenario plays out. There are no charges, no arrests, and no one gives Reposo a heads up. He only finds out when he calls the prosecutor for an update. And this is when Mark Roposo, police officer for nearly two decades, seemingly loses faith in the criminal justice system.

You can be a police officer asked to testify at a grand jury, stick your neck out there, go in there and tell the truth. If I knew this was going to happen, I would refuse to testify. I took a lot of grief over this. It is not not a great place to be. We have to testify against another police officer. Culturally, you keep your mouth shut and that's it. And at this point I kind of throw my hands up, as I can't do anything else.

While the criminal case Peter's out, the internal affairs case is much more definitive. Investigators don't ignore the evidence they gathered. The findings are scathing. They show that Santos essentially turned a mile long stretch of the waterfront into his own personal pharmacy, systematically targeting and preying upon some of the cities most vulnerable, and it makes clear that people in the department knew about it. I found at least four

Hi, George.

My name is Stugen Arnett. I'm a writer at the Boston Globe newspaper. He answered the door in sweatpants and a T shirt. He was soft spoken and polite. He invited me in and we chatted for a few minutes. I told him what would be in the story, and he made clear that he didn't want to comment at all. The new Bedford Police Department wouldn't make anyone available for an intervi In response to my written questions, They email

I'll tell you they made my life pretty hard over this. They took years off my life with this.

He feels ostracized by other officers. The bosses change his job duties and his work schedule, and it's impossible for him to see it as anything other than retaliation.

The most upsetting thing was the people who were leaders during this that let this all ride. I mean, George is one thing, but to have my supervisor, have the deputy chief of police brush these concerns off, a DA's office brush them off, and then on top of it, I get removed from my position. It was pretty disheartening.

Not long after the grand jury and IA cases peter out, it occurs to Riposo, there's one last option, one more call he can make. Did you have to sort of talk yourself into making that call, like build yourself up to it.

Yeah, because what I figured was, Hey, I'm now going to have to go on the record with a federal agency, and I'm gonna get fucking fried.

The FBI is his last hope. He's on a side job at a shipyard. He finds a quiet spot, pulls out his cell phone and dials.

I make a call to the Lakeville FBI office. I talk to a female FBI agent, give him my full it's some issues in New Bedford. I'm a police officer.

My editor Brendan is with me for the interview.

Did you say exactly what the issues were?

Yeah, I told her, they listen to this up. There's a police officer who was uh involved in criminal activity. I think it's going to get covered up. I'd like somebody to talk to. And that was it.

FBI.

That's a big deal.

You would think, you would think.

After making the call, he waits and waits.

And I never heard back ever. I mean even I call the FBI and they don't fucking call me back. It's it's fucking mind numbing.

I mean, you could have been an informer for that.

Yeah, yeah, right, I mean you were like, hey, I'm willing. Yeah. They yeah, they weren't interested. I guess.

I reached out to the FBI for comment. They said, quote, as a matter of long standing policy, we cannot confirm or deny the existence of investigations. Mark Orposo took a huge risk talking to me, going on the record with his name, to speak out against the police department where he's still employed today.

It's any interest of the leadership to keep it quiet. They don't want that brought to light because it casts a negative light on the department.

I don't know. He doesn't know what kind of consequences he'll face when this comes out.

Because I know that these guys always they always pay you back, you know, And they're not known for the this. You know this, the upper uschelon that are involved in this, they're not known for letting things go.

If the saga of George Santos sparked even a hint of departmental soul searching, I haven't found any evidence of it. In fact, I found a lot of other cases like this in New Bedford, involving many of the same players, and it goes all the way to the top of the department. Mark or Poso is not the only one who's tried to get the attention of the FBI. The FEDS know a lot about the police department's problems and a legend misconduct, and you're going to hear all about it.

Right now, we heard you you is working with the police issues.

Now you got to get the fuck up out of here.

You're gonna get that he trusted New Bedford police and they burned him. Now he's cowering in a prison cell.

I mean you knowing, not where I could call it.

Yuh, Just so, I'm going to tell you his story next. Through the course of this podcast, you'll hear how America's informant system has been corrupted. My investigation has uncovered numerous cases of informant misconduct, lies, corruption, cover ups, of cover ups, misdeeds that could cast doubt on countless drug cases with consequences for drug enforcement everywhere.

Regular people who do not spend a lot of time around the criminal system would just be shocked that we permit this kind of thing to happen in a modern constitutional democracy.

Did he try to turn you?

Yeah?

Yeah, he tried to turn all of us.

This is very serious allegation.

We can't have offices involved in anything like what's being alleged here. You're a drug dealer who has the advocacy of one of the top police detectives we used to call a license to deal. There is absolutely no way that they're telling the truth.

I am one hundred thousand percent sure I am the informant.

You motherfuckers go run on each other.

So don't start telling my client what dell he or she should do.

Now shut the fuck up and leave Me Alone that's coming up on Snitch City. Spotlight. Snitch City is reported and hosted by Me, Duke and Our Name, additional reporting by Andrew Ryan and Brendan McCarthy. The podcast is written by Max Green and Kristin Nelson along with Me and Brendan McCarthy. Max Green is senior producer. Executive producers are Spotlight editor, Brendan McCarthy and Kristin Nelson, the Globes head of Audio. Additional editing and support from Gordon Russell and

Hey, it's Jake again. If you've enjoyed this episode, well here in luck There are plenty of other episodes from this series that are available to Binge right now, so follow Spotlight Snitch City on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now