Rob Walker's documentary Snitching in the USA is broadcast on the BBC World Service at 09:05 GMT on 28 March.

BBC: The trouble with using police informants in the US

Amongst some, says Brian Cummins, the councillor for the area, there is a feeling that going to the police with suspicions is akin to snitching.

BBC: Cleveland's Seymour Avenue: Scene of a terrible crime

She wrote a recent book, Snitching, about governmental use of informants.

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Reports suggest US federal prosecutors are building a case against the firm's former executives relying on the 'snitching' of lower-level executives in a bid to arrest the bigger fish.

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"What snitching does is it rewards the informed, so the lower you are on the totem pole of criminal activity, the less useful you are to the government, " says Natapoff.

BBC: The trouble with using police informants in the US

The litany of alleged abuse brought no corroborators out of the wings, even though the bullied big shots--HP's Carleton Fiorina, Compaq's Capellas and Gateway's Theodore Waitt--have little to lose from snitching.

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