REFERRING OFFICER: Undercover narcotics detective from the Columbus Division of Police Investigative/Tactical (In/Tac) Unit. The detective will not be named due to the sensitive nature of his work. We will refer to him as "Det. S." in this write up.
ASSIGNMENT: Provide both Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas presents to a confidential informant (CI) who provides information to Det. S., enabling the entire In/Tac unit to shut down drug houses across the city.
**EDIT: 11/23/19 We received enough in donations for a Thanksgiving dinner from Kroger for the CI. The cost was $75.25. We're hoping to raise another $30.25 to give the CI $150.00 in Christmas presents. (Total donations is $195 for this Assignment currently.)**
In/Tac is the unit that busts down the doors of drug houses across the city (or rips them off their hinges if necessary), arrests drug dealers, and gets drugs and guns off the streets of Columbus. They do incredibly dangerous work every day, and they do it very well. But they cannot do it without their confidential informants.
Det. S. has been working with his CI for years and has assumed a fatherly role towards her. Even though the CI is grown, her years of drug abuse have limited her mental abilities, so she lives with her mother. Now clean, she ekes out a living doing odd jobs and making drug buys for CPD. She will never have a lot of money, and it's hard for her to provide for herself and her kids, so Det. S. would like to give her a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas. This CI constantly puts herself in danger in order to help the police close down these drug houses. She does not make a lot of money for this; certainly most of us would be unwilling to mess with drug dealers in exchange for a few dollars, but she does it often and bravely.
Any monies that we collect that are above what we need to supply Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas presents to Det. S.'s confidential informant will be set aside for future Assignments from the In/Tac detectives, specifically emergency Assignments that we don't have time to post. If you would like to adopt a family for the holidays, this would be a wonderful one to consider for your donations.
Our president, Nicole Banks, spent two nights with this team last year and was extremely impressed with what they do for the city and the dangers that they take on for us. If you'd like to read Nicole's account of her time with In/Tac, here's her write up. Because we cannot post photos of the confidential informant or the undercover narcotics detectives, the pictures on this post are from the time Nicole spent with them.
Please consider sharing this post with your friends and family, as many people are not aware of In/Tac or the work they and their informants do. You can contribute through our website, and we deeply appreciate your support. Thank you! 💙
