Even law-and-order advocates sometimes find their sensibilities offended by that most unstable adjunct of police work, the informer. Trained from childhood to disparage tattletales, Americans have hardly a decent word for those who give information to authorities. The glossary runs to such pejorative nouns as fink, stoolie, rat, canary, squealer. In some police argot they are snitches. Yet no major police force can operate without some of the shady types who will go where cops seldom can, perhaps to a meeting of conspirators, or do what cops won't, for example, shoot heroin before...
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