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Spotlight: Snitch City podcast artwork
True Crime

Spotlight: Snitch City

by The Boston Globe Spotlight Team
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Latest episodes

  • UPDATE: Case Dismissed

    May 6, 2025 · 22 min

    Reporters Dugan Arnett and Andrew Ryan are back in court to learn the fate of a case that has spanned eight years. In 2017, New Bedford police accused Steven Ortiz of being at the center of a major drug trafficking ring. But an officer…

  • EPISODE 5: “All this for nothing”

    April 1, 2025 · 46 min

    Two former New Bedford informants tell shocking stories. The first: a woman who didn’t even know she was being used as an informant by the cop she was sleeping with. The second: a man who was Paul Oliveira’s informant decades ago and who…

  • EPISODE 4: Cops & Robbers

    March 25, 2025 · 38 min

    When Frank "Rizzo" Simmons was a big-time drug dealer in New Bedford in the '90s, he went toe-to-toe with a drug cop named Paul Oliveira. After a major bust of Frank’s headquarters, Oliveira tries to turn Frank into an informant. But…

  • EPISODE 3: The Chief

    March 18, 2025 · 34 min

    Meet New Bedford’s police chief, Paul Oliveira. He’s had a hand in both of the stories we’ve already heard. And the Spotlight Team's reporting shows there's a dark backstory behind Oliveira's rise to the top of the department. Oliveira…

  • EPISODE 2: Blind Trust

    March 11, 2025 · 41 min

    Spotlight reporter Dugan Arnett receives a desperate phone call from an informant who’s now in prison. He says he's afraid for his life because other inmates know he cooperated with police. This informant always knew he’d be in danger if…

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  • EPISODE 1: Officer Pastillas

    March 11, 2025 · 53 min

    On the docks of New Bedford, Massachusetts, whispers about a rogue police officer harassing fishermen and stealing drugs come to a head aboard a scalloping boat late one night. The officer forces his way on board, saying an informant told…

  • Trailer

    February 26, 2025 · 2 min

    In a nation addicted to drugs, police across the country have become addicted to informants. Nowhere is this more apparent than in one New England port city, where police have been empowered to use informants to take down dealers by almost…

  • I got nothin’ to say to you

    February 18, 2025 · 1 min

    In just a few weeks, the Boston Globe’s new podcast will drop. Informants are the nameless, faceless cogs of the criminal justice system. And their use is cloaked in near total secrecy. Reporter Dugan Arnett will show how police misconduct…

  • Coming Soon… Snitch City

    January 9, 2025 · 1 min

    Confidential informants are the backbone of America’s war on drugs. But the way police use them has remained almost entirely hidden. Until now.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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About the show

Spotlight: Snitch City brings listeners inside the clandestine world of police informants through the story of one police department. Investigative reporter Dugan Arnett uncovers rampant misconduct and explores how, in a nation addicted to drugs, police have become addicted to informants.