Alex White, Professional Snitch - NYTimes.com: When White got the call from J. R. Smith the night of Kathryn Johnston’s murder, asking him to cover for the police, he knew he had to play along. But he also knew he was vulnerable: the police would spin the events whatever way helped them the most. To protect himself, he started taking notes. He wrote down the time Smith called and the number he called from. One of White’s slogans was “I may play dumb, but I ain’t never been a fool.”
His phone began to ring in earnest: Junnier, it turned out, was in the hospital, slightly wounded in the face and leg. (Not by Kathryn Johnston, it would eventually be revealed, but by bullets fired by other police officers.) Friends called, jubilant — they had seen the notorious cop’s picture on TV and were delighted by his misfortune; Junnier was widely hated by drug dealers. White was not sad about that side of it — Junnier had it coming. But White could see (though not admit to his friends, who were unaware of his sideline) that, if his handlers got taken down, this could be bad for him financially. And it would be bad for him in every way if they dragged him down with them.