Undercover Operations

The term undercover operations includes various proactive investigative techniques that require law enforcement officers to assume false identities to observe crime or to create an opportunity for criminal activity to take place. There are many kinds of undercover operations, but all have in common that officers mask their true identities in an effort to uncover criminal activity. Generally, the phrase decoy unit is used when an officer assumes the identity of a victim and the phrase undercover operation is used when an officer assumes the identity of a criminal. A distinct type of undercover operation that involves some surprise deception is termed a sting.

Decoy units are more closely associated with street crimes enforcement than with white collar crime and are, therefore, less likely to be used by federal law enforcement officers than by local police. A classic decoy ploy is for an officer to act drunk or incapacitated in a public place while displaying a wallet or other potentially valuable item and waiting to see if someone attempts to take the item. If the potential offender takes the bait, backup officers move in and make the arrest. In drug enforcement, these activities, particularly at the street level, have come to be termed buy and bust operations, because the sellers are arrested (busted) after the illegal item is purchased.

Various kinds of stings are also classified as undercover operations. Many are of short-term duration, but some stings can be quite elaborate and run for years. Short-term stings include officers posing as customers of drug dealers, of illegal firearms dealers, or of prostitutes or other sex workers. When an offender offers the service to the undercover officer, the offender is arrested, usually by backup officers to maintain the hidden identity of the undercover officer. Sometimes, particularly in vice investigations, these roles are reversed. Here officers pose not as customers, but as purveyors of the illegal activity. An example of this would be officers posing as drug dealers, as illegal firearms merchants, or as prostitutes or other sex workers with the aim of attracting customers to their illegal wares.

Longer term stings might involve police setting up a business to purchase stolen goods or setting up a business with the aim of seeing whether bribes are offered by related businesses, whether organized crime attempts to take over or influence operation of the business, or whether bribes are solicited by politicians or government employees who may be in a position to aid the business. Another type of sting has involved tricking fugitives into appearing at a particular location so that law enforcement officers can arrest them without having to go into the field to locate each one separately. An example of[Page 854] this type of sting occurred in the District of Columbia, when a number of wanted individuals were advised that tickets to a Washington Redskins football game were being held for them at a certain address. All those who responded to pick up tickets were then placed under arrest.

Even more elaborate undercover operations are in many ways logical outgrowths of sting operations. While sting operations use a moderate amount of deception over a brief period of time to achieve law enforcement objectives, undercover operations may be conducted over a period of years, with elaborate and expensive levels of support. Such support is usually referred to as backstopping and may include the creation of one or more false identities, with appropriate education, credit, and vocational histories; the rental, lease, or purchase of vehicles, properties, airplanes, or boats; the use of state-of-the-art electronic recording and tracking devices; the support of other U.S. or foreign governmental and law enforcement agencies; extensive preoperational review by superiors and prosecutors, and periodic status review by superiors and prosecutors during the operational phase. One of the key decisions superiors and prosecutors must make at the outset of such operations is if there is adequate predication to undertake the operation. For reasons of length and complexity, cost, danger, and legal issues surrounding entrapment, undercover operations should not be “fishing expeditions;” they should have a target and a purpose from the outset.

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