My friends and I have an ongoing debate. Can an undercover cop come up to you and try to offer you drugs? or would that be entrapment? ALSO do undercover cops have to identify themselves if you ask them if they're cops?
An undercover cop could solicit you to buy drugs, but that would be unusual. Purchasing drugs is normally a misdemeanor, selling them is a felony. They are interested in the felonies. Entrapment is coercing someone into committing a crime they would not normally commit. Simply asking you to buy drugs is not entrapment. No, an undercover cop is not required to identify himself. That would defeat the purpose of him being undercover, and may put his safety in danger.
Undercover cops CAN come up to you and offer you drugs. It's called a "reverse drug op" and is usually well organized beforehand, and doesn't include a random undercover cop just walking up and offering you drugs. They target high drug areas to destroy the drug customers, and subsequently you will end up with an intent charge. This could be entrapement if you are put in a unique situation where there is compelling evidence that you had no intent to buy drugs, but felt coerced into it. One example would be a guy walking through an alley and being approached by a couple of thugs (undercover cops) carrying bats that said "hey, it's $50 for an ounce, pay up". There are less extreme examples, but that would be entrapment if he bought them because he felt threatened not too. And no, an undercover police officer never has to identify himself if you are not in custody and under interrogation by that same officer.
Entrapment is very gray the general rule is would a normal person walk by with out giving it thought. if the average person would not then it would be entrapment so if a cop came up to you and offered you a free bag of weed you could prolly prove entrapment. Although i would justsay stay away from people that randomly ofer you drugs on teh street just a bad idea in general.
I think it is unlikely they would be putting their limited time and resources into finding those who are wanting to buy drugs. They want to get the dealers off the streets because it's the drug dealers who are committing bigger crimes. They are more likely to be asking someone they suspect is a dealer for drugs.
They can offer you anything but unless you offer to buy they have no case. As for identifing themselves I am not sure but I do not think that they have to identify themselves until they are arresting you. Entrapment is the act of a law enforcement agent in inducing a person to commit an offence which the person would not have, or was unlikely to have, otherwise committ. Entrapment is a very stick issue.
First it is settled law that police are permitted to lie in order to catch criminals. Entrapment is when the police talk you into committing a crime that you would not otherwise commit. The way the officer entices you to buy or try drugs would make or break the case. That and the quality of your defense would determine if you won or lost. The best bet is to refuse anyone offering you drugs. And if you suspect it is a cop, call 911 and report him.
I find the fact that cops would do this really disgusting Their reputation should be squeaky clean and it is these behaviors that have given them a bad name. It is no wonder the public no longer trust law enforcement. There are far to many incidents taking place that have tarnished their name.
Undercover cops will do whatever it takes to get any information they need to track down small time pushers who can lead them to the big fish. I believe that if they know a drug user knows the people who sell them drugs, they could try to sell them drugs to ascertain that they are drug users and have been buying drugs for a while. Afterwards the information they need could be obtained from the addict.
This is funny. You don't want to play with any of this stuff. The undercover can fool the average. Some are good at and some are obvious. I spotted an undercover once to a few people in a bar. The one guy pick pocketed him and he had three different licenses on him with different names.