Entrapment

I know there was a little talk of this before - I did a search and a lot of reading and havn't come up with a definate answer - only alot of ppl saying "i think" but don't know for sure....

Newayz - It appears that alot of dealers think that if they ask the person buying pills off them if they are cops or not that they're covering their ass. My understanding is that a cop doesn't have to tell you he's a cop if he's undercover or plain clothes. Seriously - wat would be the point of goin plain clothes or undercover if by law they had to blow their cover????

I always thought the entrapment law could only help you if u were sold a pill in a club and u could successfully argue that u wouldn't have bought that pill if the cop hadn't come up to you and offered it to you.

Am i right about the entrapment laws??? If so does this mean that in terms of the law u are fairly safe buiying pills in clubs (safe in terms of law only - i'm aware of other risks). On the other hand this would mean that alot of dealers are not as safe as they think.

Please comment

Nice Tits

As far as I know police can do pretty much whatever they want to catch people including (and not restricted to) actually having drugs and generally being off their head. There is little chance that dealers will suspect the dude off his chops next to him with a 1/4 tonne of kandi on asking for another pill to be an undercover.

It is entrapment when the 'undercover' somehow makes you perform illegal activity that you would not have normally undertaken.

e.g. undercover sticks a gun to your head and makes you sell pills and an old lady then the boys in blue show up.

Police Investigations into drug offences commonly involve the use of undercover officers who either offer a degree of encouragement to the offender to commit an offence, or participate in criminal activity or both.

There is no substantive defence of entrapment in Australian law. And the fact that the drugs are supplied to an undercover police officer that encourages the supplier to break the law is not a mitigating circumstance in sentencing.

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From: http://diayll.sl.nsw.gov.au/pdf/beginners_guide.pdf

I always thought the entrapment law could only help you if u were sold a pill in a club and u could successfully argue that u wouldn't have bought that pill if the cop hadn't come up to you and offered it to you.

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I highly doubt this situation would arise. The time wasted and effort required by the police to carry out such an operation in a club would be prohibitive to say the least.

An undercover police officer acting as a dealer would, I imagine, be only interested if you attempted to organise a large purchase of an illegal substance. Likewise, an undercover officer acting as a buyer would attempt to ascertain the quantity of a substance you were carrying to judge whether losing his/her cover to make an arrest would be worthwhile.

I was under the impression that Entrapment was just a legal term relevant to the US legal system, and that such a thing doesn't exists in Australia. I've also read various articles about ex-undercover agents trying to sue the Government because they ended up heroin addicts as a result of their time in the police force, where they were forced to shoot up to maintain their cover.
There ARE websites out there that specialise in Australian law, where you can email in and ask questions without fear of reproach, or possibly you could search/ask in the Legal Forum on this site.

Just as a sidenote, what would be the point in having an undercover department, if all the criminals had to do was ask "Are you a Cop?" to blow the police officers cover???

Also, try reading this:
Undercover Cops thread in Legal Q&A

My source here is a reporter/journalist who has a fair understanding of the law, and works with lawyers on a daily basis. I'll stand to correction on any of it if anyone who works/studies in the legal system and has 100% verified information though...

Entrapment is a law which governs the behaviour of police. Basically, it means that they can't offer the sale, or request it... Because they'd be entrapping the person, and they could argue they would not have done it if the cop hadn't asked.

In other words, as I understand it, entrapment states that:

Undercover police can not walk up to you and say "want to buy a pill/weed/whatever" then arrest you if you buy it.

Undercover police can not approach you and ask "can you get me some pills/coke/heroin/whatever" and then arrest you when you supply them.

These two scenarios are entrapment, and therefore the police do not bother to engage in them because they are not allowed to.

The way undercovers make busts is by making friends with and trying to get large dealers to offer them the sale of drugs, where upon they bust them. They also do their best to find out when and where large deals are taking place by making friends and connections, so that they can rock up at the deal and bust the chaps involved.

How people convince themselves that asking someone "are you a cop" could somehow invalidate the illegality of supplying an illegal substance is beyond me. It's laughable. As villz said, what point would there be to undercovers if this was the case?

Imagine how a court would react to someone standing up and announcing "But I asked him if he was a cop before I sold the drugs to him! He lied to me!"

Already been said but just to confirm, entrapment is relevent to Australian law. It it '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 committed. Evidence obtained by entrapment may be excluded in the exercise of judicial discretion to exclude evidence obtained by unfair or proper means.'
I think this is where people get the idea that asking 'are you a cop' and them replying 'no' will cover you. This alone is very unlikely to be considered to be provoking you or entising you to commit an illegal act.

So obviously if u wish to avoid getting caught wouldnt u then always ask someone what they wished to buy...like purposely go thru the motions of acting stupid until they ask if you have bla bla to sell ?

And if u go up to them......ha well sh*t your boned i guess

thanks for ur replies - uve confirmed my beliefs

There is no general defence of entrapment in Australia as ruled by the High Court in Ridgeway 1995.

That said, some of the comments people made above are correct. Things like actually having cops deal themselves, or placing drugs in someones possession etc are very likely to be held as entrapment (I don't think the term is really employed in Aus rather it would be held as inadmissible evidence). Depends on the circumstances of the case.

Im not too sure it would be entrapment if a cop got you to sell to him/her Apollo. Will try to find out on that one.

Oh yeah and the fact that cops are undercover etc is NEVER a defence Chan unreported judgment NSWCCA (cant remember the year sorry).

Just to add to all of the above - most big busts are a result of selling to undercovers. The undercovers don't sit there and wait to be offered. They activelly participate in trying to aquire the drugs - in larger and larger quantity until enough intelligence has been gathered and there is enough to make some big busts. That's a fact, which I don't have time to back up with links, but I am sure should be quite common sense.

So the moral of the story is that "entrapment" does not exist in Australia or at least not in the form defined above.

Has anyone actually seen an undercover?

I've been at clubs and raves where people tell me who is an undercover but do they actually know or is it just paranioa on someones part who shared it with friends?

In the early 90's a chick I knew met a dude at a party. Two days later he'd moved in. Two weeks later he was sleeping in her bed. Many months later he got her to round up everyone interested in donating towards a bundle of coke which she'd said she could obtain. Upon opening the bundle, he pulled out a badge.

The story was quite a talking point, especially since it was ruled that such action was entrapment and she got off. But numerous people round town who'd also met him weren't so lucky. One young guy was nabbed during his first big deal and did 2 years. What got me was the systematic planning by the squad. They fully appreciated that it would be difficult to get the girl, but by mating with a local well known user, they knew he'd make incredible ground and he did.

Thanks for the info cuba - please do find out! I'm really very curious!

doofhard, check out this thread - At Dinner With an Undercover Narcotics Detective.

Runner - phase_dancer's story would serve to prove that entrapment as I defined it does exist in Australia...

doofhard - yeh i've had plenty of people point out "D's" to me at raves and parties in the past. Most of the time i think its just a way to make yourself look cool if you can "pick" the undercovers, when in actual fact they're just picking the most out of place guy there. I don't think they can appreciate the fact that older adults DO go to raves/parties as well, and not everyone likes to dress up looking like some flourescent retard thats been attacked by a sewing machine.

Also, why would the police spend millions of dollars a year in Undercover activities when their cover can be easily blown by not dressing appropriately and/or looking out of place.

P_D - Are you fucking serious about that story? Thats some first class sneaky undercover action going on, and backs up my above comments about how Cops aren't the morons most drug users think they are.

police monitoring this site are rubbing their hands with absolute satisfaction at the hit and miss guesses we are all throwing up in the air about undercovers.

i think we need an undercover user to rat THEM out. a user who becomes a cop and lets all of us in on their secrets. *chuckle* any volunteers?

Dexter Stayne said i think we need an undercover user to rat THEM out. a user who becomes a cop and lets all of us in on their secrets

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...you mean you haven't got one yet? Best place to find one is at your local dealer's on police pay day


j/k

p_d

i think what you have to realise is that law is a question of interpretation - so what might seem to be entrapment for one person does not mean that the courts will interpret it that way....

building on what was said above by Psychadelic_Paisly - lets say we have a dealer/person X and an undercover Y.
i don't think it is a valid argument to say that if Y asks X to get him/her some drugs and X does that this is entrapment. compare this to if Y (the undercover) tells X he/she has some drugs and gives them to X along with a range of contacts to sell the drugs to. in this second scenario X couldn't have been dealing without Y's assistance. in the first scenario X had the capacity to sell or procure the drugs regardless of who was asking.

see causation if different in law from science etc. it is not enough to say "well i wouldn't have been dealing if the undercover hadn't asked me for drugs" - compare this with the other situation where it would be near impossible for the person to have been caught dealing without the undercover's assistance.

not sure if that makes sense - basically i think asking someone if they are a cop is more of an urban myth. basically cops aren't dumb and they aren't going to have this incredible loophole and not done something about it (if it ever even existed). also, cops know all about "code names" for gear and this is accepted by the courts as slang, so don't think that can cover you either....
bk


ps cuba do you have the date for the chan judgment? - there are several chans in the nsw unreported judgments - thanks
pps the ridgeway judgment is an interesting read - you can find a copy here

you can tell an undercover user... he's the cop with his shirt untucked....

I think the "You have to tell me if you're a cop," thing comes from American TV. Theory being, over there if you ask, the cop can't lie, so if he says yes he is, you don't commit the crime. I do not know if this has any basis in truth, or is just "for the movies." This is completely unrelated to entrapment, which is enticing or encouraging a person to commit a crime that they otherwise wouldn't have done. I too cannot believe that in Australia, there would be any law in place that meant that a cop had to tell you if he was working for the police. The whole point of being undercover is to make others believe that you are not a cop, so lying about being a cop would by necessity be an integral part of maintaining a good cover.