27 Times Police Had To Go Undercover, And Something Crazy Happened

My cousin was an under cover ATF agent. Anyway, they were trying to bust some guys for illegal alcohol distribution and were building a rapport by going under cover. My cousin doesn't take his ATF badge with him when he's undercover because if anyone ever saw it, he could get shot. Anyway, some hot-headed black-and-white cops came over and started harassing them. My cousin couldn't blow his cover, but pretty soon the police started getting physical and they beat c**p out of my cousin and the guys he is trying to get evidence from. They take them all into the police station only to find out that my cousin is ATF. My cousin was pissed because cops aren't supposed to beat people up. He is currently filing a law suit against that police dept.

When I first got started in forensics it was when chat rooms and webcams were taking off - so p***philes thought they'd be able to figure out who was who on the internet since clearly you'll know you're webcamming with a 40-year-old dude munching on donuts instead of a 14-year-old girl. I was a naive 18-year-old woman who was just getting started in policing, doing some clerical work for my hometown police department when I heard a couple people talking about how they were having a hard time chatting up creeps now that webcams were a thing. I told them why not just hire someone to act like an underage girl or boy and coach them on what to say and how to set up meetings to catch these a******s.

Lo and behold I volunteered myself for the job. We set up a 'bedroom' in one of the upstairs offices complete with a bed, a desk, and some posters from one of the officers teenage daughters. I had to wear some of my h**h school sports clothes or pajamas while talking to predators via Webcam - I passed notes back and forth with the team of officers and passed it off as trying to do homework while chatting. The hardest part was to still seem interested and innocent while this dude on the screen is telling me what type of horrible things he wants to do to my body thinking I'm still a child.

Edit 1: Thank you kind people for the silver, gold, and platinum - I just wanted to keep other people from getting abused and hurt the way I had been as a child. I was just doing my job even though I was kind of blundering into things way outside of my paygrade.

Edit 2: I got a ton of questions in the comments or in PM's so I'll try to answer them as best I can.

- What about fraud or entrapment? Regarding entrapment we got around it because it really didn't apply with the way we were doing things. I never actually went into chatroom and solicited people via text or webcam. I didn't have to solicit anyone, they were literally just waiting in the chatrooms ready to pounce. What usually happened was I would login with a girly or teenagery handle and people would start sending private chat requests before I could even post hello on the chat feed. We often had so many that sometimes we had to let a few of them go because there were just too many for me to try and talk to or type with. So, we never actually tried to get them to talk to me - often times we couldn't get them to shut up, once they got going they had no inhibitions at all.

- If you go look up a teen chat, makeup a cute handle and just post saying hi you'll get swarmed by pedos trying to chat you up or get you to cam with them. I don't recommend doing this because it will destroy any faith you have in humanity.

- Who did we catch? How many? We netted somewhere around 120 men and a handful of women - the most notable was a few clergy, two city councilmen, a state trooper, school teachers, and other people you would just trust around kids. All of them looked like regular people and seemed like people I would interact with everyday without any idea that they were soliciting s*x from minors online.

- Was there anyone that got away? Yes, a few never showed. But there was only one that got away that I just know went after real victim - or had already done so already - that really made me worried. He would try and chat off and on when I was on and he got a thrill out of telling me how he would like to tie me up and do all sorts of t*****e sounding things to me - in great detail. I actually started crying and he just laughed and said it would be fine after I got used to it. I don't regret doing this work but it was quite the mind f**k, especially at 18 years old.

Edit 3 - Some people have asked about how they can help, where to get resources on educating kids and teens on how to stay safe while enjoying the internet, or where they can report crime tips - so I'm going to dump some resources for everyone.

- Center for Missing and Exploited Children - [**http://www.missingkids.com/home**](http://www.missingkids.com/home) - has a cyber tip line (US) where you can report abuse or child p**n as well as age appropriate resources for child safety online and off.

- National Human Trafficking Hotline - [https://humantraffickinghotline.org/report-trafficking](https://humantraffickinghotline.org/report-trafficking) - call, text, and chat hotlines for immediate help as well as resources on recognizing and reporting trafficking.

- Europol Child Abuse - [https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse](https://www.europol.europa.eu/stopchildabuse) - resources for those in the UK on reporting and helping exploited children.

My father worked for NCIS. He told me about an incident where his guys set up a sting to bust some d**g suppliers who turned out to be local police setting up their own sting. They figured it out when they tried to bust each other.

I have gone undercover online to infiltrate child p**nography rings. Nothing too intense... but I had to interact with suspect’s online/over phone who were f*****g sick in the head and act like it was not the most vile s**t in the world.

Not a cop, but fell prey to an undercover operation. I feel obligated to preface this with how amazed I am at how integrated this man was in our g**g. If giving an Oscar-worthy performance is the standard, I have to say, I'm pretty f*****g impressed by what you guys can do. Over the course of several months, this cop earned our trust. H**l, at one point, I would have said that I trusted that man more than my own brother, who was also in the g**g (to be fair, I caught my brother stealing product from us more than once, but I trusted him to not directly destroy my livelihood). Suffice to say, this cop's acting skill was one of the number one factors that led to us getting busted.

This man, let's call him Dave, was absolutely fearless and tough as nails. One of our initiation rituals involved letting members of the group wail on you for three minutes, no holding back. If you were still breathing afterwards, you were in. After getting pummeled to the ground by seven or eight different men, Dave wasn't just alive. It was almost as if he enjoyed it (he was probably smiling because he got his foot in the door, now that I think about it).

To get to the *craziest* thing Dave did, I need to explain how our g**g functioned. We start off being refereed to as a number, both to protect identity and as a form of putting lower ranked members in their place. Names had to be earned. We didn't exactly have a set criteria for earning a name, but members often had to bring in enough income for the g**g, earn the leader's trust, and commit various violent acts for the benefit of the group before a name was even considered. All names followed the same theme: Astronomy. Our leader was known as Vega.

The day Dave earned his name, Vega had him as a getaway driver for a group of members. Their job was to sneak into a rival d****r's house, steal his product, and escape in Dave's car. As they were making their getaway, someone opened fire on the vehicle and Dave took a round to the forearm. Without even slowing down, he managed to get our guys back to the house using one arm to drive. After his arrival, Vega and I rushed him to the ER as he sat there, holding a jacket against the wound, trying to control his breaths. Within the next day, he made a full recovery.

Once Dave got back, everyone showered him with gratitude and praised his badassery. Vega approached him with a name tag in his hand and pinned it to Dave's shirt, signifying that he earned his right to be known as something more than a number: Sirius.

I don't hold any grudges against him for putting us behind bars. That man saved my life. Wherever you are, man, thank you. You changed who I was for the better. I will never forget the time that you earned your Sirius tag.

I know a guy who often went undercover as a j****e. He was committed. He'd stop showering for a while before a gig and p**s on his tracksuit before going in to work. He was so good that he managed to get the same d****r convicted twice in the space of a year and they never suspected he was the rat. He had multiple police records under different names too.

One time a homeland security officer came up to my house undercover, flashed his badge and asked if he could come in. Once he was in he pulled out a piece of paper with my neighbors face on it. He asked if I had seen him around lately, when I asked what he did, and let him know I haven't seen him around, he told me what he was wanted for. R**e, child abuse, d***s, the whole lot. Turns out he r***d his step-daughter and once he found out he was wanted he went back to El Salvador. I thought they only flashed their badges in the movies, but turns out, the s**t's real.

My friend who was an undercover cop said that multiple times he had to let himself be arrested to not blow his cover. Like when a sting was going down or whatever instead of being like hey I'm a cop, he would get arrested along with everyone else.

My friend used to be a state trooper. She told me about how she used to have to go undercover as a h*oker to try to catch Johns. She didn't do so well, though. She was far too polite, so they all knew something was up.

Not a cop but a guy my mom dated for a long time was. Older guy, in his 70s now, he was fresh out of the academy and at the Asbury Park Riots. Sad scary s**t. And then was an under cover narcotics cop for 14 years during the 70 and 80s with the NJSP. He was Puerto Rican, and spoke Spanish, was an ex marine, and became a state trooper. They utilized his ability to blend in with organized crime in the Latin community. He had to do c*ke in front of a bunch of dudes during a buy one night, and basically stuck his knife in and blew a mound up his nose. Then he started having a minor paranoia/panic attack that they were going to find out he was a cop (thanks to the gram of blow he just took to the dome) He was breathing heavy and went out for air, his heart was pounding out of his chest, panicking over how to get out of it, one of the gangsters came outside to talk to him, he’s ready to run or fight, guy goes “Man I’ve never seen someone snort that much at once man! You ok?!” He sighs a huge sigh of relief, and was like “Yeah I never did that much... I’m having trouble breathing heh heh.” The Guy was really nice, brings him a drink and they smoked a cig. Everyone is joking that he has the heart of a lion to take that much. He actually felt bad about locking that one guy up when it all went down. Think he said he tried to help him or get a reduced sentence or something. There are other stories.

As a former correctional officer:

We had a situation where a major police department planted a cop in the prison to get information on a guy they believed was orchestrating hits from inside the prison. The Warden knew and I knew (by accident) but not a single other CO knew, nor did any of the staff, including medical, and that's the way they wanted it. He went through receiving, he was categorized and placed. It was wild. He was there for a week, got the info they needed and got him out. It didn't become public knowledge that he was undercover until after I had left and it was a long while after as they were making a case. That was a surreal moment.

I once was the gardener for a cop who worked undercover in the s*x trade to identify pimps/traffickers and extract underage kids. She retired early due to mental health issues likely stemming from d**g use during her time undercover. To keep cover she would do the d***s that were being offered/used. Of course things spiralled out of control for her and suddenly she’s on permanent paid leave and she stays in the house most days hiding from the world.
So for her, what she did to keep cover is offer up her sanity in exchange for some successful arrests.

I must have been 15 when one day the door bell rang and I opened the door to two guys looking very much like real tough street guys. They showed me their badges and asked for my mum or dad. Turned out that they wanted to stake out a public playground behind our garden that was used by some d**g dealers for their mules (people drinking large amounts of water and puking up little packages with some substance in it). There was a multi-storey Bank near the playground but the bank didn’t want anything to do with it. So they asked my parents whether they could set up a surveillance team on our terrace for a couple of days. My parents allowed it. And my mum prepared food for the guys all week long.

My dad did undercover for several years and talked about a m**h head that he hung out with all the time and even babysat her kids when she went out to get h**h. This went on for several months while they were figuring out who the big d****r was and acquiring warrants. He grew a beard, had a fake id, drove an old s****y car. Eventually they got warrants to bust a bunch of people in the d**g ring and he actually was part of the SWAT team at the time and was part of the group that smashed in doors and arrested her and a bunch of others in the area. He had to wear a balaclava to protect his identity when with the SWAT team. He said it was actually really difficult because he had become an important part of those kids’ lives and was kind of attached to them and now they had no mother and had to be taken to child protective services. I never got to ask him more questions about this before he passed but I have no idea how he balanced this crazy second life and then came home and acted like a normal husband and father in our family.

I worked as a transcriptionist for a while, and I transcribed some tape taken off of body mics of undercover officers working a very notorious domestic t*******m case. It was crazy! They would sound like an absolute backwoods hill people l*****c while talking to their marks, then later when talking to the other police officers, would sound all business and like a very professional person.

My cousin worked undercover in the biker community. He was really into working out and body building so he managed to convince everybody that he treated his body like a temple and didn't drink, do d***s, or eat like s**t. That wasn't very far from the truth so it wasn't hard for him to play that part. He is also a former Marine sharpshooter so he is tough as nails and pretty heavily tattooed so he definitely gave off a 'don't f**k with me' vibe.

City Cop here.

We don't do too much long term undercover but our General Orders have a policy covering use of d***s on duty in certain circumstances. While it doesn't specify that we can do d***s, it states that if we consume them we have to immediately respond to our Departments health clinic for documentation and treatment.

Answering for my husband because he only lurks. Also, this was from a simpler time before the internet.

My husband and his brother worked for neighboring departments. Husband was undercover narcotics and his brother was a beat cop.

One night my husband was buying some crack from a group of dudes. One of the friends of the seller recognized my husband, probably from court or something. The seller’s friend started saying “This guy is a f*****g cop! I know he’s a cop. I’ve seen him before! You have to tell us if you’re a cop!”

First of all, that’s not true.

Second of all, my husband is a d**k.

My husband replies “no I’m not a f*****g cop. My piece of s**t brother is. How do you know my brother? Why do you know cops in [neighboring city]? [Seller], your boy is a f*****g narc. I’m not about to buy from a f*****g narc.”

Seller and his OTHER friends beat the s**t out of the guy who recognized my husband. Husband left the location unscathed, but sans crack.

My cousin who's in secret services acted like a d**g-a****t homeless beggar and semi-crazy muslim religious salesman owning stall for surveillance purposes.

Not very exciting but a guy that worked with me was going to this biker bar frequently to get in with a g**g (d**g related). He didn't want to get hammered and do something stupid so he would take his beers into the bathroom with him dump out half and fill it with water.