Oh okay I see. I have heard time and time again, that if a person is arrested for longer than 24 hours, charges must be laid. Will it work to write it, if the police are able to let him go easily, because the 24 hour window isn't up yet, and they will not have to worry about dropping any charges, because none have been laid yet?
When an officer (or FBI agent) goes undercover there is a limit to the number of people who are aware of the situation. If that undercover officer or agent is arrested, they play like they are a criminal until the arresting officers have them alone in the interrogation room. At which point they would inform them of their true identity and provide a contact at their station who could identify them and verify their story. At that point they normally hold them and debrief them while they are attempting to make it look like they are pressing them in order to keep the officer undercover. As far as the basic question here. "Are undercover officers/agents permitted to break the law?" The short answer is "yes, to an extent". They are normally given some rope on drug use (gang infiltration requires this), trafficking, petty crime, and robbery. They are not permitted to do major crimes like murder. Every officer knows that eventually they will be asked to testify to the events that took place while they were undercover. If they go to far down the rabbit hole then they lose credibility, and their testimony suffers.
He'd be in contact with his superiors, like, immediately. People actually get phone calls when they get arrested, right?
haha, ok well gald my detailed answer that describes how the entire process is handled wasn't helpful at all. good luck to you.
I'm sorry that being called out on your misinterpretation of my question hurt your ego? There's no need to be snarky. edited because I was wrong.
Hi, Actually WellThatsNice makes a good point. The crime you're talking about having your UC caught red handed committing is a capitol offence. It's murder. Cops would usually not want to let murderers go. And I can't see any UC agent actually committing murder (unless of course they actually had gone bad). They might try and fake one to give themselves some credibility. But they would never have permission to kill someone, and they would know that. To add to their woes if the agent committed murder as part of a UC operation it would blow back on his superiors. You can just imagine courts wanting to book the superiors if s/he in any way looked to be endorsing the action. And after the criminality was dealt with - ie corrupt agent etc sent to jail - where he is going - there would be the law suits. Massive ones. The FBI were complicit in the murder of my husband etc!!! And the publicity after that would go all the way to the top. Even if the DA were willing to drop the charges (though I woul assume it would only be for a certain period of time until the UC operation was completed) I can't see anyone up the chain of the FBI even trying to make the argument that the charges should be dropped. It would be a legal and political disaster with heads rolling at the highest level. I think you need to go for a lesser crime, or else have some way of redeeming your corrupt agent fairly much on the spot. Eg yes it looked like murder but it was actually self defence in a gun fight rearranged to look like murder. Or we just found a convenient corpse and used it as proof that our UC was a real bad dude. Cheers, Greg.
Hi, Sorry. WellThatsNice was the one to mention murder. Still, all serious crimes have to be off the table if anyone is to be able to vouch for this agent. Cheers, Greg.
Well, that's a monkey wrench in my plan. Does it make any difference if the victims of said crimes are death row inmates?
The group being infiltrated (and their criminal activities) has a huge impact on what types of activities the undercover officer can do. Gang infiltration gives the officer the most discretion. A couple interesting reads for you may be Charles Falco's book “Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs.” Falco is the former ATF plant who infiltrated the Outlaws biker gang. And Under and Alone by Billy Queen. Queen actually became a high ranking officer in the mongols. To do so he personally, did drugs, delt drugs, trafficked drugs, trafficked weapons, laundered money, drove the car in a robbery. Queen talks about the ways he got around committing major crimes (like murder) by essentially getting hauled in for lesser crimes or calling in and getting his target picked up. I think what you will find is that while these undercover officers are given some rope, they need to be creative with how they get out of committing major offenses. A murder is still a murder.
As I said, his superiors know what he's doing with the death row people. They facilitate it because it helps him do his job (indirectly). The problem he faces is when a civilian finds his secret and calls the cops on him. Does that facilitation make the whole system corrupt (and therefore implausible)? If it does, I may have to modify the organization he's under into some autonomous thing, separate from The Government.
In fiction, anything can happen but seriously, the FBI have a section dedicated to answering the queries of authors, script writers, film makers and program producers. You can email them with your query and if they can't answer your question, they'll give you a suggestion on where to go next. The details can be found on their website. I don't have a link because it's been over a year since I last used their service but you should be able to find something on the website. Good luck.
Real-life, but UK. Operation Yewtree, still ongoing. Something of a "cold case" scenario, since most of the crimes were twenty years ago or more. But. While the crimes were being committed, evidence against some of the perpetrators was compiled in a file, which was passed to the Home Secretary. Somehow, the file was mislaid, and inquiries into its whereabouts were answered with questions about how attached the inquirer was to his pension. Many of the perpetrators took their guilt to the grave (some are still alive, and have now been jailed). There is a suggestion that the then-Home Secretary was in cahoots. Files can get mislaid, especially if "those in authority" have a reason for it to happen.
Hi, @Imaginarily I found the link! https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/october/a-guide-for-writers-authors-and-producers-1
Hi CC, Thanks for that. It's an awesome link. Sadly I wrote The Nephilim and published it over a year ago so it's a little late for me. And I won't be sending them an email because I suspect that if they fact check it they might find some issues - and damn it's too late to undo them! Cheers, Greg.
If I'd known, I would have made it public (on here) when I first looked into it myself in 2013-ish but I didn't so I couldn't ... However, it's there if you should need it in the future
So the FBI emailed me back, and apparently my entire premise goes against their policies. "No" to every single one of my questions. Looks like I'll need to dust off an old organization from my RP days. It fits the role perfectly, but it's entirely fictional so I get to make up the rules and no one can sin me for it.
OK, so you now have a choice: 1) Change the story to fit what would really happen. 2) Meet somewhere in the middle - make changes to the story and make changes to what the FBI said. 3) Go for complete fiction and write it your way. These all depend on how 'real' you want your story to be. At the end of the day, it's fiction and it's YOUR story. At least you know the way it should be done (from the FBI's point of view). And YOU GOT RESEARCH INFO FROM THE FBI!! THE FBI!! How cool is that?
@cutecat22 I can check it off my bucket list for sure. For the sake of the story, I have to go with option 3. I would have to change everything else about the plot if I wanted to keep the FBI accurate and realistic. So, fuck 'em. It doesn't have to be the FBI.
