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xironxin/Post to Journal Home/You are viewing your journal/View Recent Comments/ Trickster’s whisper [Most Recent Entries] Below are the most recent journal entries recorded in xironxin’s InsaneJournal: Saturday, January 1st, 2000, 7:49 am

From the Mafia to the Hells Angels What It Takes to Go Undercover

A common urban legend, which floats frequently among prostitutes and drug dealers, as well as in the public at large, holds that if an undercover police officer is asked if he is a cop, he must admit it. Otherwise, the legend says, the police officer has committed “entrapment” and if he then arrests a person for a crime the person will be acquitted. This scenario, propagated in part by popular police television dramas is not true. While there is an “entrapment defense” which, if established, entitles a defendant to an acquittal, the fact that a police officer lies to a suspect about being an officer does not establish the defense.

This legend is commonly believed because many people believe that police are not allowed to use deception in the course of their law enforcement duties. In fact, courts give officers wide latitude to use deception in undercover operations, interrogations, and other areas for a several reasons. First, criminal suspects are not expected to be honest with the police, so police must be allowed to use deception as well in order to “level the playing field” and allow the officers the necessary latitude to catch criminals.

Second, without the use of deception, undercover operations would not be possible. The very act of an officer posing as a drug purchaser or prostitute is, in and of itself, an act of deception. Without this deception, however, courts note that it would be extremely difficult to fight drug and vice crimes. Finally, a rule which would require an undercover officer to identify himself as such to a drug dealer, upon request, would place officers in an especially dangerous situation.

In most jurisdictions, to establish a defense of “entrapment” a defendant must establish three separate and distinct factors. These factors are commonly referred to as the “subjective test” of entrapment, because they focus on the subjective intentions of a criminal defendant rather than on the conduct of the undercover officer.

Well…All this is just benevolent theory. Let’s see a little practice (aka the hideous simple truth):

MEMPHIS POLICE BEAT TRANSSEXUAL – CAUGHT ON TAPE.
“The video, recorded February 12th, shows Duanna Johnson in the booking area at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center after an arrest for prostitution.The tape clearly shows a Memphis police officer walk over to Johnson – a transsexual – and hit her in the face several times.”

“Saturday September 26 2009″ – “Three undercover officers attempt to infiltrate a March Against Police Brutality at the University of Pittsburgh, but fail miserably due to their horrendous disguise attempts. During the march, one of them breaks a photographer’s camera. This is just one example of a larger pattern of attempts to silence the media during the G20 protests.”

Time splinted, yet strangely linked with all this, what do we get?
William Moulton Marston was a Renaissance man: He earned a law degree and a doctorate in psychology, and published “Emotions of Normal People.” He also made a significant scientific contribution when his wife, Elizabeth, remarked to him that when she “became angry or excited her blood pressure seemed to climb.” This sparked an idea in her husband, resulting in his developing of the polygraph (otherwise known as the lie detector).
In 1940, Olive Byrne (his former student from Tufts) interviewed Dr. Marston for the magazine Family Circle. The piece was titled “Don’t Laugh at the Comics,” and in it he promoted the concept that comics possessed educational potential as they at least got kids reading. The article caught the attention of Maxwell Charles Gaines, who hired Marston as a consultant for his company, DC Comics. William wanted to create a superheroine who would serve as a role model for girls. For his inspiration he needed to look no farther than his wife, Elizabeth (Sadie) Holloway Marston

William Moulton Marston hoists aloft his bride, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, during a 1916 summer vacation in New Hampshire. Two years later they would earn law degrees on opposite sides of the Charles River. Archival photographs and original Wonder Woman material courtesy of Moulton “Pete” Marston.

In an era when most women did not attend university, Elizabeth obtained a master’s degree in psychology from Holyoke College. When husband William entered Harvard to study law, she wanted to join him, but the Ivy League university excluded women. Instead, women had to go to Harvard’s sister school, Radcliffe. Elizabeth rejected that choice, dismissing it as “lovely law for ladies,” and headed instead to Boston University.
Post-graduation, Elizabeth embarked on a 35-year working career. Some of her jobs included indexing the documents of the first fourteen Congresses; lecturing on law, ethics, psychology at New York universities; and working as an editor for Encyclopedia Britannia and McCall’s magazine. She waited until age 35 to have her first baby and then promptly returned to work.
She is 111 years now. Last week she was kind enough to send me this vid (we both laughed about): …

Funny, huh?  And now, to the original text:

A.O.L. /ASYLUM For All Mankind / MAIN / Aug 4th-2010 By Dan Solomon

From the Mafia to the Hells Angels — What It Takes to Go Undercover

In order to better understand what it’s like to actually work undercover, we asked Jay Dobyns, the ATF agent who successfully infiltrated the Hells Angels (and wrote a book about the experience), and Jack Garcia, who very nearly became a made man with the Gambino crime family, to help separate myth from reality and tell us what it’s really like. “Serving as an undercover agent sounds thrilling — creating a fake identity, running around with criminals, infiltrating secret organizations. But everything we think we know about the trade of being an undercover agent comes from TV and movies.” Talking to Dobyns and Garcia, one thing becomes clear: TV and movies may offer a slightly exaggerated view of the life of an undercover agent, but the reality of the situation is anything but boring.  

Creating a Cover Identity
There are various styles for creating a cover identity, but neither Dobyns nor Garcia suggests treating it like you’re rolling up a D&D character. “Some guys are pure method actors,” Dobyns says. “But I was never able to do that. I’ve always been a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of guy. I’d talk to the suspects in the case the same way I’d talk to anybody.” Garcia concurs, for the most part: “I didn’t do any outlandish background creation” he says, though entering the Mafia ranks, where most members grew up in the same neighborhood and have long family ties, required some specific details to be in place. “I was supposed to be a guy who just came in from Miami, so I found a cemetery that had a husband and wife with the same last name I was using, in case I was in Florida and the subjects in the case wanted to test me by going to visit their graves.” So, while it’s important to have a few details in place to add veracity to your story, keeping your personality in place is equally key. “I never was very good at switching back and forth” Dobyns adds. “Even playing the hardass, I still had a smile on my face. I was operating in a very brutal, violent world, but I’d just be who I was. I’m kind of a goof and I never tried to tone that down. It made me very real. There are guys who that annoyed — they viewed me as being immature — but if I tried to play a straight-up, hard-guy hitman, that’d just wear on people. Staying very true to who I am made me more believable. I don’t need to show up in a black trench coat and black gloves with a frickin’ assassination kit in a briefcase.”

How to Get In
Garcia, who’s described as the best undercover agent in FBI history, explains: Either you have a cold hit, where you go in on your own, or you get an introduction through an informant. When going the latter route, the way the informant is perceived is going to deeply impact the way the undercover agent is perceived. To that end, Garcia says that the first step is to figure out who the informant is and why he’s flipped: “You have to find out why this person’s joined Team America. What’s that all about? If he’s a good, well-regarded informant, then you don’t need much to get in.” When infiltrating the Gambino crime family, Garcia says, “I knew the mob would do their homework” hence all of the family details. And, with the help of Miami-based informants who could hook him up with references, he was able to bring “Jack Falcone” into the family. For Dobyns, the key to getting in was keeping his character straight. “I had a persona that was all-encompassing. I could take this character and put him in the middle of traditional Crips and Bloods gangbangers or into high-level, high-money kingpin types and make that person play across the board. I let the imaginations of the suspects take me there.”

Making Friends
There are a few tough challenges once you’re in a deep-cover situation, Dobyns and Garcia both noted. It can be hard not to become friends with some of the suspects in a case, and there are times when people in the group you’re in with expect you to do something that’s illegal, immoral or unethical. Dealing with these challenges is one of the more interesting parts of undercover work. “It’s human nature, when you go into a group, to find that there are people you like and have compassion for” Dobyns says. “And I don’t think there’s a way to act your way through being human.” So, how do you bust the same people you’ve grown to like? “I’m not allowed the discretion to make street decisions on who’s accountable for their crimes” Dobyns explains. “If I have two people in front of me, and Person One is someone I like, and Person Two is a nasty person I don’t care for, I don’t have the ability to say, ‘I’m not going to hold Person One accountable, but Person Two, I don’t like you. You’re going to prison.”

Can You Break the Law? “I took an oath,” explains Garcia. “We’re in the business of preventing crime, not creating crime. In the event that I had to whack somebody, I was going to feign a heart attack, and that’d give me enough time to make a phone call and get these guys arrested, or at least get the guy out. We don’t have any business crossing the line. Ultimately, this is just an investigative technique to put bad guys in jail.” Dobyns, who concurs with Garcia’s assessment, also points out another reason not to break the law in the course of an investigation: “One of the most common defenses in court is ‘outrageous government conduct.’ The defense attorney will argue, ‘My guy might be bad, but this government agent was worse than my guy. Why is my guy on trial and this guy’s allowed to act like this?”

OK. How should we end (for now) all this shit? mmm… let’s see again:

- Jay Dobyns fails to complete his mission into infiltrating and prosecuting the Hells Angels.

Jay Dobbins is little more than a lying rat bastard. He commited crime after crime in the name of “law enforcement”? Painting all the Hell’s Angels with a broad brush as criminals because of the actions of a few. To say ALL HA’s are criminals because of the actions of a few is like saying ALL blacks are criminals, or ALL mexicans are drug dealers. Yeah, Jay made his name, wrote his books, and then what? Spends the rest of his life in hiding. His house has been torched, his family is a target and the FED’s have treated him like the rat he is by not supporting their boy wonder. That is why he has had to sue his employer, the ATF. It seems now even the feds are not willing to help this rat. I guess it’s true, you should NOT throw stones when you live in a glass whorehouse. Somebody should have told Jay that before he decided to live his life as a rat.

Thursday 12 August By Xiron Xin Neutral

A common urban legend, which floats frequently among prostitutes and drug dealers, as well as in the public at large, holds that if an undercover police officer is asked if he is a cop, he must admit it. Otherwise, the legend says, the police officer has committed “entrapment” and if he then arrests a person for a crime the person will be acquitted. This scenario, propagated in part by popular police television dramas is not true. While there is an “entrapment defense” which, if established, entitles a defendant to an acquittal, the fact that a police officer lies to a suspect about being an officer does not establish the defense. This legend is commonly believed because many people believe that police are not allowed to use deception in the course of their law enforcement duties. In fact, courts give officers wide latitude to use deception in undercover operations, interrogations, and other areas for a several reasons. First, criminal suspects are not expected to be honest with the police, so police must be allowed to use deception as well in order to “level the playing field” and allow the officers the necessary latitude to catch criminals. Second, without the use of deception, undercover operations would not be possible. The very act of an officer posing as a drug purchaser or prostitute is, in and of itself, an act of deception. Without this deception, however, courts note that it would be extremely difficult to fight drug and vice crimes. Finally, a rule which would require an undercover officer to identify himself as such to a drug dealer, upon request, would place officers in an especially dangerous situation. In most jurisdictions, to establish a defense of “entrapment” a defendant must establish three separate and distinct factors. These factors are commonly referred to as the “subjective test” of entrapment, because they focus on the subjective intentions of a criminal defendant rather than on the conduct of the undercover officer.

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(http://www.asylum.com/2010/08/04/going-undercover-jat-dobyns-hells-angels-jack-garcia-gambino-crime-family/5)