![]() The candidate should be a good overall law enforcement officer and a good investigator. The traits desired for a good undercover officer are not much different from those of any good investigator they are just more critical. What we have learned in this business-not always the easy way-is that the proper selection of undercover officers can increase the chances for a successful prosecution and increase the chances for a safe outcome. The selection of the proper undercover officers has a lot to do with the overall safety of the investigation. The operation is a success only if all the officers survive to go home to their families. It is not enough that the undercover investigation gathers evidence or causes prosecutions. If our objective is to perform undercover operations effectively and safely, then we must give careful attention to the choice of officers selected to work undercover. So, while undercover operations are very useful law enforcement tools, their inherent risks make it imperative that we do our utmost to protect our undercover officers from the perils associated with the assignment. Narcotics investigations are the likeliest to use undercover operations and are the likeliest to involve injuries or deaths. The vast majority of police undercover investigations in the United States today involve criminal narcotics activity. ![]() Most often, of course, undercover operations are used to gather evidence on specific crimes, to thwart criminals who may be planning a crime and to facilitate the making of arrests and seizures. Your objective may be to find out what kinds of criminal activity are taking place in your jurisdiction, to plan the use of resources or to try to keep a jump ahead of criminal patterns. Undercover operations can gather intelligence that would otherwise go unknown. Relatively unused before the 1960s, the undercover investigative technique is widely used today with excellent results. These include crimes of narcotics, firearms and terrorism. However, many modern criminal activities are only vulnerable to this investigative technique. Police managers would have a less stressful job if their subordinates never worked undercover. ![]() Properly structured undercover operations, however, can offer a high degree of safety. Placing officers in undercover roles exposes them to some physical and emotional dangers not normally present in police work. Those gains, however, are not without their price. They allow you to penetrate criminal organizations not susceptible to other investigative techniques. To those engaged in police investigations, undercover operations offer the opportunity for increased efficiency. Currently he is involved in law enforcement training and consulting. During that period he served as a field agent in several offices, as a field supervisor and in several headquarters assignments that included three years on the DEA faculty at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Burton served as a Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration from 1970-1995.
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