The Pros And Cons Of An Undercover Work

Being undercover is a job for individuals in the police force, who think they can live under the guise of lies in order to obtain justice and get the criminals. Despite the most important pro for undercover work, being that in the end you can get the criminal who was hard to get and very crafty in hiding their crimes from formal investigative techniques, the ends justify the means, even if the means has to deal with unethical situations, where a normal ethical officer could never partake in? For instance, during undercover work, an undercover officer may have to divert money to a particular individual or group in order to make a fake purchase, such as drugs or weapons, and then allow them to take the money into the larger operation. Effectively
The rationale behind the revere-sting operation, was in order to create a distrust for the dealers and create a risk for the buyers. The San Diego Police Department successfully committed undercover work in order to break down the foundation of street level drug dealing and also turned University Avenue into the polar opposite of what the area stood for before. University Avenue was the violent area that also happened to be the area to buy drugs, but the undercover work broken that image down and brought up the area into a booming business area. As far as ethics concerned, the undercover officers did everything in a fair and good ethical manner, there was rarely anything that could be considered as a bad or borderline ethically bad. The ethically positive aspect in this scenario was that the officer did not bring in citizens who had nothing to do with the drug ring, but instead only contained their scope to those the individuals who were already coming to the area to buy
Undercover work requires that the officer going undercover must be what Delattre describes as the excellent type, an officer who does not succumb to corruptive behaviors and is able to do their duty day in and day out to the best of their ability; ethically. The officer must be deceitful to everyone and anyone he meets, in order to maintain their cover, an officer can’t be truthful to even his fellow officers, for the undercover officer’s job is to maintain cover and investigate what their commanding officers are asking of them. One of the ethical problems officers face while initiating undercover work is entrapment, for officers often have to walk the thin line of entrapment. Undercover people often have to gain dirt on criminals, but at the same time, not give the idea and coerce them to commit a crime. Constantly officers have to deal with that dilemma and sometimes officers do cross the line, in order to catch the criminal in the act and prevent them from committing more crime. For instance, female officers sometimes dress up as prostitutes in order to solicit others to enact in anti-prostitutions laws. Vice versa occurs too, Male officers often pose as the service buyer and illicit prostitutes to offer their