Yeah, No. That works on TV, but not the real world. I have worked undercover, trained and supervised undercover officers. I have dealt with confidential informants. The key to an undercover operation is plausibility. Don’t believe me? Take the advice of two of the greatest investigators ever.
Our day to day undercover operation targeted street level drug dealers and their connections. Inexperienced narcs just couldn’t understand why the black guy, selling fifty packs on the corner, ran screaming when a strange white boy showed up talking about buying a kilo.
The simple reason is if the buyer was serious and had the ability to do what he said, never in a million years would the street corner guy be involved. Big dope deals just don’t start out that way.
The reverse is also true. If Sonny Crockett pulled up to a street corner hustler offering to buy a fifty pack, chances are he’s going to get jacked. Anybody that stupid doesn’t deserve a car like that.
The first hurdle is FBI ego. Bribery, corruption whatever you want to call it, is complete, once the target agrees to provide a service for compensation. The compensation can be money, “stuff” or sex or the promise of sex.
We have all heard, maybe even stated at one time, “He did that for (fill in the blank). I’d never do that, for that amount. Think about it. The statement establishes a felonious bent. All that remains is establishing a price.
Somehow or other the FBI thinks a crooked politician who accepts a $30,000 bribe is more crooked than one who accepts a $300 bribe. America is based on the premise that if one applies himself and works hard, one can get ahead. Prospects for a $30,000 bribe are few and far between. But a crooked pol with a work ethic can steal $300 eight or nine times a day, five days a week.
A case in point. Who would ever stoop to ripping off quarters from copying machines? John R Buonomo, a good democrat from Massachusetts.
Judge allows convicted Somerville official’s pension
$39,000 a year, despite larceny
By Sean P. Murphy and John R. Ellement Globe Staff,May 3, 2012, 6:56 p.m.2
For the second time, a judge has agreed that a former Middlesex register of probate, John R. Buonomo, will continue to collect his Somerville pension even though he was convicted of stealing $100,000 in cash from state copying machines when he was an elected official.
The decision by Superior Court Judge Thomas Murtagh forces the Somerville Retirement Board to continue paying Buonomo a pension of about $39,000 a year for his years as a Somerville alderman, a school committee member, and the city’s human resources director in the early 1980s.
How would I do it? Give me $500 in used bills, an eightball of cocaine, a fifth of cheap whisky, a big titted blond and a beach boy type. I’ll make a case on every politician in the country, one at a time.
I’l return the blond and beach boy, unused. At the sound of a zipper opening the politicians will be done. They will be ready for a cigarette, eight hours of sleep and a bowl of Wheaties.
The problem, of course, is that the effort isn’t to stomp out corruption. It is to identify the really stupid corrupt pols and use them as an example. The message goes out loud and clear. There are rules to being corrupt, follow them. To the public, the message is, we’re working oh so hard…
