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Is there any place I can research undercover police procedure?

H

harmonica44

For my screenplay idea, I tried asking several police as well as others, who are not cops but are connected to the business, but they cannot go into any specifics of undercover procedures, which is understandable.

But I would like to make my script believable to the reader, so I was wondering if there is any place where writers can research those kinds of things.

I have bought some police procedure books for writers in the past, but they do not go really that much into the undercover side of things, aside from the basics, which does not really help in more specific scenarios.

Is their any place where writers can research those things more accurately?
 
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harmonica44 said:
they cannot go into any specifics of undercover procedures
Click to expand...

From this fact alone you can conclude that there is no publicly available resource to read about their procedures.

You can call the non-emergency police and ask to speak to a high ranking officer (whatever that title is in canada) and tell them you're a writer and maybe you'll get lucky and they will come to some sort of arrangement with you.

You can be lucky and have a friend that is police officer and will speak to you privately off the record in confidence.

These are your only two options.
Personally I would ignore them both and focus on a believable story rooted in common sense.
 
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Okay thanks. Well I keep hearing from everyone that undercover cops work alone, but it seems that would get in the way of common sense.

For example, I have written out a new draft for a story of mine, and looked it over. There is a scenario in it that feels like a plot hole to me.

Basically a cop who is undercover, recruits himself into a gang, as his assignment. He doesn't know who any of the gang members are though at this point. He gets an anonymous email, from an untraceable source, saying to be at a certain place, which is secluded and out of the city, at a certain time, on a certain night. The gang says they will meet him and see if he has what it takes, to become a member, or has some special talent they could use him for.

He goes there to meet them, and they search him, seeing that he is not wired or having anything on him that would make him a cop. One of the gang members recognizes him as a cop from before, though, and things go awry, needless to say, and the police force never finds out what happened that night.

Looking it over, I thought this might be a plot hole because the undercover officer was alone, and no other cops were monitoring him from far away, just to see if things were okay. Also, the cops do not know who any of the gang members, are so I thought they would also want to come to see if they can get any leads on any of them, like cars or anything.

I asked others opinions on and they said they didn't think it was a plot hole, because undercover cops work alone all the time. You see it in movies and TV where they are working alone all the time.

And even though this true, there is still something about no other cops choosing to monitor him that doesn't feel right. It just bothers me, like I have trouble believing it. I am thinking too hard, and it actually is believable since undercover cops work alone all the time? Would he tell his superiors that he made contact with the gang, and he is going to meet them to see if he has what it takes to get in, and the superiors will just say good luck, and not give him any back up to survey from afar?

Or is that just how undercover work is, and it's normal to not monitor the officer at all, even on a first meeting?
 
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Okay thanks. I have watched a lot of them and I have seen it go both ways, so I do not know what the reader will believe, since movies are kind of all over the place with it.
 
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There are thousands of books on Amazon about undercover police work. Fiction, nonfiction, legal reference... literally thousands. If you're willing to spend a few dollars there is no shortage of information right available to you.
 
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"OK, thanks. But book A says the opposite of book B."

That is context.
If every undercover job was the same, they could always do the same and get the same outcome. But that is not how life works.
 
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