Working undercover assignments isnt something most police officers get to do; around less than two percent of officers take on an undercover role in their careers. A good undercover officer is essential in complex cases. They covertly gather vital intelligence to make cases against criminals. The work is demanding, exciting and dangerous, and it isnt for everybody. Well take you through some of the basics of being an undercover officer.
Becoming an undercover police officer is no easy feat. It takes years of dedication, specific skills, and a strong resolve. Undercover work is complex, dangerous, and not for everyone. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through the steps to become an undercover cop and what the job really entails.
The Basic Qualifications
First and foremost you need to meet the base requirements to become a police officer. This includes being a U.S. citizen, having a high school diploma or GED, being at least 18-21 years old depending on department policy and having a valid driver’s license. You cannot have any felony convictions or disqualifying criminal history. Meeting these prerequisites allows you to enter police academy training.
Attending The Academy
All aspiring cops must complete police academy training. This usually lasts around 19-25 weeks and teaches you the fundamentals of law enforcement Expect intense physical conditioning, self-defense techniques, firearms training, traffic stops, investigation skills, and education on laws and civil rights. You’ll undergo scenario-based exercises to learn proper conduct, judgement, and responses in the field Academy graduates earn the title of police officer trainee.
Field Training After The Academy
New police officers complete 4-12 weeks of field training while partnered with a veteran officer This on-the-job phase covers how to write reports, respond to calls, conduct investigations, make arrests, and perform other essential duties You’ll be evaluated on your performance and must exhibit competence to pass field training. After this, you become a fully sworn police officer.
Gaining Years of Experience
Most departments require at least 2-5 years of patrol experience before allowing officers to pursue undercover work. This ensures you gain critical knowledge of police protocols, local crime trends, and how to conduct investigations by the book. The undercover role requires honed critical thinking and operation planning skills. Time on the streets builds your qualifications.
Specialized Undercover Training
Undercover officers receive specialized instruction on clandestine operations, sting procedures, informant handling, surveillance methods, and covert evidence gathering. You’ll learn how to effectively go “deep cover” in assuming a false identity and infiltrating criminal networks. This provides the techniques you’ll need for successful undercover missions. The training equips you to collect evidence and build solid cases leading to arrests.
Volunteer Experience Undercover
Some aspiring undercover cops get valuable experience by volunteering to work in plainclothes assignments during their years on patrol. This allows you to sharpen your observation and stealth skills needed for undercover duty. The added seasoning can strengthen your case when applying for a full-time undercover position down the road.
Mastering The Cover Identity
Undercover operatives need a completely convincing cover story and identity to avoid exposure during missions. This includes false names, employment history, documents, appearance changes, accents, mannerisms, and more. You essentially take on a secret alter ego. Mastering these disguises and sticking to your legend requires meticulous preparation and discipline.
Personality Traits For Success
In addition to police skills, undercover officers need specific personality strengths:
- Adaptable and quick-thinking
- Calm and level-headed under stress
- Excellent listening and communication skills
- Ability to project confidence
- Strong powers of observation
- Patient and measured self-control
- Subtle over expressive
- Empathetic to connect with suspects
This work demands keeping cool while gathering intel and evidence without tipping off criminals to your true identity. Your life and case outcomes depend on it.
Rigorous Psych Screening
Applicants for undercover positions undergo rigorous psychological screening and testing. You’ll be assessed on mental toughness, integrity, maturity, sound judgement, and ability to cope with constant pressures. Undercover cops face more occupational hazards than regular officers. Vetting ensures you can handle the demands.
Top Physical Conditioning
Plainclothes work requires top physical stamina, strength, and defensive tactics skills should your cover be blown. You may have to run, fight, or exert yourself without backup. Staying in peak shape improves safety and outcomes during unpredictable, high-risk situations that can arise during covert ops.
Accepting Personal Sacrifices
Undercover officers make huge personal and family sacrifices. You must conceal your real profession and activities from almost everyone, even off-duty. There’s little room for normal social lives or relationships due to the clandestine nature of the work. Anonymity is paramount for safety and secrecy. Count the costs carefully before pursuing this path.
High Threat Environment
Undercover duties are inherently more dangerous than conventional police roles. You have to rub elbows with hardened criminals while hiding your true identity. This increases exposure to violence from suspects if they discover they are under investigation. Tactics training mitigates risks, but undercover work remains extremely hazardous. Accepting these realities is mandatory.
Special Assignment Units
Most undercover officers work in dedicated plainclothes investigation or narcotics task force units. Competition is fierce for coveted assignments to these elite teams after proving yourself on regular duty. Only the most qualified and experienced officers make the cut. Be prepared to pay your dues before advancing.
Partnering With Informants
A key aspect of undercover operations is cultivating and handling criminal informants. This involves building trust to convince suspects to share information covertly with police. It takes skill managing these relationships while protecting informants’ identities. Their intel can make or break big cases.
Long, Irregular Hours
Plainclothes assignments involve many nights, weekends, and holidays tracking suspects for evidence. Stakeouts, surveillance, and infiltrating crime rings don’t follow a 9-5 schedule. The job brings relentless demands and pressure to close cases, so brace yourself for an unpredictable, taxing schedule.
Prioritizing Case Secrecy
Maintaining utter secrecy about the specifics of undercover cases is paramount. You cannot jeopardize operations or lives by revealing details to those outside your unit. This need-to-know isolation includes your own family members. Learn to evade questions about your activities. Discretion is a prerequisite.
Advanced Interrogation Tactics
Undercover cops become masters at interrogation techniques to extract confessions from apprehended suspects. Trickery, mind games, evidence bluffs, and psychological ploys are often deployed in the interrogation room. While controversial, these advanced tactics can elicit critical case evidence.
Is Undercover Work Right For You?
Being an undercover cop takes immense personal sacrifice, discipline, resilience, and acceptance of risks. Make sure your priorities and ethics align with the harsh realities before embarking on this career route within law enforcement. If you’re committed to justice and have the right stuff, police undercover work can be profoundly rewarding.
Types of Undercover Assignments
There are different types (or levels) of undercover assignments. The easiest (and the one with which most officers get their feet wet) is the drive-up purchase. A local informant usually accompanies the undercover officer. The two drive around the city and make street-level purchases from dealers on street corners.
Usually, the undercover comes in from another city for one nights work. A good informant can make introductions to many dealers they know. A combination of a good undercover with a good informant can produce six or more cases in a single night. An experienced undercover may even drive to neighborhood hot spots by themselves, making street purchases while a surveillance team watches from a distance to identify the dealer.
The rule for these buys is that the money must go from the undercover officers hand directly to the dealer. In addition, the drugs must go from the dealers hand directly to the undercover. The only other question is whether the undercover can positively identify the seller or not. Some vehicles contain hidden audio and video recording systems for this purpose. If not, a surveillance vehicle may drive by during or just after the sale to make the identification.
During drive-up purchases, several rules are essential for officer safety. When attempting street buys, dont let the dealer get into the vehicle and dont get out of the car. Pull up and stop, but keep the car in drive. A dark alley or other compromising location is not a good place to park. Never agree to pay more than the normal street price for drugs. Lastly, if a buy doesnt feel right or the undercover has a hunch something may go wrong, they should drive away.
The single-home visit is the next level of undercover work. Officers develop information that narcotics, guns or some other illegal commodity is being sold from a residence. An informant accompanies the officer to the house and makes the introduction. The undercover poses as a buyer and purchases from the dealer. If successful, the officer will have completed a sale case on the dealer and provided probable cause for a search warrant of the premises (read our officers guide to preparing and executing a search warrant for more information on how theyre obtained).
A home visit is more difficult, as dealers are normally suspicious of any new faces. The undercover officers job is to sell a simple story, making the dealer comfortable enough to sell to them. Most of these cases will be one-and-done — but not always.
Sometimes, a single-home visit buy can turn into something bigger. If the dealer takes a liking to the undercover, then the investigating officer may encourage the undercover to “buy them up.” This means the undercover continues to make weekly buys, each bigger than the last. These multiple buys can be used to demonstrate a continuing criminal enterprise. They also increase the seriousness of the charges as the quantity of drugs sold increases. Most importantly, multiple-sale cases may eventually lead the seller to reveal their supplier to the undercover officer.
There are times when an informant identifies a location that distributes narcotics, but they refuse to make an introduction. Undercovers can deal with this hindrance by making a cold call. A cold call is when the undercover attempts to talk their way in simply by using the informants name. Many times this doesnt work, but occasionally it will. One important thing to remember is that dealers do what they do for the money, and they are greedy. The undercover can use that greed to their advantage.
In one case, an undercover requisitioned a case of untaxed cigarettes that were seized in a different investigation. When speaking with a dealer, the undercover used the story that the cigarettes were from a burglary in another town. The burglary story gave the undercover some credibility with the dealer. Seeing the value, the dealer, acting greedily, welcomed the undercover and traded the cigarettes for drugs. The officer even took an order from the dealer for more cigarettes. Police later raided the house and seized both the drugs and most of the cigarettes. While the undercover didnt use an informant in this case, they successfully cold called the dealer and, with the right cover story, eventually took him down.
When transferred to narcotics, the first thing most detectives do is grow long hair and a beard. This may change their appearance, but thats about it. It may be a good disguise if theyre pretending to be an addict, but many dealers themselves are clean cut. A good undercover can buy dealer-level weight in drugs in a suit and tie, provided they act the part and drive up in the right car.
Being successful as an undercover requires several traits. First, the officer has to be a good liar when interacting with drug dealers; they have to be able to think on their feet and not get tongue-tied. Most importantly, though, an undercover must be able to keep their nerves under control. A nervous or jumpy buyer is a dead giveaway.
Undercover officers have to have their story down cold, as well as rehearsed answers to the most common questions dealers tend to ask, like:
- Where are you from?
- How do you know (the informants name)?
- Where do you sell?
- Do you want to sample the product?
- How do I know youre not a cop?
If an officer can not convincingly answer these questions without hesitation, theyre not ready to progress past staying in the car and doing drive-up buys.
Attitude is the most significant part of playing an undercover role. Undercover officers have to have a streetwise attitude. They cant allow themselves to be manipulated or controlled. If the dealer changes a meeting location, the undercover must be able either to say no or to change the meet time to maintain the upper hand. The undercover must stay in control and not let the dealer call all the shots.
Undercovers should also have a passive, almost apathetic attitude toward most drug deals (its supposed to be just business to them, after all). They should negotiate drug prices during a sale, but dealers all know that only a cop would pay a higher price for drugs than the normal going rate on the street. From their perspective as an officer of the law, a cop may be thinking, “What do I care if I spend an extra fifty bucks? Its not my money and Im just making a sale case.”
However, the cop should be thinking as a drug dealer would in order to maintain their cover. “If I pay an extra fifty bucks, it cuts into my profits. No way.” When playing the role of a dealer, officers have to think and act as a dealer would.
A successful undercover operation is always a team effort. Many officers working undercover work outside their ordinary jurisdiction; this lessens the possibility of running into someone who might recognize them as a cop. The agency working with the undercover officer should provide them with a photograph and a full briefing on the intended targets. If theyre working with an informant, the department should introduce the undercover and give sufficient time for both to get their stories synced.
When meeting with a dealer, most undercover officers wear a concealed audio device, or a wire (make sure to read our officers guide to wiretap investigations). The undercovers backup team should include one person responsible for monitoring the wire. This is one of the most critical jobs of the entire operation. If the undercover gets into trouble, the person monitoring the audio is responsible for sending help. Some undercover officers insist on using a partner from their own agency to monitor the wire as a matter of comfort and familiarity.
Most undercover officers have a prearranged code word or phrase in case they get into trouble. A good code word should be a word that can easily be spoken by the undercover officer without the target realizing whats going on. Only the backup team should know that the undercover is calling for help.
Some members of the team act as surveillance units, keeping track of the undercovers physical location. The final group consists of backup officers who must be ready to make an emergency forced entry if things turn bad.
When working undercover in narcotics, the most significant danger isnt being identified as a cop; rather, its “the rip.” A rip occurs when a dealer agrees to sell the undercover a quantity of drugs for a price, but when the officer shows up with the money, they are immediately robbed. Sometimes, theyre beaten up. On rare occasions theyre even killed. The general rule is the larger the cash transaction, the greater chance of walking into a rip. Always remember: if something doesnt feel right, walk away.
Reasons Undercover Officers are Used
Police officers go undercover to accomplish several types of objectives. Assignments may involve infiltrating a criminal organization to learn their operation, identify their members and build cases against them (though these assignments are rare). Most undercover cases involve an officer buying contraband. This can include stolen merchandise or guns, but the vast majority of cases involve buying drugs to bust dealers.
Police Officers : How to Become an Undercover Police Officer
How do I become an undercover cop?
So, to become an undercover cop, you first need to get hired as a police officer, get several years of experience, and get promoted up the ranks. At the minimum, you’ll need a high school diploma, but some police forces prefer candidates with at least some college experience or a degree in criminal justice.
Do undercover police officers need a degree?
Undercover police officers aren’t required to have a formal degree, but they do typically need several years of experience on the police force, plus a very specific set of skills. The table below gives you a brief overview of the profession. Source: *U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics What Do Undercover Cops Do?
How are undercover police officers selected?
The police department selection process for undercover police jobs will include an intensive background check, oral interview and polygraph examination. Although undercover police officers may be exposed to criminal activity, they are not usually permitted to have committed any serious crimes in their own past.
How long does a police officer have to be undercover?
After a period of two to three years, some police departments will allow patrol officers to request undercover duties. Whereas, other police departments require patrol officers to spend more years patrolling the streets or years working as a detective in order to acquire familiarity with the local criminal network and undercover police procedures.
