I would imagine there would be a thread or two already asking and answering this question.
It’s a standard element of cop shows dealing with murder investigations for example. The investigating officer promises to overlook card shark/prostitute/conman/etc.'s wrongdoing in exchange for information that will help solve the murder. Does this happen in real life? Do police let people off the hook if they’re useful to the investigation?
Not that I know the True Facts, but wouldn’t you, if you had a choice between solving a murder and a virtual misdemeanor? Or, speaking as a taxpayer, who do you most want off the streets, a murderer or a dealer?
I have/have had commissioned peace officers in my family. They tell me that narcotics informants generally do what they do in exchange for leniency towards their own illegal activities.
Happens all the time. Small time crooks are the grease in the wheels of justice. Sometimes it gets very greasey.
Just saw an episode of the First 48 last night. Homicide cop, looking for a person of interest, scooped a guy who had a bag of pot. Knowing full well he was on TV, the homicide cop cheerfully told the dude that he was homicide, not narcotics, and if dude played ball there’d be no trouble with the weed. It’s just how the system works.
Well, given that prosecutors will grant a criminal immunity from a charge (or reduce it to a lesser charge) in order to get them to testify against their co-conspirators, it would surprise me if police officers didn’t do the same sort of thing (albeit less officially).
In my younger days had a detective come to door looking for a flatmate over an armed robbery (it wasnt him btw). Totally ignored the sweet marijuana smell coming from the hallway as he had much bigger fish to fry.
Yes, about 25 years ago my youngest brother and a pal of his were driving a white van through London - it reeked, they were smoking, and they got stopped by police checking for the IRA. No Problem.
An inverse case is a few years ago, I was ambling from one pub to another when I saw a bunch of policemen marking out about 100 ft of road. I politely asked one of them what they were up to, he told me the were looking for unlicenced cars. Fine, but then up trotted what could be charitably called a ‘mental defective’ who said ‘are you looking for the guys who did … ?’
The policeman sent him on his way, at which point I put on my sage act and said ‘I think you might have missed something there’
The policeman (constable) replied in a girlish manner ‘You have been drinking, I don’t want to talk to you anymore’.
Sad really, the constable was old enough to know better and the ‘defective’ had come from the worst dens of iniquity in the neighborhood, a little island of iniquity in a sea of high rent.