Me and two buddies were taking a break from gaming at the casino. Then we were approached by this new guy. Definitely only been a regular for the last six months or so. He chatted us up about the current “hot” hustle games. I noticed one of my buddies acting more and more uncomfortable. When that guy walked away, I asked him what’s up. My buddy said he had strong suspicions that the new guy was a undercover cop. I, however, did not get those vibes.
New guy ranked each area casino in terms of security of their parking garages. Like presence/absence of cameras or lightness/darkness. He apparently knew the fitness requirements for security guards at the casino we were hanging out. Tall middle-aged guy with a buzzed haircut. Wears Underarmour. What creeped my friend out most was the new guy lied about his experience. When we asked what games did he play back in day, he couldn’t come up with any specific names. We have never seen this guy around, yet he claimed he has been around for years. Often.
I think this guy was just “dick measuring” when he tried to make himself appear more experienced than what he was. Dishonest? Yeah, but I dont think suspicious. As for his appearance and security knowledge, I think he was just an aging “suburban” guy who is paranoid about the city and its casinos becoming more “diverse”. My buddy disagreed with me. But why would WE be approached by a narc? Me and buddies dont engage in illegal activities. Who knows?
Have you ever encountered any narcs? Or believed you have? Share your stories.
I’ve definitely had people private message me randomly out of the blue on Reddit asking for weird stuff that I have no idea who they were or how they even knew my username. Like people asking for shady advice on how to buy a gun on reddit after I posted on a popular reddit gun board.
I don’t hang out in places that may have police informants or narcs around.
I used to go to the racetrack with my Daddy. There are always sketchy types at the track.
I’m absolutely certain illegal activities were happening on the down low.
I imagined the police were aware.
Police have need of informants.
Accept your new friend or not. If you’re legal, you have no problems.
Yes, quite a few times. My cousin (an actual drug dealer) had me accompany him to a bar where a guy wanted to sell him a fully automatic weapon and wanted me to go along as his backup. I didn’t sit with them when they spoke but observed from a couple of tables away. When he came over and desribed the conversation I told him to get out, that it was an undercover trying to set him up and we left.
Later I had a falling out with my cousin and in discussions with the police they brought up the bar incident and why he didn’t buy the gun. I met them a couple of times in bars after that and just nodded and chatted with them, then got out.
Evently my cousin was killed in a murder suicide over a drug deal gone bad.
I also had a couple of other times when I was 100% sure I was talking to a cop in a bar becasue they would sit and drink with me and streer the conversation into a specific incident that they should not have known about me being involved in.
One even came to my home in Pitssburgh pretending to be a magizen salesman, and the conversation went to my time in Columbus and the people we both knew. He brought up my ex-GF and it rang alarm bells, so I told him I knew he was a cop and asked him what he wanted to know about her but he wouldn’t say. Later I found out that she was convicted of a multi-million land fraud where she (a legal secretarty) would falsify and notorize land titles and take loans out on them.
Not a ‘narc’ per-se, but a couple of cops on what I think was a ‘fishing’ expedition.
Kind of a long story -
I was home alone. My wife was a little late getting home, but I was not too concerned. Now my house is passive solar, and rural. Really a perfect place to set up an MJ growing operation (this was before it was legal).
Two cop cars pull into my drive. One a D.A.R.E. car. Since my wife was a little late, I thought the worst. I nearly collapsed.
These two local cops said they where looking for someone that jumped bail and gave my address. This bail skipper skipped from another county and town 100 miles away. Now, understand that my address could not be found in phone books. This was also before it could be found on Google Maps or whatever.
They wanted to ‘look around’.
I really should have got their badge numbers and taken contemporaneous notes. It’s sort of a blurr. But I was so relieved that my wife had not had a car accident, I really didn’t care.
I really think they where pushing the limits of an illegal search.
In my freshman year at college, my roomie got into drugs in a big way. At one point, he was hanging with some sketchy looking guys. One day, he came into our room with a few of these guys and asked me to leave for a few minutes. Well, he was setting up some kind of deal. And you all know that these guys were narcs because it’s in this thread. A little while later, when I was going up the stairs back to the room, the sketchy guys were coming down, smiling. I said, “So I got the room back?” and they laughed and said, “Oh yeah, you got that room, all right.” By which they meant that I had to room to myself for the rest of the semester. I didn’t realize that until the next evening, when my roomie and his dad were moving out per campus rules. The narcs had busted him and a two or three other guys when he met them elsewhere for the deal.
If they don’t have the usual “cop tells” like moustaches or how ridiculous Rudy Giuliani (then a NYC DA) and Al D’amoto (Senator from NY) looked when they had some of the press see how easy they coud score some crack in Times Square in the 1980s, surprise surprise.
Yet as a friend once put it, “If they seem too cool to be cool.”
I’ve never encountered a narc, but I did know a former undercover cop. I did a stint of army reserve duty with her a few years back. Turns out that the police recruited her right out of the army, providing her with training during the day and having her work at a nightclub frequented by drug dealers during the night. She spent a year gathering evidence, and then the police chief held a press conference, introduced her as a cop (making her untouchable), and announced several indictments. Her undercover career over, she started serving as a uniformed patrolwoman.
Nice girl. Actually, more scary than nice, but we got along well.
Back in ‘06 just after my divorce, Yahoo had a dating site (eventually bought by Match and ruined). The site had “romance” chat rooms that were an absolute hoot. They were divided by State and the larger States had multiple rooms. A bunch of us regulars would show up frequently and have meetups. It was wild. Anyway, there was a function where you could request to have a private chat with people. About once a month I’d get a request and shortly into the conversation they’d reveal that they were really 16 or 17 years old. Immediate block obviously but I suspect most of them were narcs or Perverted Justice types rather than actual teens.
Back in my college IRC days, we’d troll people by pretending to be underage naifs in various channels. No real goal to it in that we weren’t looking to dox them and call the cops or throw rocks at their car, we were just having a laugh at their expense and wasting their time. The joke was that any 16 year old girl on IRC was actually a 22 year old male. Admittedly not the best possible use of our time but possible that a percentage of your narcs were just bored trolls playing with the creeps. Maybe you include bored trolling under “Perverted Justice” though.
I think it was about 80/20 to get a response. Usually it was a “Whoah, hey, we can’t talk”
One day years ago, my friends an I were walking down Venice Beach “boardwalk” people watching, and this one really huge dude caught my eye. His body language screamed “undercover cop” rather than “muscle beach lifter”. Anyway, we walked up a ways, came back, and dude was still standing in the same spot. Either he fell asleep standing up, or he was “on the job”, as they say in the tv shows.
The one that was really weird, we were trying to find a hotel (pre internet) in Hollywood/ Santa Monica area, so we pulled into one that didn’t look sketchy. While my friend goes into inquire about lodging, a bunch of skanky women all come up and…urged us to leave. Strongly. You’d think that if they were professional ladies of easy virtue, or peddlers of illegal substances, that they would want us as clients, not for us to skidaddle. I think someone even yelled at us from the balcony to leave NOW. It wasn’t like we could - our friend was inside. It was getting a bit…scary.
Finally he came back and we did leave, to more yelling. What was that all about? Maybe an undercover cop operation, or drug dealers who didn’t want to sell? To this day I have no idea.
I worked for the US Department of State for a number of years. A casually fun game was “who’s a spook”. It’s no secret that the CIA has people posted to embassies around the world, and a lot of them, like the Station Chief, are declared to the host country. But there is also an element that are there in a clandestine capacity, usually under the guise of “political officer” or “economic liaison” or some other cover. It can be a careful topic of conversation, but it’s a really bad idea to try to “out” someone, as you will likely end up on a plane headed for home and some unpleasant debriefing when you get there. While they’re good at hiding who they are from host nationals, most of them are not well briefed as to State Department jargon, departments, etc. So if you get a blank look when using a common acronym, it’s possible that you’re talking to a spook.
Waaay back, when I was a student, we used to hang around in a local pub where bands played (this was the late '70s, exciting times).
On two or three of occasions a couple of guys walked in who were so obviously Plain Clothes (as we would say) and Drug Squad that it was hard not to laugh. A good decade older than anyone else there, neat leather jacket and jeans… made you wonder if the clothes were standard issue.
I never understood that and always thought it was bullshit. I was never “undercover” but for several years I worked plain clothes. It’s not like I wore the same shoes in uniform that I wore in plain clothes. I own multiple pairs of shoes, almost like a real person.
