This is what a lawyer acquaintance of mine told me once about these hypothetical situations. The usual legal recourse if someone fails to follow through on a contract (verbal or paper) is to sue for redress. The court will not enforce an illegal contract - whether it’s lottery tickets or narcotics or sharing proceeds from a robbery, doesn’t matter. If you and Fred agree to do something against the law, the courts aren’t going to help you collect from Fred if he stiffs you on the payment or takes your goods.
Of course, that does not address possession, theft, or criminal conspiracy charges - which may or may not require different levels of proof and may result against one side or both.
A drug dealer lending money to a long-time client who’s identity he knows is not remotely like your fantasy of an 'illicit goods dealer" who has a big shop where people can walk through, grab stuff, and pay later. People who deal drugs routinely use violence and the threat of violence to protect themselves and collect money, even though it’s illegal. It is really rare for them to go ‘OMG that is illegal, I have to stop’.
My only experience with drugs was a bit of experimenting in high school, but the kids in my church were much more into it, including one guy “Fred” who was a small time dealer. Fred shared an apartment with several guys including a mutual friend “Sam” who never did drugs.
Some people broke in and held them at gun point while searching for their drugs. Fortunately no one was hurt, but Fred and the others wouldn’t let Sam call the police, for obvious reasons. Needless to say Fred decided to find a new place.
I’m listening to a podcast Crimetown now about organized crime in Providence, RI with the Patriarca crime family.
This is exactly how organized crime flourishes. The police can’t help the small time crook, so the local organized crime takes over and settles things. This happens a lot in Japan, where official rules prohibit things such as unauthorized gambling. The authorities close their eyes and allow the yakuza to “police” these things, which keeps it from becoming that much more of a mess.
If you try to steal from too many dealers, someone who is ruthless will find a way to ensure you don’t do it again.
Sure. Most things about dealing illegal times is risky though. Argument invalid.
What if the thief is actually Doctor Who and just travels somewhere else in the universe? Try thinking about this a little further than just listing up any question that pops up in your brain. None of these hypotheticals represent realistic insurmountable difficulties.
So now we’ve moved from just a random customer ripping you off to a rival criminal syndicate going to war against you? Or are you suggesting someone buy a freight ship to get “free” weed for personal use?
Freight ships need to go to port for supplies and are occasionally searched by customs, especially if they don’t have a reasonable explanation for their presence.
You’ve seen too many movies. Why is he doing this risky and criminal activity if he’s already wealthy? Why isn’t this guy worried that the dealer “just shoots the guys for trespassing”?
It might not be legal for them to shoot you, but I suspect they might do it anyway.
I’m finding it difficult to understand why a drug dealer would shrug his shoulders helplessly if you interrupted a drug deal in progress and started grabbing the drugs. Drug dealing is already illegal - why would they be so scrupulous about the laws against shooting people when they aren’t about the laws against drug dealing?
IIRC there have been a number of instances of people being shot when they tried to rip someone off in a drug deal, or in disputes over drug-selling turf, and so forth. Drug dealers may not be the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, but they are a little more resourceful than to say “hey, we can’t call the cops, so there’s nothing to be done.”
How do you think the police are going to take care of it? If you tell them they are after you because you stole their drugs, I think the police might arrest you and put you in a nice safe jail for drug possession. I rather doubt they will let you go and arrange for police protection 24/7.
And I think they are going to be a little insistent on finding out why, exactly, people are trying to kill you. And if you won’t tell them, they will probably ask the drug dealers you ripped off why, and again, your safety is not going to be the police’s top priority.
I have heard people refer to the shooting of drug dealers and other lowlifes as “public service homicides”. It doesn’t mean that the police shouldn’t investigate and try to close those homicides - just that ‘guy who rips off a drug dealer gets killed, drug dealer who kills him goes to prison’ can be considered a win-win situation from several points of view.
OP, you do realize that police do act on anonymous tips. If you are in possession of illegal items, no matter how you acquired them, you can be turned in. You steal my briefcase of stolen jewelry or crack, if I can’t get it back or you have a habit of it, I’m calling the Johnny law tip line to remove you from the equation if I can’t take care of it with my buddies. Unless you are using the items personally, you have to sell them to get any value out of it.
Police will not protect you. That is not their job, and they have no duty to protect you. When you tell them “angry, heavily armed drug dealers are coming after me” they’ll say “great, let us know when they get there”. They will not let you loiter around the police station waiting for the drug war you started to begin. They might clean up your body and glance around the crime scene for clues after the fact, though. If you’re lucky.
Seriously, dude!? “The violent, illegal-drug-trafficking cartel can’t stop me because that would be illegal”??? Are you listening to yourself? What you are proposing is nothing more than an elaborate suicide plan.
"[ insert name ] [ swear by Almighty God/do solemnly and sincerely affirm ] that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lady the Queen as a police officer in Victoria in any capacity in which I may be appointed, promoted, or reduced to, without favour or affection, malice or ill-will for the period of [ insert period ] from this date, and until I am legally discharged, that I will see and cause Her Majesty’s peace to be kept and preserved, and that I will prevent to the best of my power all offences, and that while I continue to be a police officer I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties legally imposed on me faithfully and according to law. "
The OP might want to read up on what a “rock house” is. It’s an ordinary looking residence or warehouse that’s been armored inside to serve as a drug dealer’s retail store or warehouse.
The typical design includes small floor-to-ceiling mazes at the entrances. Mazes well equipped with gun ports and goons aligned down each corridor. Anyone entering who behaves suspiciously won’t be alive at the other end where the goods are. The poor bastard who gets to answer the outside door is kinda like the “point man” in an infantry squad. IOW, he has lots of back-up but is ultimately expendable.
As to goods in the forest, such a marijuana grow operation, lethal boobie traps are very common. The US forestry people have lots of problems with these. Likewise bad guys sometimes install video surveillance and have a team of goons near enough by to respond to the only path out of the forest before you can get back with enough product to matter.
To be sure, with enough resources *any *set of defenses can be overwhelmed. The drug enforcement agencies of the world demonstrate this almost daily. Anything from taking candy from a baby and stealing the gold from Fort Knox can be done. You just need enough firepower and enough willingness to give and take casualties.
Hint: the amount shown in movies is about 10% of what it takes for easy jobs and 0.001% of what it takes for really hard jobs.
“Ok, the, we’ll send a car by your place every few hours to see that everything is good.”
The police cannot spend scarce man-hours providing doorman service to a potential victim. They will act if there’s a credible immediate threat -“Hello, 911? There’s a guy with a shotgun breaking down my door!” but they don’t provide bodyguards because sometime in the next week you might be a victim. They can’t even go after the other guy unless you can provide credible evidence they directly threatened you. (They can go to his door, hope he answers, and interview the guy, but they can’t really hold him)
I wouldn’t steal, I wouldn’t steal from a drug dealer, and I regard the police as a form of organised crime: I think it is unethical to involve them in anything, as well as unwise.
Drug dealers aren’t stupid, and they’re probably better at this than you are. You have to sleep and leave your property sometime.
Leading them right to the police isn’t likely to work, either. They know where the police stations are, and if you do this a few times, the police are going to start to wonder why you are casing the joint…
Attracting the attention of the police when you’re doing something illegal is a pretty bad plan, but planning a gun fight with drug dealers is probably a worse one.