Identifying a possible person of interest.

With the recent topic od drug dealers brought up, I wanted to put this out there if, and I mean if you decide to do anything like this. Educate yourself. This is for all those out there that don't know what they are looking for, but think they do. Remember this is not the movies, this is life, these are people, and they are all different and every case is different. I am not telling anyone to go out and do these things, but these are things I have encountered and use to find my cases.


When looking for dealer territories there are a list of characteristics that are important to keep in mind. I am going to do a rough rundown of the basics. I cannot give enough emphasis to this, this is not for education, but as a means to get you to educate yourself. These tasks are purely common sense and experience. Please just read and take it as is. Take this as a person that sold all of these drugs and used them. I am speaking from direct experience in this form of illegal activity.

When scouting for the territory of a dealer, you have to look. That is the first area of focus. Locating the drug activity.

Location:
To find a location of dealers you have to physically go out and do the leg work, you have to scout areas, drive by parks late at night in plainclothes patrol, walk down streets you wouldn‘t necessarily walk through. Check for gathering of similarly dressed individuals. Typically very plain dressed. White tshirts and jeans or shorts, and boots or sneakers, lots of smoke usually surrounding them. This allows them to blend in easy when cops are called and they need to disappear. This is a very good tactic on their part. It is hard to pick someone out of a lineup if they are all dressed the same. Use this to your advantage. Take their tactics. Again, do your own research.

Men standing on street corners is a strong sign of activity. You may think it seems racist or stereotypical, but trust me. Go by a few random times, see if they are there each time. Establish a pattern. How many times are they there a week? How long? How often a day?

When dealing on a corner, you have a lot to take into consideration. How often to you see cops coming by? What are you carrying to protect yourself? There is always a chance of getting jumped on a corner when dealing. They are typically very paranoid and uneasy. If you are on a corner you are a lowest level dealer. They do not like new faces, but will sell to them. They will pretty much take anyone’s money. You can find them leaning against a wall or sitting on a bodega’s steps waiting for someone to come by and purchase. Watch their habits. What are they wearing? What is their physical description? How do they greet different people? What drugs are they selling? How do they do the exchange of drugs? How often is the person of interest on their phone? What do they do when the police come by? What is the persons name? Note that even a street alias is a good start. And especially, find out who and where they get their supplies from.

A dealer is 9 times out of 10 a user. If you can identify a user, or several, you can pick out who the dealers are in the group, and if it is a high traffic area. How do you identify a person of interest as a user? Look for specific characteristics both in their appearance and behavior.

Weed: Red eyes, typically very easy going, want to be tough guys when friends are around. Typically nicer dressed, all of which is clean and spotless. They are very easy to talk to and want to get busted less than any other dealer, because nothing is worse than going to jail for a couple grams of weed, let me tell you. It is embarrassing. These guys will bail in a heartbeat and will spill their guts if alone with them. They are talkers. They will ramble on and on, and give away plenty of info if you listen, it is easy to build trust with them.

Cocaine: Neurotic, skinny, baggy eyes, always moving in some way, can become aggressive quickly, very, very talkative, and unless you get them on topic, never anything useful. Their dress ranges from clean cut to straight dirty. Erratic behavior, and random times on the street. Typically late hours, and most dealing any kind of weight will be in an apartment or home. No one likes to carry serious weight on them. Small weight like dimes and grams are found on street level dealers.

Methamphetamine: Yellow fingers, eyes and teeth, some teeth possibly missing, sunken face, erratic behavior again, but this is more of paranoid and delusional and more prone to violence. Twitchy, dirty clothes, unkempt, again most dealing any kind of weight will be at home. Usually anything carried he will openly do in public. Meth users are very open and stupid. You could very easily catch someone in the act in a public area. They are unreliable, and keep odd hours. Late nights, and sometimes holed up inside their homes for days or even weeks.

Heroin: Track marks on the arms, yellowish and pale skin, sunken face, missing teeth, Spacey in conversation. They are quiet, and know what they are doing. Private, only come out when they need to. Sloppy and dirty in appearance.

Most times any of these dealers when making a transaction will try and duck into an alleyway, or put their backs to traffic, or can openly deal on the street. Learn to spot this stuff. It is important to know someone has drugs on them rather than assume they do.

You have now read one way of finding locations and some things to look for in a person of interest. This is the initial step. Now take this and go learn more.

That's quite a bit of stereotyping there.

Remember this is a firsthand account, coming from a former user/dealer, interpret as you will. I am offering simply what I have seen and encountered.

Stereotyping.....maybe

Accurate.....definately

I could picture one or two individuals I have dealt with in each type as he described them.

Oy Vey. I'll be back on this one, when I have time to write somethin up.

This is kind of like a "cold reading" from a psychic. Very stereotypical. It resonates well because we see these behaviors in movies. Although some of this stuff does happen, it is not a sure-fire way to spot a drug dealer/user, or locate a person of interest. Persons of interest, by the way Fear, are those who are wanted in connection with a crime, but have not been arrested yet. So the people you speak of may not yet have that title. I won't say there is not some good information in here, but I urge everyone to do the homework themselves. Different cities have different behaviors, but there are similarities as well.

I'd say the physical symptoms are not wrong. Particularly the marijuana dealer description read as over the top to me and I suppose I commented based mostly on that.

"Unwashed hippie" is more accurate around here than "Typically nicer dressed, all of which is clean and spotless." And if you want to find a pot dealer you can pretty much just walk around asking people if they 420 and where to pick something up. I get it offered to me pretty regularly without any intent to know about it at all...

But all of your descriptions pretty much describe extremes, which is sort of like describing a drinker as "having a sloppy unkempt appearance and drinking early in the morning to stop his shakes, constantly driving drunk despite the legal ramifications of his prior DUIs, etc etc..."

Something people don't want to acknowledge is that the vast majority of drug users are not constantly portraying some kind of anti-drug PSA. I realize you're speaking from some personal experiences here, Fear... but it had to be pretty extreme experiences with the worst off people out there.

I've had friends involved with all of these drugs. They can be pretty bad, but the worst case is not the typical case.

I can see where a corrections officer's point of view might make it seem so -- but really, if they're in prison then the odds of them being a worse case are relatively higher than if they're walking around in normal society.

ok, first off, yes, I lived in the shittiest shit you could possibly think of, and in what is the equivalent of a 3rd world country in Philadelphia. Regardless of what other ways a druggie may appear, these are the types of people I know, and can identify and have busted.

It is not the same as a cold reading. I am aware of many many kinds of druggies and dealers, and I did reitterate several times that this is a basic and easily identifiable list to start for those that have an interest. I made it clear it is not meant for education, that it is meant to inspire one to educate themselves. This is given as a perspective view. How I have seen and experienced it, again I say, not meant as a fucking lesson.

I am good at what i do, and I have no problems doing it. So far as I know, I am the only one that operates in this fashion all of the time. My entire base of operation and procedure is undercover, and my focus is on infiltration. Say as you wish about my methods, I never claimed to be a teacher. But I am a registered informant for the police, and they use what I give them. So no matter what anyone says or tries to argue with me about, I know what I am doing in this area. If I come across as arrogant, that is fine with me, I don't care. And if anyone really wants to test what I know, I would be more than happy to set the record straight.

You come across as pretty defensive, not arrogant. And I don't think what you said is entirely wrong or doesn't correspond to some things you've observed -- I think it's biased.

You also may believe you're the only one doing undercover stuff because other people are resisting the urge to talk about their covert exploits on therlsh.net. You also might be correct, but I'm just saying that there are two possibilities there.

What I'm trying to do here is talk to you and provide feedback on what you wrote. Did you want us to just say "yeah, man... spot on!" ???

'Cause I can say that if you want.

P.S. Are you sure Philadelphia is the shittiest shit I could possibly think of?

Oh hush, he's not saying that these're official guidelines for rooting out dealers, he's offering a perspective, and a pretty accurate one, too.

Not sure if it's the same for other places, but over here along west coast and even branching down to Baja, you could make a venn diagram for weed dealers. Surfers, skaters, stoners. srsly

Ok, you ssy in the original post that you will give "the basics", and tell people how to find "the territory" of a dealer. Nothing to suggest that it was meant to be specific to one type of area. So in the sense you now provide, I see your point. Dealers in the financial district are going to look much different than those in the poverty-stricken parts of town, and yet again in other areas, so it would be silly to try to educate people on all the differences in this forum.

I've done some travling in my time and I would say that these descriptions are pretty accurate for larger citys . In small towns and smaller citys the dealers have to look and act differently or they would get arrested in no time . As far as philly being a crappy I've never been there . But la has some bad areas , berkley and san f have some pretty crappy places , vancover bc has some seriously scary areas but the worst place I've ever been ( except mexico ) is detroit . That city is third world I saw a burned up car in a turn lane and it looked like it had been there a while . I've slept on the street in la but there are places in detroit I wouldn't go in the daytime . I've never heard of any detroit rlsh but if they exist they are some serious badasses