Challenges in Drug Investigations: Law Enforcement Barriers and Recommendations
Abstract
Law enforcement should keep up with the drug industry’s various dynamics. New illegal drugs are introduced periodically, some of which are hard to recognize. Since manipulative people may file sexual harassment charges against innocent law enforcers, officers may need witnesses or secret video recordings when dealing with opposite-sex informants. Police officers may also struggle with informants when payments are involved.
Drug investigators ought to be conscious to avoid falling into the traps of drug peddlers. If law enforcement officers find strong opposition, they may drop a case, letting the guilty go free. Legal and scientific analyses may be needed to prove a case. Drug importation poses significant obstacles for law enforcement, with mislabeled narcotic ingredients being common. Concerned parties should collaborate to address the drug problem accurately and quickly.
Introduction
Drug possession, distribution, manufacture, and trafficking laws are complex and vary by case. Thus, a law enforcement officer should initiate a case to ascertain if a defendant has broken these laws. The police should then systematically gather legal and factual evidence to prove the claim (Kammersgaard, 2019). While drug investigations and enforcement may seem straightforward, law enforcers have encountered many barriers that usually prevent them from attaining good investigation results.
Literature Review
Drug case investigators should consider ‘victimless crime’ when gathering evidence. Drug investigations rarely involve victims; drug traffickers, users, and producers rarely face charges. Thus, drug investigators ought to use informants for drug information. Informants might represent anyone in the impacted community, which is a considerable drawback(Gaston, 2019). Law enforcement should find and communicate with such people.
Drug companies are notoriously secretive; thus, law enforcement may need help to gather evidence. Law enforcement should find new substances and methods that are unorthodox. In the 1980s, drug dealers knew the law could apprehend them, especially with all the innovations (Gaston, 2019). In response, drug peddlers hired youth to sell drugs for them; this ascertained that law enforcers overlooked their practices.
Effective drug investigations require massive resources to prevent further issues. These situations often need undercover operations; if the concerned police officers fail to ‘ commit a crime,’ real drug peddlers may not believe them. Such an officer may stage a narcotics sale with other law enforcement agents posing as clients to convince concerned parties (Kammersgaard, 2019). Law enforcement officers typically face problems working with informants, such as female prostitutes who may try to trick them.
Thus, law enforcement agents should be cautious of such people. Before paying informants, police should take photographs, recordings, and fingerprints and consider predetermined sums. The concerned officer’s supervisor should intervene to ensure that any payment is per earlier agreements established before developing a connection with informants. Signing a cooperative agreement ensures that parties fulfill their duties, and such technicalities can slow drug investigations.
Hindrances to Drug Cases
Drug traffickers have a history of murdering police enforcement, making gathering evidence for official charges difficult. Pre-investigations may be needed to protect one’s life; these difficulties make drug control complex (Tsai et al., 2019). Crime labs may be needed to verify cases; law enforcement officials should delegate some of their investigations to outside parties, which may worry them. If the crime laboratory improperly accuses a suspect, the case may be meaningless, and no formal charges are necessary. Witnesses strengthen drug cases; thus, police officers should identify trustworthy, neutral eyewitnesses. Time and money constraints can make this challenging, making law enforcement officers struggle to prosecute suspects.
Chemical investigations of seized goods are inefficient under the law. A product may have several synonyms, and crime labs cannot prove guilt by name alone. This requires a chemical examination of the substance’s molecular structure, which might be difficult (Kammersgaard, 2019). Thus, molecular weight alone cannot reliably predict molecules if the lab has no standards for the drug; a bespoke standard may be needed. A single carbon skeleton has more than six thousand constituent forms, making analysis costly and hindering criminal investigations.
Before filing a drug case, police must assess whether the suspect was in actual or constructive possession. The former involves a person caught with a narcotic, which the law identifies instantly and makes it easier to start an investigation (Teymourian et al., 2020). For instance, if police officers find a person with a bag of heroin, that person is guilty of drug possession and can be charged. The situation can change if the party is in constructive possession of the substance.
The latter word describes a person who likely has an ‘indirect ‘ possession of a drug and can get it. When a police officer examines a car and finds a bag of marijuana in the rear, the officer may discover that the automobile belongs to a friend. However, the drug owner in such situations could deny knowing the material. An officer may need to prove that this person knew where the drug was and could get it. After proving constructive possession, law enforcement can press charges against the accused.
Drug cases often allow lawyers to intercede, and officers may reduce or drop charges depending on their strength. A lawyer can efficiently call witnesses or narrate the accused. This may sound lawful and fair, but lawyers have exploited legal loopholes (Kammersgaard, 2019). Law enforcement should search a location or person to file a successful drug case; however, searches should be done legitimately, as arrests are commonly defended by wrongful seizure or search. Officers should first determine if their inquiries are legal; if the search was illegal, its evidence cannot be produced in court, which usually means the accused can be acquitted. Like a poisonous tree that grows dangerous fruits, evidence or charges from an illegal law enforcement method are equally illegitimate.
Law enforcement officers ought to painstakingly link the presence of drugs around a suspect to the individual’s capacity to obtain those substances at that moment. Officers may not pursue a drug charge if there is no evidence that the accused could not acquire the substance. Due to defense attorneys’ use of law enforcement’s experience and skill, drug cases are complex (Teymourian et al., 2020). Young officers may need more experience in particular police units to conduct such investigations. Junior officers are often questioned on their capacity to follow protocol and know what to do in such instances. Therefore, such individuals typically route cases to older law enforcement agents who may be handling other cases, which may prevent investigations on the suspects.
Police officers’ incapacity to employ communications technologies to find drug-related evidence is a significant issue. Law enforcement has been accused of letting drug crimes go unpunished for extended periods (Kammersgaard, 2019). Officers may work too hard to find more significant charges against defendants, which prolongs lawbreaking. The criminal investigations authority may be aware of a drug sale and multiple subsequent transactions in future months yet fail to act. Installing computer surveillance cameras in such facilities has caused this setback. Even if the product was manufactured and distributed from the start of the inquiry, extended delays may not result in successful arrests.
For example, San Diego police arrested a drug dealer in 2003 as the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI developed surveillance-based investigative methods (Kammersgaard, 2019). The defendant planned drug deals with associates, but law enforcers ultimately failed. However, because the later organizations were more interested in testing their new methods, they ignored apparent proof of the relevant parties’ wrongdoing.
Ideology can complicate evidence collection from particular groups; thus, a person may oppose criminalizing nonviolent victims. Therefore, some investigators favor drug treatment over the incarceration of culprits (Kammersgaard, 2019). Investigators may not pursue formal charges against a defendant willing and able to complete a drug rehabilitation program because they recognize their efforts are futile. These concerns persist even though such officers frequently violate their obligations. Steroids are forbidden because of their anabolic effects, but they are usually sold to athletes to improve performance or muscle strength. Steroids are category three substances in the Controlled Substances Act and should be eradicated (Kammersgaard, 2019).
However, marketing techniques can make investigations difficult for law enforcement. Unlike other illegal drugs, steroids are often advertised as dietary supplements, which can mislead law enforcement and potential users. Law enforcement may find it difficult to prosecute such persons because the production process of such substances may have been quality controlled. The Federal Drug Authority’s position on steroids makes law enforcement difficult (Kammersgaard, 2019). The latter group may not care about eradicating dangerous products, making it hard to gather evidence against accused parties.
The drug investigation method also hinders drug evidence collection, as officers are required to locate the source of illegal narcotics. Drug investigators may spend months on one case, making it impossible to handle other cases (Kammersgaard, 2019). New narcotics posing as designer drugs may be available in the market. Drug peddlers and producers routinely make medications that include elements not yet recorded in government publications but have a similar outcome as market-leading illegitimate substances. Thus, law enforcement may be compelled to charge users of designer medications with felonies even if the law does not cover most of them. In such circumstances, people can use such items for lengthy periods without punishment, making the law ineffectual.
Law enforcement should distinguish between legal and illegal substances since some natural ingredients may cause issues. Enforcement officers should send the product to the crime lab for testing (Rosenblum et al., 2020). After that, literature should be consulted to determine if the chemical is unlawful. In addition, much care should be taken to prove that the active ingredient in a drug can cause harm, which may make it difficult to use such data.
Ultimately, massive amounts of illegal drugs may enter the country. In other cases, interested groups may import illicit drugs by mail service. Police officers might not have sufficient time or supplies to verify if every product getting into the nation through mail services is legitimate. Drug peddlers and suppliers can easily avoid being nabbed by using this route, especially when boundary management is reinforced.
Recommendations
Drug authorities, government agencies, police enforcement, investigators, and other experts are stakeholders who should regularly share case information. Additionally, authorities that may have met designer medications may need to provide frequent updates (Kammersgaard, 2019). The drug authority should streamline its reclassification process to simplify drug charges for law enforcement.
Authorities may witness drug crimes but wait to bring charges until they have enough evidence to solve the problem. This hinders justice by letting some criminals go unpunished so law enforcement can pursue more significant cases—law enforcement should follow specific rules to submit formal charges with little proof. Prioritizing computer surveillance technologies over criminals creates systemic problems in law enforcement.
Police personnel need drug case training before and after recruitment, mainly when defense counsel attacks the officer in charge’s trustworthiness. Increased funding for law enforcement supports their operations in drug investigations and enforcement (Rosenblum et al., 2020). Some opponents believe that the country is already spending enough money on the drug issue but have yet to see results; therefore, alternative techniques may be needed.
These arguments should be revised as law enforcement requires more assistance than ever since many hurdles prevent investigations. Drug business complainants are rare due to their nature; thus, informants or undercover police should be encouraged. This requires numerous preparations and resources, and since budgetary limits have hampered drug efforts, lawmakers should create legislation for the government to fund them appropriately.
Ideological obstacles may be another key to drug investigations and control. Punitive drug policies may encourage narcotics usage, but since most arrested people are drug victims, lawmakers should reduce possession charges(Kammersgaard, 2019). Law enforcement should target suppliers who distribute and sell goods to consumers. Dealing with the user side alone will only solve half of the problem because various causes still drive drug supply. Treatment programs should be reinforced to help reduce drug arrests by addressing demand.
Conclusion
The lengthy process of locating, searching, and collecting evidence from places is the main challenge for narcotics detectives and law enforcement. These investigations involve court orders, covert work, and informants. Pharmacological and chemical definitions of drugs require time, but as the Drug Enforcement Authority does this, a manufacturer may have changed the unlawful substance’s ingredients to avoid detection. Thus, investigators may need fiscal backing and drive bureaucratic reduction.
References
Gaston, S. (2019). Producing race disparities: A study of drug arrests across place and race. Criminology, 57(3), 424-451. Web.
Kammersgaard, T. (2019). Harm reduction policing: From drug law enforcement to protection. Contemporary Drug Problems, 46(4), 345-362. Web.
Rosenblum, D., Unick, J., & Ciccarone, D. (2020). The rapidly changing US illicit drug market and the potential for an improved early warning system: Evidence from Ohio drug crime labs. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 208. Web.
Teymourian, H., Parrilla, M., Sempionatto, J. R., Montiel, N. F., Barfidokht, A., Van Echelpoel, R., De Wael, K., & Wang, J. (2020). Wearable electrochemical sensors for the monitoring and screening of drugs. ACS Sensors, 5(9), 2679-2700. Web.
Tsai, F. C., Hsu, M. C., Chen, C. T., & Kao, D. Y. (2019). Exploring drug-related crimes with social network analysis. Procedia Computer Science, 159, 1907-1917. Web.