Strategies To Avoid Arrest: Crack Sellers' Response to Intensified Policing

• NCJ Number: 163012
• Journal: American Journal of Police Volume: 14 Issue: 3/4 Dated: (1995) Pages: 49-69
• Author(s): B D Johnson; M Natarajan
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 21 pages
• Grant Number(s): 1R01DA05126-06; 5 T32 DA07233-10; 1K21DA0024201
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Previous studies have paid little attention to ways in which crack sellers adapt to increased enforcement, other than through displacement; this study provides information relevant to this issue obtained through interviews with street-level crack sellers in New York City.

Abstract

More than 300 different crack sellers and distributors were observed systematically in the field, and more than 120 were interviewed extensively. The sellers were interviewed in New York City at the end of the 1980's and early 1990's during a period when a major investment was made in arresting and prosecuting crack sellers, principally through the development of Tactical Narcotics Teams (TNT) and special anticrack and antidrug squads. During interviews, subjects were asked several standard questions about how they managed to avoid police and arrest. The findings are discussed under three main headings: seller strategies to avoid police, seller strategies to counter police tactics, and specific responses to TNT's. Strategies to avoid police involved cooperation among sellers in warning about police, lookouts and shared warnings, shifting word usage by street sellers, the stashing of drugs being sold, stop selling when police are present, the use of intuition and training to identify police, and seller explanations of routine police behaviors. Strategies to counter specific police tactics involve countering the "observed buy," checking for marked money, police stops of suspected sellers, the stopping of automobiles of suspected sellers, the setup, the sustained investigation, and the surviving of the buy and bust. Regarding specific responses to TNT's, unless TNT's or uniformed patrol officers remained on the block, crack sales would often resume within a week, but with a new set of street sellers and low-level distributors. Except for low-level street sellers, TNT's had little impact on drug dealers. 24 references