New York Times report NYPD has been going after lowest level offenders in drug trade chain, often with the help of undercover stings. Addicted customers were the targets of these operations like old homeless heroin addict Brian L. (21), crack addict Reginald J (55), were profiled in the whole story.

Undercover NYPD officers posed as addicts and asked the two to help buying drugs. Brian & Reginald took money from the undercover officers to buy drug worth 20 or 40 dollars from a dealer and gave the drugs to officers, and both got arrested under drug dealing charges.

The condition of both men made them pick up the opportunity to get cash due to their drug addictions and financial strain. ,” Reginald J. told the Times. “I like to think I could resist it, but I’m way beyond that. My experience has shown me that 1,000 times out of 1,000 times, I will be defeated.”

There were 9 police officers involved in the whole operation, and none of them cared about following brain to see who he buying drugs from.

Homeless Brian L said the undercover lady officer said to him, she was staying with her grandmother in Brooklyn and was worried she would soon go into withdrawal. “I said I would help her,” he testified. She gave him $20, which he used to go buy two bags of heroin. After giving drugs to her, he was arrested with possession of less than a dollar in change and no drugs on possession.

” the Times reports – troubling questions raised here, in both operations of arrest drug users were the “go-between”, while officers made no attempt to find higher- level dealer who supplied them with drugs.

Defence lawyers and juries have criticized the NYPD’s tactics, and the way prosecutors have pursued these cases.