“She said she wasn’t a police officer.”

The next Suburban Legal Myth deals with the prostitution and/or drug deal scenario where someone asks the undercover police officer if he or she is a police officer and the officer says, ‘no.’ The defendant thinks that because the police officer lied about her true identity that the case has to be thrown out. The only possible basis in truth for this rather ludicrous myth that if true would hamper all undercover police activity7 is found in the defense of entrapment. 8

Most clients think that if an informant or under cover police officer set them up, then it has to be entrapment. They have trouble understanding that their predisposition to commit the crime tends to negate the entrapment defense.  And that the negation is even more so with those who have a prior record for committing the same crime. 9

Of course, it is usually a good rule of thumb that if a person is even thinking about asking whether someone is a police officer, to not go through with the deal.