Many moons ago when I lived in Maryland, I worked in a store that was next door to a liquor store and I got to be friends with the owners. One day the Maryland State Police sent in a cadet who was just shy of 21 but looked to be about 30 and he was in uniform to boot. They young guy working behind the counter mistakenly figured that a big burly guy who looked about 30 years old and was wearing a MD State Police uniform (the clerk didn’t know the difference between a cadet uniform or a full State police uniform) and who pulled up in front of the store in a MD State Police car, didn’t need to be carded to buy a bottle of liquor (back then the drinking age for beer and wine was still 18 FWIW).
That was a big mistake on his part and the liquor store, even as they contested on the grounds it was some sort of entrapment, was fined many thousands of dollars for their “infraction” and threatened with loss of their license. IIRC they tried to or did criminally prosecute the clerk too which ironically pretty much ruined his chances of getting into the Navy.
I later worked at another shopping center near another liquor store and for several days there was this “kid” hanging around asking various people to go into the liquor store to buy liquor for him. When he approached me I told him, “First of all no and secondly no because I know you are a State cop”.
“I’m not a cop”, he protested but then I told him “BS. Every afternoon for the last four days, I saw you get out of a State Police car parked across the street”. I told the owners of the liquor store what was going on and the stationed a guy in front of their store to make sure none of their customers fell for it or them getting fined as well. Then the police showed up and threatened the store owner with “obstruction of justice”.
Speaking of undercover cops, back in May 1991 I was helping my parents move back to California from Maine.
After a long road trip across the country, we arrived in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn in Goleta, Calif., just north of Santa Barbara.
We parked in the far end of the parking lot, next to a white van with a number of 30-something guys sitting inside.
The guy behind the steering wheel looked at me when I got out of the car, and I looked directly at him. The first thing I thought was, “These guys are undercover cops.”
A week or two later, after the moving truck arrived and my parents were settled in their new residence, I was watching the local news. Big drug bust at the Holiday Inn. A bunch of drug dealers were shown “proned-out” in the parking lot, and the plain-clothes guys I saw a week or two earlier were cuffing them. Apparently a bunch of drug dealers were renting motel rooms at the Holiday Inn.
..and then cops say that they can't "waste time" busting kids for pot.....but they have PLENTY of time to try to set up the public!