In undercover narcotics work, there’s a common saying: “The only people who wait forever are cops.” I’ve heard this repeatedly across the narcotics world — from officers who have never worked undercover to highly respected operatives with decades of field experience. For a long time, I agreed with the sentiment and echoed it myself. In essence, this belief suggests that long delays during a drug buy increase the likelihood an undercover officer will be exposed. There are other costs to waiting, including wasted time and burned operational resources, but the focus of this article is tied to undercover officer safety and exposure.
More importantly, this discussion aims to analyze the dynamics of waiting in narcotics transactions, identify why dealers manipulate timing and explore ways to reduce some of these operational challenges. The goal is not to label waiting as universally good or bad, but to understand how waiting functions inside illicit drug markets and how law enforcement can better navigate it.
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Does waiting actually expose an undercover?
The first point that must be addressed is the belief that excessive waiting automatically signals undercover police activity. Research and field observations paint a different picture: dealers make almost everyone wait. Time manipulation allows them to manage risk, shift locations, or observe who shows up. In fact, unpredictability and deliberate delays are normal parts of illicit-market behavior, not automatic indicators of police presence. [1] Street-level dealers intentionally stretch transactions to monitor surroundings, assess threats and avoid patterns that would make them vulnerable to surveillance or ambush. [2] Simply put, waiting increases the dealer’s ability to visually survey the scene and maintain safety.
Further, research on restrictive deterrence emphasizes that dealers constantly change how they sell rather than whether they sell: adjusting meet locations, deciding how long they stay in one spot, and pacing exchanges based on their own risk assessments. These behaviors are applied broadly across customers — not only to vet law enforcement. [3,4] In smaller markets, many dealers prefer selling only to people within their social circles to reduce exposure, which dramatically reduces access for undercover officers.
Ask any investigator: How many times have you tried to flip a suspect into a CI who can list targets but cannot introduce an undercover because the target won’t sell to someone the dealer doesn’t know? This happens constantly, especially in rural areas without reliable open-air drug markets. The refusal to sell to strangers is not an isolated quirk — it’s a structural method of control.
Dealer control and manipulation
When a dealer is cautious but still willing to sell to you, they often introduce additional restrictive behaviors to maintain control. Delaying exchanges is one of many manipulative tactics dealers use to maintain leverage. [2] In my own career, subjects frequently attempted what we called “tripping.” A deal would be scheduled at a specific time and place, the dealer would confirm that product was in hand, and then, upon arrival, the dealer would suddenly insist on traveling somewhere else to complete the buy. Sometimes they wanted us to ride with them; sometimes they wanted us to follow.
Was this a genuine mistake because product availability changed at the last minute? Almost never. In many situations, the dealer wasn’t even the primary supplier — they were simply a middleman protecting the true source. In other situations, the real dealer intentionally added hoops to jump through so they could observe us longer, feel us out, and maintain control of the deal. Regardless of the setup, there are many different types of dealers, and understanding the type of target you’re dealing with matters before you launch an operation.
Subsistence dealers vs. traffickers
For example, if your target is a subsistence dealer, you may be facing a frustrating situation. These individuals do not sell drugs primarily for profit — they sell to support their own drug use, for perceived status, or for exploitation of vulnerable users (including women needing product). They rarely have consistent access to narcotics, constantly need to trip or negotiate supply logistics, and often waste enormous operational time. Subsistence dealers are notorious in small or rural markets and offer little predictability.
On the other end of the spectrum, profit-driven traffickers present different challenges. Research has consistently found that the narcotics market is fundamentally a seller’s market, where buyers have limited alternatives and must adapt to the dealer’s schedule, product availability, and pacing.²⁵ Waiting is a strategy dealers use to maintain dominance and leverage — not simply a vetting tool against police.
Based on my own fieldwork, the market is still dominated by sellers, and waiting is sometimes unavoidable. One particular example involved working with a CI to purchase an ounce of methamphetamine. I personally heard the dealer tell the CI that the price was $700 and that we had to trip to a location of his choosing. In that moment, he inflated the price, controlled logistics, and controlled geography — all before a single gram changed hands.
Using intelligence to reduce operational friction
While these control dynamics can be aggravating, they are not invincible. Strong intelligence can significantly reduce confusion and help differentiate between normal market chaos and targeted vetting behavior. When human-source debriefs are combined with OSINT-driven contextual intelligence — such as social media activity, call-pattern data, geographic habits, vehicle recognition, or social-network mapping — the investigator is far more capable of anticipating dealer behaviors.
CI and suspect debriefs should routinely explore:
- Dealer habits and routines
- Usual meet locations
- Whether the dealer typically “trips”
- Whether they sell to strangers
- Whether they maintain lookouts or counter-surveillance
- How long transactions usually take
- Whether delays are standard behavior or unusual
This information may not eliminate waiting entirely, but it can absolutely help undercover officers avoid misinterpreting normal market disorder as undercover exposure.
Final thought
The purpose of this article is not to tell you whether to wait or not wait. Instead, the goal is to explain why dealers behave this way and why waiting is not exclusive to identifying law enforcement presence. Ultimately, operational decisions will fall to you, your team, and your chain of command based on risk, necessity, and available intelligence.
Future articles will expand on debriefs, tripping, OSINT integration and tactical preparation in narcotics investigations. In the meantime, remember: intelligence matters more than impatience. The more you understand a target before you enter the field, the smoother and safer the case will be.
References
- Jacques S, Wright R. (2015). Code of the suburb: Inside the world of young middle-class drug dealers. University of Chicago Press.
- Jacobs BA. (1999). Dealing crack: The social world of street-level drug dealers. Northeastern University Press.
- Guan B, Lo TW. (2021). Restrictive deterrence among drug offenders: Adaptation, selective avoidance, and risk management. Deviant Behavior, 42(4), 467–482.
- Guo X, Lo TW. (2023). Risk perception and operational adjustments in illicit drug markets: A qualitative examination of restrictive deterrence. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 67(6–7), 713–734.
- Bourgois P. (1994). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press.
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