Wasn't This the Plot of Coen Brothers Movie?
November 17, 2017 4:24 AM   Subscribe

 
Can’t make this $#¡+ up!
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:30 AM on November 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I wonder if this sort of thing does not happen quite often. Both the fake dealers and the fake buyers are motivated to provide a lure which makes them stand out from the crowd a little as a prospective target. And the planners of undercover operations prize secrecy higher than openness - even if that means that colleagues are kept in the dark.
posted by rongorongo at 4:32 AM on November 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Isn't this a plot line in Brooklyn Nine-Nine ?
posted by Pendragon at 4:33 AM on November 17, 2017 [21 favorites]


Some of the twitter comments are great:
"Now I wanna see the two precincts have a civil forfeiture battle."
posted by TedW at 4:36 AM on November 17, 2017 [73 favorites]


Isn't this a plot line in Brooklyn Nine-Nine ?

In the twitter thread they are debating if it was Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Reno 911!
posted by TedW at 4:41 AM on November 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Super Troopers, surely.
posted by elsietheeel at 4:59 AM on November 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Reno 911. Clemmy defuses the situation by hitting on the undercover FBI guy.

So this is actually...worse.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:05 AM on November 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Each officer involved is now under investigation as the department tried to determine what went wrong.

And they will all receive the highest possible punishment that can be given to a police officer: PAID VACATION NO TRIAL.
posted by adept256 at 5:08 AM on November 17, 2017 [70 favorites]


There's bodycam footage. Is it Christmas? It feels like Christmas.
posted by nicodine at 5:24 AM on November 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Narrator: On the next Arrested Development...the Bluths take jobs as undercover cops in a Detroit neighborhood.

Tobias in leather daddy costume: "This is going really well!"

Franklin: "Yo, man, you’re going to get your sorry white ass thrown in jail."

Narrator: It was not going really well.
posted by notorious medium at 5:29 AM on November 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Wasn't this a movie? Police something something 3?
posted by tommasz at 5:46 AM on November 17, 2017


"While the homeowner stood and watch."

Could you imagine?

"...what the fuck happened to my day?..."
posted by ZaneJ. at 6:04 AM on November 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Dear OCP, I don't care if ED-209 was a bit glitchy, it can't possibly be any worse than these "special" "ops" "cops". Please upgrade the damn thing to the latest Android and get it out on the streets.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:12 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


A Scanner Darkly as told by your local improv group.
posted by notyou at 6:16 AM on November 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


I can't look. Please tell me they were mostly white?
posted by allthinky at 6:23 AM on November 17, 2017


Queenen: Do you know what we do here? My section?
Billy: Sir, yes sir. I have an idea of--
Dignam: Whoa whoa whoa...Let's say you have no idea, and leave it at that, okay? No idea. Zip. None. If you had an idea of what we do, we would not be good at what we do, would we? We'd be cunts. You callin' us cunts?

My theory on Feds is they're like mushrooms-- Feed 'em shit and keep 'em in the dark.
-- Dignam(Mark Wahlberg)

I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.
-- Frank Costello(Jack Nicholson)

The Departed(2006), directed by Martin Scorsese
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:28 AM on November 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Promotions for everyone!
posted by sirshannon at 6:46 AM on November 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


The way this always plays out in the L&O universe and every other non-comedy cop procedural / movie I've ever seen is that the undercover cops go along with the arrest until their booked and then everything gets sorted out with some shouting and an exasperated captain. Apparently they'd rather blow their cover because...?
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:46 AM on November 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Surely, some old silent film shot at a framerate slightly below 24fps, which no restorers corrected because its ridiculous speed adds to its comedic value.
posted by acb at 6:46 AM on November 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I can't look. Please tell me they were mostly white?

The video only comes up postage-stamp size in my browser for some reason, but all of the cops I saw in the footage appeared to be white dudes.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:47 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


according to my partner's retired cop dad from metro Detroit, apparently all precincts are supposed to coordinate with a central command unit regarding undercover efforts for the day, the 12th precinct didn't report they were setting up a 'fake drug house', the 11th thusly busted in when they heard some new house was loudly advertising products

supposedly the 12th precinct has been 'running wild' lately and cop dad isn't surprised by this turn of events whatsoever lol

legalized use of force + lackadaisical vigilantism / corruption = great times, institution of police is deffo necessary
posted by runt at 6:53 AM on November 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


By a wide margin, my favorite part of this story is the interview clip with the guy who lives in the neighborhood, where he's saying "Just...communicate? Y'know? Communication."
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:53 AM on November 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


I think the MC5 was thinking of this scenario when they wrote this:

Together in the darkness...
Come with me
Let us dance the
Let us dance the dance
The dance from which all dances come
Yes together in the darkness
Astounding ohh

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:57 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Reno 911

Ugh, my stupid brain keeps reading this as Reno nine-eleven. *fondness for the 90s intensifies*
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 6:58 AM on November 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Wire: Omar shows up and rips off the undercover officers. A detachment from the MCU shows up and Prez shoots one of the undercover officers, but his father-in-law keeps it off his record. Bubbles and Stringer are watching and laughing. Later, McNulty gets drunk.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:04 AM on November 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


The Wire: McNulty gets drunk.

FTFY.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:12 AM on November 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Needs more Yakety Sax.
posted by mkhall at 7:16 AM on November 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


This is why we need more armed citizens. The only ones who can stop good guys pretending to be bad guys with guns catching good guys pretending to be bad guys with guns are good guns with guys.

Wait, what? Anyway, I'm sure more people with guns would have solved this situation.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:29 AM on November 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


I have never been a fan of police procedurals. But I do know an actual undercover cop. And according to his stories, the way they do this is that they give a signal, at which point uniformed cops burst onto the scene and arrest everyone, including the undercover cops, who get carried off to jail along with the targets, and they make a big show of booking and processing everyone in. Then they are swept off to different "cells" and the cops walk out the backdoor and offstage.

The guy I know (who honestly is a bit of a jerk) thinks the funniest part of his job is when the perps complain that the other guy they were arrested with, got out of jail quicker, and they don't realize he's a cop. He plays his role convincingly enough, over the long term, that he stings the same perps repeatedly.
posted by elizilla at 7:29 AM on November 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


This is clearly a sign that the 2017 writers are running out of ideas.
posted by wittgenstein at 8:18 AM on November 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm still confused about what house got raided, and why? Were they operating the sting deals out of the house? If so, why was the house's owner even there?

Or, in my most farcical of possible worlds, did they just show up and raid a nearby house under the assumption it was involved?
posted by pykrete jungle at 8:24 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is clearly a sign that the 2017 writers are running out of ideas.

If I hear All Along The Watch Tower I'm dumping the series. Not even joking.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:43 AM on November 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


I'm pretty sure this is a side mission in GTA V.

That being said, if it isn't, it should be.
posted by Fizz at 8:54 AM on November 17, 2017 [2 favorites]




The real takeaway from this is that Detroit is so safe now that cops have nothing left to do but arrest each other.
posted by palindromic at 9:29 AM on November 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Chief: What we need here is dope on the goddamn table.

Police: We have a lot of dopes but we can’t fit them all on a table sir.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:45 AM on November 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
posted by SPrintF at 10:03 AM on November 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Well that ruined the police chief's week! He is so pissed off.

It's insane. I mean, even if they didn't believe they 'hey, we're cops too' bit, how does it erupt into a brawl? Just arrest them and sort it out down at the station so no one gets killed. It could easily have been a freaking blood bath.

And it isn't even a situation where two different police departments were involved (don't get me started on the insanity of having fifty gazillion separate law enforcement departments in the USA). They were two precincts of the same department!
posted by kitten magic at 11:01 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Next you'll tell me that buffalo from Buffalo, NY who are intimidated by other buffalo within their community spend a fair amount of time intimidating their fellow Buffalonians.
posted by panama joe at 11:51 AM on November 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


This is clearly a sign that the 2017 writers are running out of ideas.

So....what happens when the network cancels the show??
posted by MikeKD at 1:32 PM on November 17, 2017


So....what happens when the network cancels the show??

We just have to hope the radical format change doesn't leave us with Endlessly Burning Fireplace.
posted by Copronymus at 1:44 PM on November 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Am I the only one who is stunned that no one was shot to death?!
posted by honey badger at 2:08 PM on November 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Am I the only one who is stunned that no one was shot to death?!
I mean, someone mentioned that they all appeared to be white, so it seems about right.
posted by cardioid at 3:01 PM on November 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


"we ran out of budget for a fireplace, how about this dumpster full of week old garbage instead?"
posted by idiopath at 4:28 PM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm really confused as to how two precincts in the same department, presumably narcotics/drug enforcement teams, didn't recognize any of the other officers. Like surely they've run into each other before?
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:45 AM on November 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Clearly, they have mad costuming skillz to go along with the mad policing skillz.
posted by mosk at 5:42 PM on November 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


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