Ocean City Drug Crime Investigation

The following is information on drug investigations in Ocean City, Maryland from minor offenses such as possession to major ones involving undercover officers and the narcotics task force. If you have been charged with a drug offense call an Ocean City drug lawyer today to set up a free consultation.

Scenarios of a Drug Investigation

There’s couple of different scenarios that are pretty typical because there is such a huge police presence. Law enforcement will have officers both on foot and on bike patrol simply to observe people in Ocean City. If they then suspect that someone is using or possessing drugs then an officer will likely attempt to investigate by making contact with that person.

This first contact will likely be a one-on-one encounter with a police officer, however, Ocean City law enforcement also patrol in squad cars and will make traffic stops, especially on those driving down the coastal highway.

If police makes contact with a driver and they suspect that driver of being under the influence of drugs or possessing drugs they will likely do a search and possibly make an arrest for possession of drugs.

Narcotics Task Force

At the other end of the drug spectrum, you have police officers whose sole purpose is to investigate narcotics, called the narcotics task force.

The narcotics task force is the task force that includes not just the investigation by Ocean City police officers, but also Worcester County Sherriff’s deputies and members of the Maryland state police. Some of these officers are going to be in uniform and some are going to be undercover.

Task force officers are doing much more in depth investigations. They may have been contacted by an anonymous person or a concerned citizen who said that they suspect person A is possessing and is selling drugs.

As a result the task force will begin an investigation where police will observe that person to watch what they’re doing, who they have contact with, and where they are traveling. Police may then used either an undercover officer or someone the suspect is familiar with to facilitate a purchase or sale of a substance. This is done simply to try and confirm that the suspect is in fact possessing or buying narcotics.

Undercover Officers

In some operations the police will use an undercover officer who makes the purchase themselves. They often contact the seller by telephone or text and carry through with the purchase on their own.

One example of this is for distribution charges where police want to accumulate a lot of information on a particular person including where that person seems to be selling drugs from, in order to present it to a judge and get a search and seizure warrant for that location.

Once a warrant is in place, law enforcement can execute the search and seizure warrant or an entire house or apartment and potentially find the items that end up with charges. They can then end up charging everybody that lives in the house with possession of drugs or possession with intent to distribute.

So there are a variety of different way in which a drug investigation can take place.