Undercover

Howard County police have cited Snowden River Liquors and Fuddruckers in Columbia and Normandy Liquors in Ellicott City in the sale of alcohol to underage customers during an undercover operation. One of two 17-year-old girls working with police entered each of the businesses and tried to buy alcohol. At Snowden River Liquors on Snowden River Parkway and Normandy Liquors on U.S. 40, police said, the cashier did not ask for the decoy's identification. At the Fuddruckers restaurant on Dobbin Center Way, the cashier asked for the girl's driver's license.

WASHINGTON -- A Feb. 4 trial date has been set for Kofi Apea Orleans-Lindsay, a Silver Spring man accused of killing an undercover Maryland State Police trooper in October. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly set the date yesterday and also scheduled the next status hearing for May 7. Orleans-Lindsay is accused of killing Cpl. Edward M. Toatley, 37, during an undercover drug sting in northeast Washington. Prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty. Two weeks after the shooting, police arrested Orleans-Lindsay in New York City and charged him with first-degree murder in the death of Toatley, a father of three from Halethorpe.

Howard County police unveiled last night an 18-month undercover drug investigation in Columbia in which they tapped telephones and posed as dealers and users to dismantle a network of 37 alleged traffickers and seized $100,000 worth of drugs, 20 vehicles and four guns. Operation Clean Sweep focused on drug dealing - mainly sales of crack cocaine - in the Columbia villages of Oakland Mills, Harper's Choice, Wilde Lake and Long Reach, police said. "Nobody wants drug dealers in their neighborhoods, and I heard that message loud and clear," Howard Police Chief Wayne Livesay said at a community meeting in Oakland Mills, where police reported on the results publicly for the first time.

Two Harford County cab drivers have been arrested and charged in separate incidents in which undercover officers were driven to county locations for illegal drug purchases, the county sheriff's office said yesterday.James Otha Solomon, 53, of the 400 block of Dembytown Road in Joppa was charged with conspiracy to distribute counterfeit crack cocaine and Christopher Cole Edmondson, 27, of the 1600 block of LaSalle Road in Forest Hill was charged with conspiracy to distribute a controlled dangerous substance, described as powder cocaine.

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- A 17-year-old Southern California boy who was tortured and strangled at a suspected drug house spent the weeks before his death making undercover drug deals at the direction of Brea, Calif., police, according to his mother.Cindy MacDonald of Yorba Linda, Calif., said through an attorney that although she gave written permission for her son, Chad MacDonald, to be used as a police informant, she told police repeatedly that she wanted to end the arrangement. She said her son told her that he felt pressured to make increasingly larger buys to avoid prosecution on methamphetamine charges.

NEW YORK -- On an unusually warm day in December 2003, three dozen men filed into the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, kneeling on the moss-green carpet for midday prayer. To anyone watching, the service would have appeared unremarkable. But several police reports, when taken together with testimony at the recent federal trial of a Pakistani immigrant in the plot to bomb the Herald Square subway station, revealed something extraordinary about the gathering: Among the kneeling men were at least three who were working undercover for the New York Police Department.

A months-long undercover drug operation in Annapolis has brought the arrests of a dozen people suspected as street-level dealers, which police believe will have a significant impact on the local drug trade. The arrests last week followed operations going back to last fall, when undercover officers from Anne Arundel County and Annapolis as well as confidential informants began buying drugs from the suspects and officers began recording a number of the transactions on audio and video. The investigation, announced Monday, came on the heels of several recent warrant sweeps through some of the city's more troubled communities and as officials gain more traction with a multi-jurisdictional effort called Capital City Safe Streets, which brings together federal, state and local resources to fight crime in Annapolis.

An undercover police operation in the Patterson Park area, identified as a "hot spot" of drug activity, resulted in the arrests of 12 suspected drug dealers yesterday, six of them juveniles.Maj. Timothy Longo of the Southeast District said it was the first targeted initiative in one of the city's six so-called "hot spots," designated in July by the state's office of crime control and prevention as a geographic area where crime is concentrated.Longo said that 36 criminal indictments in sales of narcotics to undercover officers were prepared with pre-set bails totaling $6.7 million, and that special squads scouted the streets to arrest the suspects during an all-day operation.

County police arrested five men and three women Thursday after a monthlong undercover drug investigation around Nolpark Court in Glen Burnie.Kareem Asvai Allison, 20, of the 7900 block of Nolpark Court was charged with possession and possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine and carrying a concealed deadly weapon.Stanley Anthony Brown, 36, of the 1000 block of Louise Road in Glen Burnie and Laurence D. Tuck, 19, of the 900 block of Parkey Road in Gambrills each were charged with possession of marijuana, two counts of assault, and escape.

Shuffling along an East Baltimore street, an undercover detective gave a knowing glance to a suspected drug dealer bundled in a thick coat outside a mini-mart on a painfully cold January morning. In half a minute, the detective walked off with two $10 capsules filled with low-grade heroin. Other officers soon swooped in, arrested the alleged dealer, discovered a stash of 59 gelatin capsules of heroin and recovered the detective's marked $20 bill. "You're captured, clown show," said Sgt. Stephen J. Kolackovsky as he took a photograph of the 23-year-old suspect with an instant camera for police records.