No offense, but this is exactly the kind of proposal I would expect from a software developer. It would work perfectly with a program where everything is nice and clean:

INSERT fake_actor() 5 TIMES SELECT suspects() CHECK officer_state_of_mind()

In the real world, as somebody already said, the logistics of hiring 5 actors to act "suspicious", get themselves arrested, set up plausible backstories that you would somehow have to keep from the police, potentially expose them to bodily harm, the legal consequences if something go wrong, etc?

I'm going to assume you're proposing this as a thought experiment and not something that could actually work.

[And I mean this in the nicest of ways, I construct these kinds of "solutions" constantly too]

I wasn’t so much proposing hiring five professional actors; rather, doing what police forces themselves do to set up a sting — finding five FBI officers that all happen to look similar, cleaning them up to look even more similar to one-another, training them in espionage / counter-counter-intelligence techniques, and then phrasing the BOLO in such a way that it avoids mentioning their differences.

> potentially expose them to bodily harm, the legal consequences if something go wrong

Presume that the FBI is staking out the police building and has (compelled) the cooperation of the local sheriff, in exactly the same way white-hat social-engineering pen-testers work in cooperation with the management of the organizations they attempt to penetrate. Presume also that, unknown to the police, no real suspects are being simultaneously processed (all have been redirected to other neighbouring precincts) and so all police suppression equipment has been swapped out for non-working versions. (If you try to taze or shoot the suspect, you lose.)

To be clear, this is a setup that already happens when there is an officer under FBI suspicion of being complicit/involved in criminal activity. The FBI comes in and works with the precinct to set up an internal sting. The only difference, here, is that this involves all the officers of the precinct, rather than just one.

Ah fair enough, I didn't realize this was something that already happens.

You think it's a bad idea just because of logistics? Compared to other things the FBI does I don't understand why you think this would be unreasonable from a logistics standpoint

I wouldn't want to be the undercover actor involved in that. There's a non-zero risk of serious injury, or death.

Risk level is at the same level as for any other random person.

No, it's higher. Because you aren't just a random person you are purposefully intending to look and act like someone accused.

I get the whole purpose of "yes, people are stopped every day because they resemble someone wanted", but this is "I am going to go out of my way to purposefully resemble and act like someone who the police will take a negative interest in".

It'd certainly lead to deaths and injury if it were implemented today, but after police get the idea that anyone they pick up might be innocent and that they'll be held meaningfully accountable for shooting first and asking questions later that would change. I think in our current system it's totally unrealistic and not worth the risks but in a place where police weren't routinely abusive it'd probably be fine.

This is true of any undercover operation, and should be vastly less true than, say, infiltrating a gang or mob group.