During a drug bust how do the police assess how much drugs and weapons are worth?

They go to the ‘Drugs ‘R Us’ website and type in the weight and the blend, and they get back an estimate.

In my observation of news reporting, the police tend to overvalue the haul of weapons and drugs, in order to make themselves look better. They tend to say that ‘street value’ is higher than it really is.

Street value.

Police know the street value of drugs. The value of guns is not street value, but market value.

Back in the day (back in the 1900s) a gram of coke went for $100. So when the cops nabbed a kilo, the “street price” was 1,000 times that $100, or one hundred grand.

But most people in the trade knew you could get a kilo for $15,000.

^^ The 19-hundreds?? Or do you mean the 1990’s?

This one is easy.

First they do the drugs, right after they shoot the weapons.

Then they fill out the assessment reports.

Told you… easy!

@smudges I was referring to the 20th Century.Those were the 1900s, just like we refer to the early colonial period in America as “the 1600s”.

In the States, they send the drugs to a Forensic Chemistry Lab of the state.

This Lab does the analysis of what the drug is, how much there is that is confiscated, what the street value is, and documents it for criminal purposes for court.

There is a good documentary called How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix about how this went very wrong in Massachusetts.

@zenvelo Ok, I just thought maybe you meant the 1990’s.

The DEA keeps track of the going ‘street value’ of drugs. I presume the ATF is doing the same for guns? or they use the retail value of the firearm maybe?