Lawrence Police won’t say how many written agreements they have with private individuals who help set up undercover drug stings in exchange for favorable treatment.

But below are answers to other questions about the use of these written “cooperating individual agreements” between narcotics police and their undercover helpers.

Q: Are these agreements legal?

A: Police and prosecutors say there’s nothing in the law that forbids their giving people money to buy drugs undercover.

“Otherwise it wouldn’t be done,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Dave Zabel said.

Defense attorneys counter there’s nothing in state law that specifically allows it.

“Basically what they’re doing is encouraging an individual to engage in illegal behavior with state sanction,” said Jonathan Becker, an attorney for a woman charged with buying cocaine with police money, then trying to switch the drug with baking powder before returning it to police.

Becker argues the woman never would have been in a position to have the drugs if police hadn’t encouraged her to become a “cooperating individual.”

Q: How long have local police been using these agreements?

A: “At least 10 years in some shape or form,” said Lawrence Police Sgt. Tarik Khatib, who runs the joint city-county Drug Enforcement Unit.

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Q: How many people in Douglas County have these kinds of agreements with police?

A: “I really don’t want to reveal how many informants we have,” Khatib said. “It’s numerous.”

Q: What kind of rules are there to control how these agreements are used?

A: Much is left to police officers’ discretion, Khatib said. However, there are some guidelines.

It says, among other things, that the person won’t buy any drugs without approval from police, won’t use drugs and won’t tell anyone about the agreement.

Q: What are the alternatives to using a system like this?

A: One alternative is for police to do all their undercover work, but Sheriff Rick Trapp said that’s not feasible, especially in a smaller community.

Local defense attorney John Frydman said an alternative was to legalize drugs and stop spending so much public money going after drug dealers.

He also wants police to start using forms that document people’s consent to searches during traffic stops or other encounters.

Often, people become informants or “cooperating individuals” after police find contraband on them during these encounters, Frydman said. Often, he said, people later deny they gave police permission to conduct the search.

Defense attorney Martin Miller said he’d like to see more emphasis on the public-health aspects of drug abuse.

“There’s always a problem when you are giving a person who might have a drug problem access to drugs,” he said. “As a matter of policy, that’s bad news.”