There's few things in life more intolerable to me than a dirty cop.
Bad drivers, rude, profane people and obnoxious, undisciplined teens? No problem. Egomaniacs, the socially-elite who parade their imagined superiority to the world? Piece of cake. Crooked cops are a whole different story.
I've had the displeasure of wearing the same uniform as a few who chose to run afoul of the law; four ended up in prison. There's another out there, a guy who is older than me and retired on disability when I was still a young copper, that eventually went to prison for trafficking cocaine. He's been out for awhile now, back in the area and no doubt back in the drug business.
He also murdered his wife. That's only my opinion, as her death was ruled a suicide, but I have strong reason to believe she didn't willingly put a gun to her head. That's all I'll say about that one.
Back in the mid-90s I was working in a ten-county anti-drug task force. It had been my goal for several years to work in the unit; you wore your hair however you wanted, grew a beard and dressed like...well, not scumbags, but not far off, either. We ran CIs, 'cooperating individuals' who, most times, would make a few buys from drug dealers for us, who would later be indicted by a grand jury, thus putting them in the court system. There's many variables to the chain of events described but, by and large, that's how we operated. Sometimes the unit executed search warrants on dope houses in the middle of the night, usually with the assistance of the county-wide special operations team...the black-garbed, automatic weapons-armed door-kickers commonly referred to by the public as SWAT.
It was the best position I would hold during my 30-plus years as a police officer.
On occasion we'd work other types of crimes, too, such as prostitution, white-collar, gambling and liquor offenses. It was a weeks-long joint venture with the state liquor cops that introduced me to my first dirty law enforcement officer.
The operation was called a '61-B' because that was the section of state liquor administrative code used to cite establishments into hearings before the liquor board. Sending several agents to the area, nearly every bar in the county was checked over several nights. My partner, who commanded our four-man afternoon shift unit, a man I called my 'rabbi' because he'd taught me so much about how to be a policeman, and I were assigned a female agent. I'll call her Janet.
Janet was short, bespectacled and rotundish, a gal who let you know immediately that she knew her job and, probably, yours too. To me she seemed a little arrogant...but she knew liquor law.
Her job was to enter an establishment and mingle, chat up the bar staff and watch for liquor violations. Our only means of communicating with her was one-way; she wore a body wire, or transmitter, that permitted us to monitor her conversations, though we had to be positioned within a couple hundred yards or so. We'd worked out a code phrase that would indicate trouble and needed intervention on our part prior to Janet entering a dive on the west end of the county on the night in question. We anticipated her spending an hour or two inside and then moving on to the next location.
That's not what happened.
Rabbi and I were parked at a closed landscaping business probably a hundred fifty yards from a place I'll refer to as The Hollow. We listened as Janet went inside and seated herself at the bar, ordering a drink that she'd nurse while doing her job. It wouldn't do to have an undercover agent become inebriated, you know.
Janet struck up a conversation with a male who obviously had taken the seat beside her. She stuck to her cover story, which I'm unable to recall now, while the male proceeded to inform her that he was an off-duty sheriff's deputy from a few counties away, originally from the community where The Hollow was located, and that he liked to come 'home' on his time off so he could party in a place where no one would know his profession.
Then things got very interesting.
Stephen, the deputy, asked Janet, the undercover state liquor agent, if she'd be interested in throwing in if he bought a quarter-pound of marijuana. Janet, God bless her, agreed, but said she'd have to go to an ATM to get some cash. She told Stephen she'd be back as soon as she could and left the bar, driving straight to where we were parked.
As soon as we'd heard the events unfolding, even before Janet left the bar, the inside of our car became a flurry of activity. Rabbi immediately got on the cell phone (it might even have been one of the ancient 'bag' phones that were all the rage in the very early days of wireless communication) and instructed the other half of our crew, Larry and Duane, to sign out some SIU (Special Investigative Unit, which we also were) cash and bring it to our location after photocopying the bills.
How they did all that in under 25 minutes, driving from our downtown office to the west end of the county, is still a mystery to this day.
Carrying our cash, Janet returned to the bar. Our plan was, after the deal was made, to take down Stephen when he left the bar; Larry and Duane were going to stop the dope delivery guy after he left the immediate area, arrest him and recover our photocopied buy money.
Janet went back inside the bar; Stephen suggested they wait in his car in the parking lot for the delivery guy to show up. A few minutes later the pair were in the crooked cop's car, chatting while awaiting their dope. At one point, Stephen was heard to say something along the lines of, 'have you ever seen one of these?' Our girl asked him what it was and, I'll never forget this, the mope says, "It's a nine-millimeter with a laser sight."
Now we've got him armed during a drug transaction, which enhances the crime.
Shortly thereafter the dope arrives; our mope gets out of the car and, with half of the money used to buy the quarter-pound belonging to us, makes the transaction. Delivery guy leaves, followed by Larry and Duane (at that time, De-Wayne, as I called him, bore a striking resemblance to actor Tom Berenger). Rabbi and I heard Stephen divide the grass with Janet; they said their goodbyes and she got out of his car.
The impending felon left the lot and drove a half-mile west to another bar, one which no longer exists today. Rabbi and I waited outside in the lot for the other half of our team to arrive, they having had a marked cruiser from the local department take custody of the drug dealer they'd stopped. Once they arrived the four of us walked inside; our man was sitting mid-bar, drinking. Rabbi, an imposing figure, stepped beside the soon-to-be ex-deputy and told him he was under arrest for trafficking in drugs. Without a word, Stephen stood up, put his hands behind his back and was handcuffed.
I can tell you this now: never, for the rest of my career, did I take more pleasure in slamming a cell door closed than I did that night.
We towed Stephen's car, got a search warrant and recovered his half of the marijuana along with the laser-sighted 9mm handgun. Janet had the other half of the dope and it all was logged into evidence. Our bills were recovered from the dealer during the book-in process, pretty much nailing his coffin shut. We spent the rest of the night completing our paperwork...and notifying the Sheriff for whom Stephen worked of his deputy's arrest.
The next morning, that same Sheriff drove to our jail and fired the mope we'd locked up, still in his cell.
I love a story with a happy ending.
