Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.metro From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: On night patrol, RDU officers jump out on drug dealers Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 17:03:26 EST Message-ID: \SE B;METROPOLITAN;POLICE BEAT \HD On night patrol, RDU officers jump out on drug dealers \BY Fred Reed \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES It's dark in the city. Sgt. Tom Kormis, Officer Jim Crane and I set out in an unmarked car for the less habitable regions of 14th Street. The plan is to sweep up some drug dealers. The officers are with the District's Rapid Deployment Unit, which ranges over the city catching people who need to be caught. The RDU lives, professionally speaking, at 1501 South Capitol St. Cops have a genius for finding bleak places to work. At least in the District they do, where the police budget is low. The RDU facilities, like others, have the ambiance of a cell-block but with fewer comforts. Ugly furniture, minimal amenities, stamped-steel lockers. The suburban cops live in palaces by comparison. Anyway, the scam we're working is the buy-bust, which means that an officer in disguise, in this case a black female officer named Quigley, goes into a drug neighborhood and buys crack. Then lots of cops swoop down and grab the peddlers, big-time. Everything is controlled by radio. We're in plain clothes. Sgt. Kormis and Officer Crane look like small-time thugs. I'm dressed in late-'60s, semi-sociopath-dirtball attire. Officer Quigley, riding in another car, is positively scruffy. That's a compliment. Undercover women in her job are supposed to look scruffy. Somewhere off 14th Street we park in a lovely alley, trash and Dumpsters and chill alley light everywhere. Then we wait. Out on the street, Officer Quigley is making the buy. We can't see her, but other cars can; and we follow the action on the radio. "She's walking south on . . . OK, looks like she's making the buy . . . everybody ready?" While she does her thing, a couple of undercover guys - "UCs," in the lingo - follow along, presumably (I can't see them) talking and scratching and looking, you know, indigenous. They serve both as witnesses and as protection if Officer Quigley needs it. The RDU does all of this with the precision and forethought of a football play. In the alley, Officer Crane puts the car in gear and sits up, alert. "She made the buy . . . seller is walking south on 14th, black male in a dark Redskins jacket and a grey baseball cap. Let's go . . ." The quotation isn't precise because I can't write fast enough, but it's close. We shoot out of the alley. These guys drive like my girlfriend, and she's from Chicago. It isn't reckless but . . . "imaginative" may be the word, and you get there faster than you expected. A guy in a Redskins jacket, baseball cap, all the rest, is in front of a corner convenience store. Sgt. Kormis and Officer Crane jump out. A jump-out is like right now, fast. The guy goes into the store. They follow. He drops a $20 bill in the aisle, good sign that he knows he's been had: drug dealers know about marked money. They grab him and it. Got him. Except, hmmm, heh. Oops. The bill he dropped isn't marked. We hold him on the corner and have Officer Quigley drive by to identify him. The idea is that he doesn't know what car she's in, so she doesn't blow her cover. Wrong guy, says Officer Quigley. It happens. The officers politely let him go. In the real world, the light isn't good, or the guy radioing the description can't get a good look, or three similar guys are walking down the street. Why the man dropped his money isn't clear. Maybe he just sold drugs to somebody else. Maybe he was careless. Meanwhile, another officer gets the right guy. He has the marked money, and Officer Quigley identifies him. Bingo. Good case. All that remains is for some judge to let him go the next day. But, as countless cops say, if you think about that, you get discouraged and find another job. Incidentally, several District officers have told me that after the riots in Mount Pleasant and Los Angeles, they don't like arresting people of some ethnic groups (Officer Crane and Sgt. Kormis are white.) Further explosions, some think, are just a matter of time. No cop wants to be the one who accidentally sets it off by arresting some drunk or druggie. Cops are easy targets for hostility over conditions they didn't cause and can't do anything about, and they know it. Their formula is to get in, arrest the guy fast, and get out before a crowd can form. We set off to make another buy. Over and over, the RDU does the same thing. For the evening, none of the dealers gets away, and no other innocent folk are questioned. These guys are pros. 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