by Lou Reiter
“Father Vu tells the SNU guys he has to make the buy for the fishing boat that day or it’ll go to another buyer. Says they got to get down to the coast fast. Prick, excuse me, Pepy, says maybe we can work a deal.
“What’s the deal? They forget about $50K and leave with the rest and their 7-series BMW. The Vu boys were born here in America. Father Vu, however, is another matter. He came over as a kid with his family after the Commies overran us in ‘Nam. He remembers the Vietnamese police. He knows corruption. To him, it was a part of doing business.”
“Why did they file the lawsuit, then?”
“Momma! Mrs. Vu! She’s the one behind it!”
“Did you ask the city and PD to give it back?”
“They said it was theirs. And they said all that was confiscated was $20K. That fat shit Garcia says they’re lucky he didn’t take their car and all the money. Can you imagine the arrogance?”
Taylor spent another hour asking Felix if he knew of other incidents involving the SNU. Felix really didn’t know of others, but had heard several attorneys griping about the same behavior. He knew the chief was proud of the unit and kept saying so in the press. The chief liked the arrest stats. He liked the hot cars they seized. In fact, Felix thought the chief still drove a Mercedes they seized off a drug dealer coming in from Arizona.
Taylor discovered one law firm had filed the other three civil lawsuits involving the SNU. They all were pretty much identical. SNU arrested their clients who weren’t really guilty, or so they claimed. The clients said they didn’t have any narcotics on them and denied using them. But the SNU seized the narcotics they said they found in the clients’ cars. Each of the clients took the deal offered by the local DA. Plead to simple possession, don’t contest the car seizure, and they would only get community service. The charge would be expunged within two years. It was too good a deal to pass up considering the consequences. It was a safe deal, even though each of the three clients adamantly denied using or possessing drugs.
Each worried that it would be their word against the word of the cops. The attorney knew the lawsuits would be an uphill fight with the plea agreement, but he was hoping for settlement on the value of the cars. What the League finally gave was adequate, but not inordinate.
The “war on drugs” may not have been won, but it produced a mega billion-dollar industry in the United States. The battle against drugs began in 1971 under President Nixon. In 1984, part of the Omnibus Crime Bill turned focus to the seizure of property involved or derived from drug trafficking. The legislation used the old customs’ concept of “in rem,” meaning “against property,” rather than against an individual.
Shortly after, the concept of “equitable sharing” of seized property with the federal government began. Even if it wasn’t sanctioned under state law, local police could seize property and share a portion with the feds. It’s estimated as much as a half a billion dollars annually flows to the Department of Justice from seized assets. It could be over a billion dollars in all. But the drug enforcement industry is estimated their cost is nearly $50 billion a year. This includes law enforcement, prosecution, defense attorneys, courts, probation and parole agents, and prisons. There are more people in jail from drug cases than criminal actions. There are plenty of attorneys, cops, and judges in jail as well for dipping into the massive amounts of money received from drug trafficking. For the person from whom the seized assets come, there is nothing but laborious bureaucratic red tape and delay after delay. Most simply give up in their effort to reclaim what is theirs. Years ago local cops made their quotas from speed traps, but today it’s called highway interdiction.
*****
Sergio called Taylor on the second day. He had no trouble finding Spence. There weren’t many black families owning ranches in the Texas panhandle. Sergio said Spence was reluctant to talk with him at first. When Sergio lied and said Pepy copped out, naming Spence as the ringleader, Spence went ballistic. But he was still apprehensive about giving out details.
“I made a call to the Assistant Attorney General in Austin,” Sergio said. “I’ve worked a lot of political corruption cases with him. Most involved small county sheriffs. Told him what I expected Spence would divulge. He faxed an immunity agreement to our local DPS post. With that, Spence opened up. He really hates that Pepy!”
Spence told Sergio they all liked the work at SNU. They liked chasing after scumbags. They all liked the excitement the job offered. But, Spence said, Pepy ran the show and Sgt. Cooke sat back, taking some of the credit. Pepy was the rock star and he loved it.
Spence wasn’t sure where Pepy got his information, but claimed he never saw the supposed informants. Spence thought a lot of information came from Pepy’s whore girlfriend. He said the unit would skim money and drugs from each bust if at all possible. Spence said he never kept any money, but gave it to the Boys’ and Girls’ Club anonymously. Spence indicated the unit kept some of the skimmed drugs in the office and figured it was used as drop evidence to make an arrest appear even more solid He wasn’t sure, but thought Pepy was using coke and giving a shit load of it to Izzi, his girlfriend.
What really pissed Spence off, and the reason for his sudden resignation, was the Emma Mae Jones shooting. He didn’t know what happened inside the house to cause the shooting, but he saw Pepy leave the house, go to the unit vehicle, and come back with a brown paper sack.
He saw Pepy stuff the sack into the bedroom closet after depositing a bag in the dresser. Spence left the force because he didn’t want to get sucked into lying to the grand jury or any other legal proceeding. Sergio said Spence agreed to testify against Pepy, but not against Bull or Clap.
“The AG wants to go into Sierra Vista and close the whole operation down,” Sergio told Taylor. “No one likes that pompous ass Garcia anyway. Calls us Rangers political hacks. Always asks us if we shine Chuck Norris’ boots. Motherfucker! I get so God damn mad at light weights like Garcia.”
Taylor thought a minute. “Sergio, I’d appreciate it if you’d hold off for a few days. I’ve got a couple other angles I’d like to pursue. It could make the AG even more sure of the outcome. Can you do that? Can you quiet your folks for a few days? Don’t want any leaks.”
“Okay, no problem. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m going to have Spence’s statement typed up into affidavit format and signed. Let’s meet tomorrow night and you can bring me up to date. How about the Buckeye Grill? Figure you’ll be buying with the League’s money.”
*****
Taylor found the chief’s lieutenant and asked him to set up a ride-along with Bull Cochran. “Why don’t you just call him into the office?” the lieutenant asked.
“I prefer to ride along with patrol guys. Their car is their office. They usually feel safer there. I find it beneficial and they tend to be more open in conversation. You’re welcome to come along, but you’ll have to ride in the back.
“I’ll set it up, but don’t expect me to back you up.”
Taylor knew the lieutenant wouldn’t want to sit in the back of the car. Marked police cars turned the rear seat into a small cage of molded plastic. Bars covered the windows to save them from repairs when freaked-out arrestees tried to kick their way out. A solid plastic divider separated the back from the front seat to protect the officer. The upper half of the divider was Plexiglas so the officer could see if the arrestee passed out or needed medical attention. The only way a person could be comfortable sitting in that cage would be if they were the size of a midget.
*****
Bull was, well, a bull of man. He towered at six foot six and weighed over 300 pounds. Between Bull’s bulk, the computer and radio gear crowding the front seat, there wasn’t much room left for Taylor.
“So, I hear you were a cop in California.” Bull stated flatly.
“Yeah. Twenty with LAPD.”
“Must have been fun. Meet many movie stars?”
“Not really. They pretty much stay to themselves or end up in Beverly Hills. LA doesn’t
have the same pull.”
“Bet you saw a lot of police work in your time.”
“That I did, both good and bad. But the job is basically the same no matter where you are. A drunk is a drunk. A DV is a DV. Good people, bad people. I get in a car and still think I can do the job. Maybe not as good with all new electronic gear though,” Taylor said, turning to look at Bull. He could see the big guy’s knuckles turning white as he gripped the wheel tighter than normal.
“You here to talk about the Jones’ shooting?” Bull asked.
“Just wondered why you suddenly left SNU? Most guys fight for a job like that.”
“Yeah, I loved it. Catching bad guys. Made some big arrests. Felt like I was making a difference. The chief would send us all these ‘Attaboys.’ I felt special. Not like working a radio car and chasing bullshit calls.”
Bull waited to see if Taylor would follow up, but he stayed quiet. “I feel bad that I had to shoot the old lady. But, she shot at us first. Then I find out it was another cluster fuck of Pepy’s.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hey, I’m no snitch! I’m not going to rat out, even a rat. Pepy changed after he hooked up with that whore. Don’t know what gets into a guy that goes to bed with a bitch who probably just fucked who knows who? What’s he thinking?”
“What do you mean he changed?”
“The clothes. The car. The clubs. I mean, we all skimmed a little off the top on some arrests—money and a little pot here and there. But Pepy seemed to have a regular supply of coke. I guess his whore bitch needed it. Maybe he needed it. But I don’t know that and shit, don’t quote me!” Bull threw up his hands in denial. “Just a bunch of signs I saw. A cop knows when things aren’t going right.”
“You feel bad about having to testify at the grand jury about finding drugs in the Jones house?”
“Hey, I didn’t testify anything about drugs. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t see any of that. That was all Pepy. I wasn’t asked and didn’t volunteer testimony about any drugs. I told the DA not to ask me questions about finding drugs. I was pissed at Pepy, though. We shouldn’t have been in that old woman’s house. Shit, she was so old she probably thought we were robbing her. But, I still got to go home. I didn’t know anything about Pepy’s bullshit investigation. Now I know it was bullshit. But I didn’t know that when she shot at me and Clap. I just reacted. My training kicked in. It’s a shame the old lady ended up dead. But it wasn’t my fault!”
“Was it Pepy’s?”
“Like I said, I’m no snitch. But after the grand jury, I could see the handwriting on the wall. Cooke and Garcia wanted stats and seizures and didn’t care how we got them. I simply wasn’t going to get in the middle again. So I left. Probably shot the shit out of my career here in Sierra Vista, but I got commitments. House payments. Two cars. Daycare. It seems to never end.”
Taylor spent another hour riding the streets with Bull. They made a couple traffic stops and answered two calls about neighborhood disputes. Taylor liked the big guy. He was the kind of cop who would give a day’s worth of work for a day’s dollar. He treated citizens with respect. Taylor inquired about Clap and found he was on vacation for another week.
*****
Taylor was thinking about the information he had gathered. It was obvious Officer Pedro Fuentes was over his head with commitments. Cash for a 100K car? Top line clothing? He was cutting corners and probably manufacturing probable cause for search warrants. But, Pepy must have had access to more narcotics than simply skimming off the top on a few arrests.
Taylor knew one exceptionally vulnerable area in narcotic evidence control. When police seize narcotics during an arrest or search warrant operation, there are systematic controls and processing procedures to follow. Many times officers will do a preliminary field test to make sure what they confiscated is really a narcotic. The junk is packaged up, sealed with evidence tags, and booked into the evidence room. Officers are required to request lab testing before they go for prosecution. When testing comes back positive for narcotics, the evidence is sent back to the evidence room for storage.
Each time the narcotic package is handled or removed from the room for any reason, documentation is made to show the chain of custody. More than one case has been lost when the unbroken chain of custody can’t be documented. Narcotic evidence also leaves the Evidence Room during court prosecution and could end up as an exhibit. Sometimes that evidence never makes it back to the locked storage room and thus becomes a problem for the prosecutor’s office.
But the most vulnerable time occurs when the case is over, or will never be filed or heard in court. Now the actual evidence becomes a problem for the local police department. Most evidence is destroyed; commonly it’s burned. There are other methods of disposal, but usually burning is the vehicle of choice. It might happen once or twice a year.
A police department notes the case numbers and the narcotic evidence involved and then checks with the primary investigator and the prosecutor’s office. If they say the materials are no longer needed, the evidence is scheduled for the next burn. That process is frequently documented by digital camera and video. More than one person is present during disposal to avoid any questions later. Well run departments will often have all, certainly the larger packages of narcotics, field-tested to ensure packages still contain genuine junk and are not filled with gypsum or milk sugar.
Taylor made a couple phone calls. The first was to the chief’s lieutenant. He asked him whether he knew what Sierra Vista’s procedure was for narcotic burning. Of course he didn’t know anything about it. His second call was to Sgt. Cooke at SNU.
“Narcotic burn? Yeah, we do something like that. I’ve signed a lot of memos sent to Evidence saying a case was over or not going anywhere. Beyond that, I can’t say what happens. I make it a practice to look around the SNU office every now and then to make sure we don’t have evidence sitting around. But the burn, don’t know how they do that. Sorry.”
Taylor thought to himself, sorry from a sorry shit. He again called the lieutenant and asked if he could visit Evidence. This time the curious lieutenant wanted to come along. Taylor learned the Evidence Room was housed in the basement of the station. A light duty officer, injured in an on-duty traffic accident, was the primary person in charge. Two volunteers from RSVP, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, regularly worked in Evidence as well.
Taylor noted the hallway leading to the Evidence Room had a surveillance camera at the end covering the door and the nighttime evidence lockers arranged along one wall. This allowed officers the option to put evidence in lockers, secured in the hallway and only opened when inside the Evidence Room. This preserved the chain of custody. A volunteer was on duty when Taylor and his guard dog arrived.
“I don’t know a great deal about the narcotic burns, Mr. Sterling,” the volunteer said. He was retired military and was proud of his 32 years with the Air Force. He retired from a maintenance unit. “I do know one is coming up next week.”
“Have you ever been present when a burn was done?”
“Last time I was. We hauled a bunch of stuff that had been thrown into cardboard boxes. We went to the waste management plant since they got this big industrial incinerator. Officer Boone, he’s in charge here, picked out a package of narcotics and read off the number and I checked it off the list. A plant foreman was there to make sure we didn’t follow the stuff in.” He chuckled and then caught himself.
“Mr. Clements…”
“Call me Sarge, everyone does. That was my last rank in the Air Force. Makes me feel a little more like I belong here and I’m like one of the cops.”
“Say, Sarge, you got that list for next week’s burn?” Taylor saw the chief’s lapdog lieutenant was standing at the property bin fondling handguns. At least the guns wore the bright red safety straps to prevent accidental discharge.
Sarge found a folder on the desk marked BURN in bold black letters. Taylor noticed there was a list stapled to the front
followed by individual evidence reports. The reports listed the original booked items. He guessed Sierra Vista used a bar code system to track each item once it was booked. Taylor leafed through the reports and found one that interested him.
Case #10-634007 Booking Officer P. Fuentes. Arrestee Julio Rodriguez. 2.6 kilos suspected cocaine. Following the original evidence report was a memo written by Pedro Fuentes indicating that the arrestee had pled guilty and had been sentenced sometime in April 2011, thus the narcotics captured could be destroyed.
“Sarge, can you pull up the chain of custody on this case?”
The eager volunteer scanned the bar code on the burn list and peered into the computer screen. “Well, let’s see. Booked in 10/23/10 by Fuentes. Taken out on 10/27/10 by S. Roberts, Crime Lab, and returned the next day. Next entry appears to be 5/10/11, taken out by Officer M., er, looks like Murphy, and returned later that same day. Then again two weeks later by another officer with the name of M. Vigil and again returned the same day. That’s the last entry, Mr. Sterling.”
“When an officer comes in to sign out evidence, what’s the procedure?”
“Well, they show me an ID, particularly when they aren’t in uniform. I don’t know most of the officers. I know some, but not most. Particularly I don’t know those on nights and graveyard. I key in their ID number. They usually just give it to me rather than have me check their ID card. That takes too much time, they say.”
“Sarge, you’ve been really helpful. I imagine PD appreciates you as a volunteer.”
“Yeah, they do. Gave all of us, there’s about 15 total, a nice party last holiday season. Gift certificate to Wal-Mart, too.”
As Taylor left the Evidence Room, he motioned for the chief’s lieutenant to follow him. Taylor asked if he could get the phone numbers for Officers M. Murphy and M. Vigil. Taylor told him he wanted to follow up on evidence he noted on the burn list. Back at the chief’s office the lieutenant got the numbers from the office secretary.
