As I drove to my apartment that day, I thought about how easily I could have made the wrong call and shot an innocent and unarmed man who was simply trying to drive somewhere to share Christmas dinner with family. I’d taken a chance when I opted not to pull the trigger. A man’s life hung in the balance as I made a split-second decision. Polite and respectful, that man in a duster coat taught me an invaluable lesson on pulling the trigger.
For two years, I continued to patrol. The long hours that I’d spent with my dad delivering milk as a kid came in handy because I’d already learned most of the street names in town. I grew closer to the other guys on the force and continued to demonstrate loyalty to the always-colorful Chief Joe McCarthy. I made some small busts, responded to numerous calls about heart attacks and other health emergencies, and improved my marksmanship at the range. I continued training Korean Karate and working out with weights as well.
Underneath, I was desperate to do something more to prove my worth. Undercover narcotics was what I needed. That was where I could balance the inner spreadsheet against my years in the Pagans. I was young, too, and needed the adrenalin rush that came with living life on the edge.
Looking back on my initial two years in uniform, I know I learned the basic methods of patrolling. But I failed in terms of doing effective police work. I didn’t really get it, I suppose, until after I’d worked undercover. My attitude changed. After two wild years undercover, I no longer had any desire to impress people or to prove my loyalty and bravery in any way. I had worked with so many solid cops from all over—agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Police, and all the city officers who did the real dirty work—and managed to earn their respect, as they earned mine.
I realized after the Christmas Day incident that I was a touch too authoritative, too black-and-white and by-the-book. I hadn’t yet learned that good police work is usually done in more of a gray area. Over time, I learned that most people respond better to honey than to vinegar. I could bull my way through a situation using my gun, badge and strength, or I could take a kinder and more thoughtful approach that resulted in fewer conflicts and better results.
As a patrolman, I responded to plenty of calls about loud parties lasting late into the night and pissing off the neighbors—for good reason. In the early days, I’d demand to see the homeowner and officiously order him to turn down the music “NOW.” But that put the homeowner in an awkward position, and they’d often try to save face with their party guests by defying me. Ultimately, I’d win the confrontation, but not before some kind of verbal conflict or a fight. My “in your face” style got the job done, but not without a lot of conflict. Later on, I learned to handle the call in an entirely different way that rarely failed. I would find the homeowner and ask to see them privately, away from the other partygoers.
“Look, man, I need a favor from you,” I’d tell the homeowner. “Do this for me and maybe someday I can help you out with a problem or a ticket. Listen, it’s your neighbors complaining, and if the shoe was on the other foot, you would be pissed if someone screwed up your Saturday night. So please, I am asking for your help. Kill the music, and you and I are friends.”
The response from my new method usually yielded amazing results. I could quietly stand back and watch as the homeowner would start berating the partiers, demand the music be turned off and comply with whatever I may have requested. Not only were the results better, my new policing method wasn’t as stressful. The conflicts were gone, and I made solid connections in the community.
In time, I truly started to feel that I was a force for good. I stood for the weak and defenseless and punished the truly deserving. I broke out of the rock-hard shell I’d created during my years in the army and with the Pagans and engaged the compassionate and fair-minded part of me that had been extinguished by that sea of violence.
My new method was to be the muscular, hard-looking “bad” cop in appearance, but kind and understanding in action. Coming on strong and then being kind seemed to put people in a better space. Being a good guy was now my true persona.
One of the younger guys on the job was finishing a tour with the Monmouth County Narcotics Task Force. This cat was a friend of mine and filled me in on undercover work. I wanted in badly, made my request and waited. I’d been on the job less than two years, but I was older than most of the other guys when I joined and anxious to get more bad guys. The MCNTF had jurisdiction in some of the roughest neighborhoods in the state, the same ones that I’d hung out in as a Pagan. Perhaps more important, I knew how to blend in with the people there, because I’d been one of them. I didn’t need to assume some undercover persona; I simply needed to adopt the same persona that I’d had only a few years earlier.
The trouble was that the MCNTF had a very tenuous relationship with the Middletown PD. The task force prosecuted the big cases and also prosecuted cops—some with zeal. There was real bad blood brewing, and it was only fitting that I should be in the middle of it. In the end, it was Chief Joseph McCarthy who would decide who went undercover. He chose me, and dissent be damned. My time at the MCNTF was the precursor to my hell ride at the Bayshore Narcotics Task Force.
I have seen cops try to do undercover work and admit they were too spooked to continue. It takes a certain type of person to walk unarmed into enemy territory, with no real backup and no trimmings of authority. No gun, no badge. Just your wits and balls.
I believed that I could fit in and pull off undercover work because I had been a criminal, at least for the two years I ran with the Pagans. Now, running with the righteous, I was given the extraordinary chance to redeem myself. Not for the affirmation of others, but for me personally. Where I stood morally mattered to me intensely. It was the fuel that pushed me to take down drug dealers like Big John and so many others who treat the world as if they are predators picking off sheep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
COCAINE & CADILLACS
“What the fuck are you doing, trying to take someone down for a fucking eightball? That’s fucking ridiculous,” the confidential informant said. “I can set up a buy for a pound of coke.”
I’d already given a nickname to this CI. His name was Rocky LoPresti, but I called him Rocky the Lying Squirrel. I didn’t believe Rocky had the connections that he claimed. He laughed in my face when I talked to him about buying eightballs on the street, and told me that that quantity was so small it wasn’t even worth bothering with. I had serious doubts at the start whether I’d be able to work with this fuckhead, much less have any success. But I was wrong.
Rocky proved to be a very hot CI, one of the best that I ever dealt with. We worked around the clock for three days straight during the fall of 1985 and scored some major buys from some very bad people.
This white kid looked like you’d plucked him out of a college class at Rutgers. He was an innocuous-looking 22-year-old with shaggy, curly black hair. He lived with his mommy and daddy in a mansion near the Superior Court building in Freehold and constantly talked big. I thought he was full of shit. First impressions can be deceiving, and this kid proved to have a very agile mind and truly amazing connections.
The usual way for undercover narcs to get to the big dealers was to tag a lesser target who was more vulnerable and then use them to roll the network up from the bottom. Sometimes we got to arrest the big guys at the top, and sometimes those major arrests went to other agencies. You couldn’t allow it to matter to you if another group of dealers moved in to fill the void. That’s just the way it was. You just kept doing your work. In the end, the vast majority of people in the game are pawns—the low-level dealers on one side, and some of us narcs on the other. But sometimes things went in a different direction indeed.
Rocky ID’d a guy named Larry Gaines as a high-value, and dangerous, target. A skilled martial arts figure, he’d been operating out of Middletown and had partnered with a Pagan, my old “friend” Tennessee, the qu
iet and slightly-built cat who had engineered the Pepsi bottle enema and subsequent murder of our fellow Pagan. Gaines had a guy named Robert Williams on his payroll, a chubby five-foot-10 guy in his early 30s, with a wispy beard and fairly long hair. Working as Gaines’s mule seemed to be a second job for Williams, a way for him to pick up extra money, and it ultimately proved both dangerous and stupid.
Rocky arranged for me to buy a pound of coke from Williams. The deal would go down in the parking lot of an A&P supermarket in Port Monmouth, where I’d meet Williams at his car in the early evening. I was supposed to walk over to Williams’s car and show him the buy money, and he would hand me the package. Another cop, Alton Bennett, was going to back me up on site, observing the deal from his undercover vehicle. We had multiple marked units stationed nearby but staying out of sight.
As people walked by with their shopping carts full of groceries, Bennett watched Gaines pull into the parking lot in his Cadillac Seville, get out of the car and walk over to Williams’s car. The two of them talked briefly before Gaines walked back to the Seville.
I pulled into the lot a few minutes later, parked at the end of the lot by the street and walked over to the vehicle Rocky had described to me a few hours earlier. Williams was sitting in the car, just as planned. I showed him a wad of cash, and he pulled out the brick of coke and handed it to me.
“You’re under arrest, fuckhead. I’m a cop with the Bayshore Task Force,” I said, sticking my Smith & Wesson in his face.
Bennett radioed to the marked units, and four of them descended on the parking lot from different directions. They picked up Gaines and assumed custody of my handcuffed prisoner, Williams. We ordered tow trucks in and put both Gaines’s Cadillac and Williams’s cars on the hook; they would be searched later, back at headquarters.
We also executed a search warrant on Williams’s house, where we found a half pound of coke, a scale and other drug paraphernalia. Bennett and I hoped to turn Williams and get him to talk about Gaines. But Williams was too afraid and immediately lawyered up. Gaines spent the evening practicing karate kicks and punches in his cell, successfully freaking out the cops guarding him.
We knew going in that the case against Gaines was weak. Bennett and I were pretty confident that he’d dropped the coke off with Williams in the parking lot right before the buy went down. But Bennett wasn’t able to see Gaines carrying anything, and our evidence against him was mostly circumstantial. Charged as Williams’s co-conspirator on felony drug sale charges, Gaines had lawyered up with an expensive defense attorney who’d gotten a bunch of dealers off in the past. In court, the case would weigh heavily on Bennett’s testimony.
The case went to trial months later, with both Williams and Gaines represented by tough attorneys. As the prosecutor built his case, he ordered Bennett to get the pound of cocaine out of the evidence vault and bring it into the courtroom to show to the jurors. The prosecutor displayed the drugs on his table in the front of the courtroom and had Bennett testify at length. The defense attorney then grilled Bennett on the stand. This process continued for hours. When the judge called a brief recess, everyone left the courtroom. Bennett, who seriously needed a break, walked out along with the attorneys.
No one thought about guarding the evidence that was sitting there in plain sight—not Bennett, who had signed for the contraband, or the prosecutor, the judge or the court guards. Somehow they all thought that everything was going to be fine because we were in the Monmouth County Courthouse. Gaines’s hot sister, who’d been in the courtroom to observe the proceedings, thought differently. During the break, she walked up front, snagged the pound of coke and casually walked out of the courtroom without anyone noticing. When the recess ended and people returned, someone noticed that the drugs were missing and the entire courthouse was immediately placed under lockdown.
Bennett, who technically had possession of the drugs because he’d signed for them, was surrounded by sheriff’s deputies and the prosecutor, who promptly read him his Miranda rights. No action was taken against the court guard who’d been in the room, and of course the prosecutor didn’t think that he was at all responsible—even though he was the one who’d directed Bennett to bring the drugs into the courtroom and had the drugs on the table in front of him. The courthouse guards, police and other law enforcement personnel launched a massive search of the building. Bennett’s ex-wife, who happened to be a security officer in the courthouse, was among those engaged in the search.
“How are you, dear?” Bennett said as he saw her approaching him in a corridor.
“You really fucked up again, didn’t you?” she asked before continuing the search.
A sheriff’s deputy subsequently found Gaines’s sister, along with the drugs, in a courtroom phone booth. The woman was arrested, and the drugs were placed back in the vault, where they stayed under lock and key for the remainder of the trial. Ironically, she could have flushed the drugs down a toilet and destroyed the case against her brother. But she was greedy and wanted to keep the coke.
No one ever apologized to Bennett about what happened that day.
Gaines was subsequently found not guilty and released. He’d lost his Cadillac to the county and had been forced to shell out tens of thousands for a defense attorney, but he was free. Williams was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the drug sales.
Later, I found out that Tennessee had been at the A&P the night the drug deal with Williams went down. Bennett and I hadn’t seen him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
PASS THE FUCKING PEAS
In 1986, after working undercover for more than a year, I was sent to a week-long training class on advanced narcotics work at the State Police training facility in Sea Girt, New Jersey. Sometimes truth seems odder than fiction, and this was one of those moments.
One of the classes was run by a veteran New Jersey State Police detective who’d done some very heavy undercover work inside an organized crime family. I knew he’d taken an enormous risk doing that work, so this dude was a hero to me. Like many who put their lives on the line for real, he was quite humble.
“How many of you have done undercover work?” asked the tall, lean detective.
I raised my hand, the only one to do so in a room of about 40 cops, young and old.
“You have the look of someone who’s been there a while,” he said, staring me straight in the eye. “We try to keep assignments like that to six months. How long you been under?”
“About 13 months. I figure two years to close it out.”
“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “Big cases to clean up, huh?”
I knew the guy was being friendly, not sarcastic, and nodded my head.
“Well, you think about it, ’cause you’re a serious candidate for burnout. This is how you’re going to know you need out. You will be at a family dinner. Your family will be there, mother and father. Your grandparents and aunts. Without even a thought you will look at your mother and say, ‘Mom, pass me the fucking peas.’”
It was good for a laugh. But it stuck with me. And some months down the road, when I was still undercover and having dinner with my mother and father, my brother’s family and his kids, I looked at my mother and said, “Mom, can you pass the fucking carrots?”
The kids laughed; the adults, not so much.
It’s the little things that you notice when you’re doing undercover work. When you’re a cop, the community generally opens its arms to you—especially the merchants. But if you’re working undercover, you are lucky if you get the worst table in the restaurant. You look like a thug, because that is the role you’re playing as if your life depended on it. And the universe conspires to remind you of who you are. If you have a hot informant, you might run with them for days, with little sleep. You feel like crap, but you soldier on. You get pulled over by cops who bust your balls.
The New Jersey State Police pulled me over once during my years
undercover: two State bulls together. I told them that I was working undercover and that my ID and weapon were in a briefcase on the back seat. They let me show them my ID—at gunpoint. Then they relaxed but got sarcastic.
“Man, you really look like shit,” one said.
“Thanks. I’m supposed to. It’s easier to keep breathing this way,” I replied.
“Man, you do look like a piece of shit,” the other one chimed in. “You really do look like shit. He’s not kidding, ya know.”
“Are you done?” I asked. “Or do you want to go issue some tickets to the taxpayers?”
They left, after delivering some other snide comments.
Months after my “pass the peas” moment, I started to wonder if I was getting close to burning out. The doubts began when Jack Mullins and I set up a six-pound marijuana buy with a Jamaican cat and saw the meet go down in flames because we were drunk.
The two of us were supposed to meet the Jamaican at a construction site off Route 35 in Hazlet. Workers had just completed the foundation, and the site was a mess, full of piles of dirt, construction equipment and pieces of lumber and debris. A big strip shopping center was adjacent to the property. The plan was that I would play the big-shot construction supervisor and Mullins would be one of the guys working for me.
We intended to meet the target late in the afternoon, after the regular workers had gone home, and take him down with his haul of weed. The rip was set to go down at about 4 p.m., right after the site had closed down. In this case, we didn’t have to worry about burning an informant, and it was going to be an out-and-out rip. But we fucked it up and our target got away. We had no one to blame but ourselves.
Jersey Tough Page 26