Most people have this impression of an undercover officer who is highly trained, well equipped wearing a wire, and having backup just a few blocks away. Today, this is more common, in February of 1976 that was not the way it was done. I was 24 years old and was on what the US Air Force called "terminal leave". I had spent fours years in service and had save several months of leave so they let me go almost two month early and continued to pay me until my discharge date which was in March. My wife and I moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas so I could attend college in the Fall of 76 on the GI Bill.
I had a friend of mine who was a patrol officer for the Alma Police Department and in those days it was not uncommon for civilians to ride with officers on night patrol to provide company for what often turned out to be a very long and boring job. While I was still in the Air Force, it was during one of these "rides" that it come to me that one could attend college during the day and work for a sleepy little department at night and do one's home work in the seat of a patrol vehicle while on road side watch. I decided I would seek employment at one of the departments in the Fayetteville area. I took several courses in Law Enforcement including a highly praised course in Fingerprints thinking this would give me an edge. I also licensed myself as a Private Investigator during the last six months of my tour in the Air Force to provide some additional income. (In those days it took very little in Arkansas to obtain a P.I. License.)
I first applied at Springdale but they would not be hiring until June of 76, and I really wanted to start sooner. Fayetteville also was not hiring, but one of the departments recommend I try the Washington County Sheriff's Department. They had a new Sheriff who had been in office just a little more than one year and he was hiring new deputies. So I put on my leisure suit, yes that is what we wore back in good ole 76, and interviewed at Washington County. I learned that the only opening they had they had just hired Ray Ward, recently retired from the Navy. I sat in Sheriff Herb Marshal's office waiting for an interview and visited with his personal secretary, Becky Wood. This turned out to be one of the small events in ones life with great impact. The following day after my interview, Sgt. Stone, a long time deputy for the department died of a heart attack. Sadly, the Sheriff now had an opening and at the urging of Becky, Herb called me in for a second interview.
The role as a night patrol officer with a sleepy little department was not what the Sheriff wanted of me. I suppose he was impressed with my application, noting that I had decided on a position with a law enforcement agency a year before and had taken steps to prepare for that role on my own. He also like the fact that I excelled while in the Air Force with several awards for leadership, and early promotion to E5 in 2 years and 9 months, and I was eligible for E6 when I choose to leave the Air Force. He was ex army and it took him twice that number of years to obtain E5. What Sheriff Marshal offered me next was never one of the options I had considered, and he was kind enough to allow me 24 hours to consider the offer.
Because I was not from Washington County, fresh out of the service, and had some training and experience, Sheriff Marshal wanted me to work not undercover, but deep cover. I would be sworn as a deputy by the Sheriff only, (normally this is down by a Judge and recorded in the clerk's office) my only contact would be C.I.D. Lt. J. D. Snow and his secretary, I would receive no badge or identification, and I was never to come back to the Sheriff's Department again until my assignment was over. All meets would be at some hidden and discreet locations. I had to use my own vehicles and there would be times that I would have to live away from my family with the suspects. After speaking with my wife about this job, we decided I would try it. Over the next months, I let my hair beard grow, my hair touched my shirt, and I lived the life of a bum searching for dope.
I was allowed to carry a gun for protection and the Sheriff approved that I had a Browning Hi Power which turned out to be his favored weapon. I would stick it in the back of my jeans without a holster and put on my Air Force fatigue jacket which was very fashionable with the ladies in those days, and head out each evening to see what I could see. Much of my job was gathering Intelligence. All the cities and Washington County at large was having a crime wave of burglaries and it was believed they were mostly drug related. I was often given assignments to make the connection between the two.
One of my first assignments was to work with a snitch whom I will call Jerry. Jerry was a life long resident of Washington County but his family had strong ties to one of the two political parties in the county. So when he was arrested for drugs, he was not prosecuted but offered a chance to turn snitch to save his butt and his family name. It is my opinion these people are the lowest of low, they do what they do for one person, themselves. I was to be seen with Jerry in hopes some of his bad reputation would rub off on me. Mostly Jerry just wanted to do dope and drink beer, but we did make some progress. My first drug buy was a bag of marijuana from one of Jerry's close friends, whom I will call Charles. So much for friendship.
Working deep cover means drug buys are recorded and the evidence is sent off, but no arrest are made until such time that the deep cover officer's job is over. Charles did not know it but this small purchase was to cause him much trouble later that same year.
Jerry and I moved to a hangout in Tontitown called the Quarter Horse Bar. It was a suspected hangout for drug dealers, fencing of stolen goods, and just about anything else bad. One of the top things on my list of things to do for the Sheriff was to try to obtain information on the location of two suspects who murdered a Springdale Police Office in 75. James Ray Renton and David Cosell were wanted for that murder and it was hoped that some bad guy would know where they were. My ears were always open and my arms covered where I would write vehicle license numbers and names of suspects.
The Quarter Horse was a bad place. I almost witnessed a murder and was torn with keeping my cover or taking action. Kenny, the bartender was playing pool with one of the patrons when they got into a fight. Kenny almost beat the man to death, then drug him outside the bar and was in the process of running him over with a van, when the bar's owner stop Kenny with a shotgun. The place was like the old west including two local Tontitown 14 year old girls who sold their bodies in one of the back rooms at the bar.
I think my gun saved me from much of the rough stuff at the bar. I have never been a fighter, and have never consider fighting as entertainment as some men do. I always consider a attack to be serious and should be dealt with in a serious nature. The first week I was there, Jerry and I were playing pool and I notice everyone at the bar seemed to be watching me play and I'm not that good. A few minutes later, Jerry came over to me and told me that my gun was hanging out. When I would lean over to make a shot, my jacket would ride up and the butt of my High Power would catch. No one every said anything and everyone always show me great respect after that. Of course in those days there were lots of stories about drug crazed Vietnam Vets, and while I had never been to Vietnam, no one knew that or asked. Several of my contacts at the Quarter Horse led to several good cases both while I was undercover and even in later years as a Criminal Investigator.
While at the bar I often faked being drunk and once stumbled into one of the back rooms where I discovered about 200 small marijuana plants growing. No one saw me and since this was a public place, Sheriff Marshal decided it would be safe to raid the place, so a few days later a search warrant was served on the place and it was shut down for a few months.
I kind of distanced myself from Jerry after the Quarter Horse. I felt he was working the other side too much and met up with one of my old school chums who was attending college in Fayetteville. I never suspect he would have contacts in the drug world and really started running with him only because I was waiting for some new assignments from the Sheriff. The first night we went to a little off the way place just off of Sunset in Springdale called Foos One. It was a pool room and had Foos tables and most of the people hanging out there were 13 to 15 year old kids. It seems my friend had a thing for young girls. It was at Foos One that I met Jimmy who would turn out to be a narcs best friend. Jimmy was 14 and as normal came from a divorced family. His mother could not control him or his sisters and Jimmy pretty much did as he pleased. He was heavy into drugs and like to show off by helping others get the drugs they wanted. He was just the guy I was looking for. We would go to some guys house and he would lie and tell this guy that he and I were life long friends and he had known me forever. This was the trick. No one wanted to sell to a stranger but if someone who they know would vouch for you then anything was possible. Jimmy was just doing it I suspect because he needed an older man in his life as a father replacement. It bothered me using him but it was my hope that when I came out, my actions might prevent more serious crime in Jimmy's life later on. Sadly, 15 year later Jimmy was still deep into crime.
Jimmy also introduced me to a 15 year old girl name Donna. This was a serious test of my ethics and is the road to many undercover's down falls. Donna was a very pretty young lady with all the charms of a woman. For some strange reason she really took a liking to me and she wanted more than to sell me dope. Needless to say I was very flattered and had to keep telling myself that it was illegal, unethically, immoral, and I was married. She was very tempting, but I held the high ground and later was very glad I did. I made several drug purchases from Donna and on the night that I came out from cover and we served arrest warrants and search warrants on Donna's home, she very angrily told me what she wanted to do to me. As a matter of fact, she carved it into the cement walls of her jail cell. I still remember the Sheriff laughing at me when I told him the story about how she was trying to temp me and later while we were at her home searching her bedroom, someone open one of her drawers of her dresser and there must have been hundreds of condoms in that drawer. Everyone had a good laugh at my expense, because it was clear I was not the only one she took a liking to.
Each night when I would return home, I would type out my activities and every few days meet Lt. Snow's secretary in a grocery store and drop them in her basket. It was on one such trip, I had just returned home and the Sheriff called me very excited. two of his investigators, Mike Haney who is still in law enforcement working for Springdale, and Ron Woods had been working on a real heavy weight I will call Butch. It seems Butch was about 30 and living with a 13 year old prostitute and the two of them were suspect in trading dope to kids for stolen goods. Butch like working with kids because if they got arrested, they would be juveniles and since they would not do any real jail time there was little investigators could do to pressure them to turn their "source". He believed they were safer that older criminals, and it appeared he was right. The Sheriff was excited because in one of my reports Jimmy and I had met up with Butch and road out to Lake Elmdale where Butch would show me some dope. Butch was smart. He would not sell it to me. He would only sell it to Jimmy and Jimmy would have to sell it to me. Not enough according to then Prosecutor Malone Gibson to arrest Butch on. For the rest of my time under the most I could provide was information, because Butch would not break his rule, I was too old, and he knew cops had to be 21 or older.
One of the most frighten experience one can have is to go live in the den of dopers. On more than one occasion I had to leave my family and spend time in the homes of dopers. One was a college student who had been arrested for a lab. He was not the master chemist and I had to go worm my way in and lived at his apartment for almost 2 weeks. Very little came out of this but I spend most of my sleeping nights with my High Power in my hand under my pillow.
After about seven months of undercover the Sheriff could tell I was getting weary. This was not the life I liked living and went against everything I stood for. My parents, brothers, and close friends were not allowed to know what I was really doing, so I received a lot of pressure to "straighten up" and live right. One of my brothers actually got mad at me later when I came out and he learned I had been a "narc". My last assignment was a big player whom I will call Terry and the Sheriff told me if I could get a buy off of him, he would bring me out.
It was a fine late summer morning and I drove out to Terry's house and woke him up. I told him I was looking for weed and Jerry told me Terry had the best. (I was just taking a guess that he would know some doper named Jerry.) He looked at me then asked where they hell did Jerry hear about him. I told him Jerry and I use to hang at the Quarter Horse Bar and his name came up. He then asked me if I knew his cousin, Steve. A light went off, because Steve was a person at the Quarter Horse I played pool and I jumped on this and made it sound like Steve and I were the best of buds. The next thing I knew, Terry was showing me his stash and bagging me up some extra for family friends. As he handed it to me, he looked me in the eye and told me "if I learn you are a narc, I will kill you." I looked him right back and told him "same to you". He start laughing, slapped me on the back and told me to come back anytime.
Later that evening, I was back, with the Sheriff and his posse along with a search warrant. Terry got away and did not show up until almost 5 years later. It seems he knew Sheriff Marshal's car very well, and when he saw it coming down the drive, and he ran out the back and for the hills.
We spent the next two days serving many arrest warrants and several search warrants. It did not seem like much to me but it turned out to be the largest undercover operation every in Washington County. Even today, no officer had stayed deep cover longer or arrested more persons than that 1976 operation.
I saw Terry a few years ago, and we laughed and joked about our younger days on different sides of the law. It is over 21 years later and I am a civilian. Terry told me he now drinks beer instead of smoking dope because he grew weary of looking over his shoulder for narcs. We both have children each trying to help them learn from our experiences and mistakes. We laugh because we looked back and realized that we risked our lives and were even prepared to die over a weed, he wanting the right to smoke it, and me trying to prevent him from doing so. Makes me wonder, who makes up these stupid rules?
I am proud of my role as a deep cover officer because it was a job I did my best and did well. I look back today and see it was a waste of youth, money, and energy. I know from my experiences that we can not stop Americans from doing to their own bodies what they will. I also know that drugs are illegal not because of the harm they cause, but because the illegal drug trade makes too much legal money for those who prey off of others. I for one would like to see law enforcement get back to doing it job of arresting real criminals, those who rape, murder, and steal and leave the drug users to the doctors and social workers.
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