Cops as Junkies
A tour through the dismal day-to-day world of narcotics agents, where anything goes. Anything and everything.
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McDonald testified that on the way to jail, Clifton kicked him in the ribs. "He said it would be easy to kill me. . . .that all he would have to do would be put some narcotics in my pocket and blow my brains out," the attorney swore under oath. McDonald said that, in his opinion, Clifton was "either drunk, crazy or doped-up. . . .one of the three."
The narcs' celebration didn't end at Waco city jail, however. Later that same night a San Antonio dentist, Dr. Harry Wilson, was returning with his wife to their Waco motel when Agent Clifton threw a beer can at their car. Mrs. Wilson testified that "He (Clifton) threatened my husband. . . .and insinuated I was a woman of ill repute." When the Waco police arrived at the scene of this disturbance, Waco Sgt. Carlton Fisher told the Wilsons to forget it. . . .that Clifton and the others were police and "that's all we need to know and all you need to know." Baylor law student Doyle Neighbours, who was riding in the patrol car, heard Fisher tell another Waco cop later: "If those guys (the narcs) keep that stuff up, we're gonna have a hard time covering for them."
The same grand jury that returned the 92 drug indictments also indicted McDonald for assaulting Agent Clifton with his rib cage. McDonald was acquitted after a brief but highly revealing trial in which Agent Adams admitted on cross-examination that sometime after the beating he, two other agents and their district supervisor conspired a plot to frame McDonaId and his law partner, Tom Ragland. They approached a girl who had been involved with a drunk charge and asked her to lure the two attorneys to a motel room which would be bugged for sound and pictures. The girl refused and advised the two attorneys of the plot.
In July, 1972, Agents Clifton and Adams were indicted for violations of Sec. 242 of the Civil Rights Act. The DPS paraded its entire command into court, including several Texas Rangers, who had no interest at all in the case. "At one time during the trial," says Tom Ragland, "I counted 28 narcs in the courtroom." Not surprisingly, the agents were acquitted.
Following the civil rights trial, Houston attorney C. Anthony Friloux, Sr., chairman of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, wrote to members: "The atmosphere in Waco is unbelievable. The state narcotics agents had convinced the Grand Jury that criminal defense lawyers are responsible in large part for the narcotics problem and the ineffectiveness of the state in dealing with this problem."
Like all wars, the War on Drugs has its ignorant armies slashing at anything that stirs. In the darkness of this holy passion, a mentality is created, just as it was in Viet Nam, just as it was at Watergate, the enemy is plainly labeled—you have your "slopes" and "gooks," you have your "dangerous student radicals," and in the War on Drugs you have what the chief of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, a Nixon appointee, recently termed your "vermin." Thus are rules of civilization suspended. Thus does your cure become your disease.
In the 1930s, the nation's Chief Narc, Harry Anslinger, coined terms like "killer weed" to describe marijuana. The movie Reefer Madness is now a campy hit on college campuses; but in the Thirties Anslinger showed it to Congress as a documentary. Four decades later, Richard Nixon set up his Drug Hotline, so that citizens can turn in their friends and neighbors, toll free. Gradually, the strike force has shifted its preoccupation from soft to hard drugs, but the method is the same.
"Harry Anslinger took a hardline approach, especially to heroin," says Sheriff Raymond Frank, a graduate of Anslinger's course. "Throw them in jail, throw away the key, let them suffer through cold turkey. This was supposed to teach them a lesson. I was stationed with the Air Force in England and saw how they dealt with addicts. Instead of stealing, an addict could get a prescription for heroin, period. I'm saying that approach has merit. I don't know the answer to the drug problem, but I do know that something is wrong when addicts are forced to steal and burglarize to support habits. I know there are better approaches."
"As far as marijuana goes, it's certainly no more dangerous than alcohol. They make this point at the DPS Breathalizer School—that if gin were invented today, if it were a brand new product, just on the market, you would need a prescription to buy it. It's dangerous. The time will come, I feel sure, when marijuana will be accepted as alcohol is now."
I asked agent-in-charge Terrell why, in his experience, people used drugs, and Terrell said flatly: "I've always thought people used drugs because they like them."
"And what about deterrent factors?" From the stricken pale on Terrell's face, I gathered that the question was too broad.
"Uh. . . .enforcement," he began. "Uh. . . .education. . . .education may be as important as enforcement. . . .get the people where they don't want it. . . .supply and demand. . . .that sort of thing. . . .uh "
There was a long, embarrassing silence, a breach in the conversation that lasted nearly 30 seconds, then publicity man Bill Carter thought of something. "Certainty of arrest," he said. "Don't forget that."
I asked Terrell to think of himself now as a human being, not a narcotics officer, then answer this most basic question: should a man be sent to prison for abusing and misusing his own body?
Carter pretended to study a pamphlet on his desk, while Terrell took forever to formu1ate his reply. Finally he said, very lowly and honestly, "Probably not. He needs help. I don't think 25 years in the penitentiary is the kind of help he needs."
"The trouble is," Carter interjected, "that user you're talking about is probably also dealing."
Elmer Terrell brightened noticeably as the litany returned: "That's right, if I light up a joint here in this room, I'll probably give you a hit, right? So I'm a potential problem to you. If you hang around me very long you're gonna get in trouble 'cause you'll probably be smoking grass too. This is your problem with the user. It's like a disease."
The man in the Attorney General's office had warned me about this story, had warned me of the dangers of prejudging. "It's easy to have tunnel vision," he said. "It's easy to set a goal, then find ways to arrive at it." Yeah, I admitted it, right up front. I feel narcs are repulsive, the lowest form of life: to paraphrase Duane Osborne, creatures different than you and me. Why? The man at the AG's office had a good answer:
"It's the old Code of the West," the man in the Attorney General's office told me. "It's the Cagney movie. . . .don't squeal. Agents moving about surreptitiously, gaining confidence of their victims. . . .it hits a wrong cord of American culture. You've got to have a weird gear to be a peace officer. Cops, by nature and by training, don't trust. You see a group of kids in front of a widow lady's house. . . .are they fixing a broken screen, or breaking in? A cop's nature is to think the worst."
Right. Credit intentions. Read, with open mind, how the Nixon Administration paid Turkey $35 million not to grow poppies, even for legal, medical use. Result: a critical world shortage of medical codeine and morphine. Read, without irony, of a drug raid in Houston. Ten city and county officers rush a man whom their informer has fingered as a drug dealer. The man has a gun. At least three members of the raiding party draw their own weapons and fire. The man is shot dead. Only then is he identified as Monroe Scott, a rookie DPS narcotics agent.
These things happen in time of war.
NARCOTIC AGENTS
Narcotics officers are employed on five levels (working together in many cases): the federal level, where most of the money is and, therefore, the most efficient prosecution; the state level, also quite active in Texas; the county level, somewhat less concerned with narcotics; the local police level where the force exerted on solving narcotics problems varies with the degree of the problem in each city; and finally the "other" category wherein may fall any agency employing narcotics officers beyond the four above-mentioned categories—one example is given.
Who Has Them?
Federal: DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) is a new agency bringing together all the federal agencies formerly concerned with drug law enforcement. It is made up of the staff of the former Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE), and the transfer of 500 Special Agents from the Customs Agency Service. ODALE, Department of Justice, created by an Executive Order of President Nixon, became fully operational May, 1972. Its objective: to launch a concentrated attack on narcotics and dangerous drug traffic, specifically street-level heroin and cocaine pushers. It was unique for it represented the first totally integrated federal, state and local effort to combat the "heroin crisis"; it was the pilot project for DEA.
At present there are five DEA agents in Dallas working with the local police, one in Fort Worth, one in Austin, three in San Antonio, six in Houston, and four in El Paso.
State: DPS (Department of Public Safety) employs 112 narcotics officers
County: The Harris County Sheriff's Office employs six narcotics officers who made 100 arrests from January to June, 1973. In the Bexar County Sheriff's Office there are two officers who work with the local Metro Squad (consisting of themselves, officers from the San Antonio police, and officers from the District Attorney's office) to investigate narcotics cases. There are no narcotics officers per se in the sheriff's offices of Dallas County, Tarrant County, or Travis County. However they will investigate narcotics violations when they occur and, for example, in Travis County four cases have been filed in the past year.
Other: The University of Texas System, for example, employs five narcotics officers in the entire system; there are other U.T. police working on drugs part-time.
Where do they work?
DEA: Included in the 36 target cities, countrywide, for ODALE/DEA are Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio. On a consistent basis heroin is more predominant in the poorer section(s) of a city or town. Marijuana is somewhat more predominant among the more affluent.
DPS: The majority of their work is in the large cities, and they have a legislative mandate to work in school areas; the concentration is on pushers.
Police: In all five cities, the police say their work is all over the city, no predominant area.
Under What Laws Do They Operate?
Narcotics agents operate under no special laws except that, like all police officers, they can carry guns, can make arrests, and can apply for search and wire tap warrants. The "no knock" drug raid laws are still in effect but rarely used. Cecil Emerson, head of DEA Task Force, Region VI, says that they have never used them.
Anne Bauer Barnstone
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