The New York Times-20080125-Undercover Work Seen as Mix of Art- Temptation and- Sometimes- Corruption
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Undercover Work Seen as Mix of Art, Temptation and, Sometimes, Corruption
Working as an undercover narcotics officer is among the most dangerous jobs on the police force. You have to pretend to be an addict and win the trust of dealers. But if you must do the job, it would seem, a good place to land would be the area designated by the Police Department as Brooklyn South.
For as large as it is, covering the vast territory that is lower Brooklyn, Brooklyn South is far from the most crime-ridden patrol borough in the city. It is home to stretches of middle-class homes in neighborhoods like Midwood, Ocean Parkway and Sheepshead Bay, and includes the boutique-filled byways of Park Slope, the boardwalks of Coney Island and the cobblestone streets of Red Hook.
Last year, 71 murders were recorded in Brooklyn South, about half as many as were reported in either the Bronx or Brooklyn North, which includes such neighborhoods as Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Yet it is in Brooklyn South that a corruption scandal has gripped the narcotics unit. After allegations surfaced that undercover officers were rewarding informants with drugs, 4 officers have been arrested, 6 suspended and 10 put on desk duty.
Corruption has a history of metastasizing in all types of law enforcement commands, and all types of precincts, from the busy to the sleepy. And corruption in narcotics units is one of the most common scourges of police departments. For undercover officers, temptation is everywhere, the pressure is enormous, and it is easy to quietly pocket a bad guy's drugs or cash.
The problems that come with vice enforcement are as old as policing themselves, said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. (Mr. O'Donnell also briefly represented one of the arrested officers, but no longer does; he would not comment specifically on the Brooklyn South case.)
It's a dirty business, he said, and it's hard to be involved in the business and not get your hands dirty.
Citywide, the narcotics bureau made 51,000 drug arrests last year. Of those, 7,400 were in Brooklyn South, compared with 15,500 in the Bronx and 10,400 in Brooklyn North.
According to officials, two narcotics officers, Detective Sean Johnstone and Officer Julio Alvarez, lied about the amount of cocaine they recovered from a suspect in September, collecting 28 bags but reporting 17. Detective Johnstone was later recorded boasting that he withheld the drugs and gave them to an informant, a clear violation of department policy, which allows informants to be paid with cash or leniency, but never drugs.
An inquiry by the department's Internal Affairs Bureau followed, and led to the arrests last week of two other officers in the unit, Sgt. Michael Arenella and Officer Jerry Bowens. According to court papers, in November the pair took drugs and cash they had recovered and gave them to a confidential informant as payback. They had recovered 40 bags of cocaine and $250, but reported only 38 bags and $210, officials said.
As a result, the Brooklyn district attorney's office has moved to dismiss 80 drug cases, and is analyzing whether 100 more are tainted.
Still, news of the scandal left scores of the city's police officers dismayed and perplexed. Undercover officers can easily obtain department-issued cash for buy and busts, police lingo for scoring drugs and making arrests.
Many wondered what the officers would have to gain from imperiling their careers by supplying informants with drugs. Was it because Brooklyn South was a tougher place to buy drugs than other patrol boroughs? Was supervision lax at the unit?
Anybody who would do something like that is nuts -- completely nuts, said a former narcotics undercover officer who worked in the Manhattan North and Brooklyn North patrol boroughs and is currently assigned to a precinct in Brooklyn South. Why would you give the C.I. crack and drugs if you can give them money? he asked, using police shorthand for confidential informant. The officer, like most people in the Police Department, is not permitted to speak to the news media and did not want to give his name.
The Police Department has divided the city's five boroughs into eight patrol boroughs. Brooklyn South is one of the largest.
Brooklyn South's narcotics unit is housed in a blocky office building it shares with a Medicaid-related health care provider. In 2003, some 30 officers were transferred out of the department for swindling $45,000 in false overtime pay.
A handful of crooked red and white parking signs line the sidewalk outside and read Police Department vehicles. And a small but steady stream of officers go in and out of its doors, some in police uniforms, holding steaming cups of coffee, others wearing puffy coats and hoodies, their waistbands bulging with department-issued handguns.
As anywhere in the city, there is an art to being a good narcotics officer in Brooklyn South. Many of its neighborhoods are as diverse and disconnected as different countries, and as insular as covens.
Some housing developments have every minority, but if you go deep into one neighborhood there might be 100 percent of a certain group, said another former law enforcement official who worked in narcotics. It is certainly a help to get into a minority neighborhood if you are black or Hispanic.
Being a good undercover officer takes a certain type of person. You must be an impeccable actor, a chameleon who can blend seamlessly into easily combustible situations, coolly stare your target in the eye and lie. You have to know the street lingo for drugs, like red top or blue top for different vials of cocaine.
You have to look the part, wear the right clothes, and have a good back story. If you say you are a mechanic, you'd better know cars, because chances are that the dealer will too. Many undercover narcotics officers use props. They might push shopping carts filled with soda cans in plastic bags, aping a homeless person, and twitch like an addict.
They might bring along a basketball, saying they are coming back from the courts and itching to score on the way home. If they are buying crack, they have to produce a crack pipe, or stem, and it has to look used.
If the dealer insists that they test the goods before they buy, that they take a hit off a crack pipe or a snort of cocaine, undercover officers are supposed to resist unless the situation is dire, unless they have a gun to their heads. And if they are they are forced to take the drugs, they must report it to their unit, and undergo a medical evaluation. And if they are forced to ingest more than once, they will almost certainly be taken off of the streets.
Undercover officers must deal intimately with volatile types who are prone to robbing would-be buyers in lieu of selling them drugs. The officers are often attacked. In 2003, two undercover officers were killed on Staten Island when a deal to buy illegal guns soured and suspects shot them.
One of the perks of undercover work is that it can allow swift career advancement. By going undercover, an officer can be made a detective in 18 months, speeding up a process that can take three to five years, or more.
As details of the Brooklyn South scandal unfolded, many of the department's current and former officers faulted the department's pay scale for attracting lower-caliber candidates and forcing the department to fill its spots with less experienced officers. Yet each of the four officers arrested had been on the job between 6 and 12 years.
The transfer of the commander of Brooklyn South's narcotics bureau, Inspector James O'Connell, has left many officers in the department especially saddened. The inspector is widely respected in the department for being a hands-on leader who aggressively fought crime in some of city's most embattled precincts. He would never have put up with his officers slipping drugs to informants, they said, had he only known.
He's extraordinarily hard working and conscientious, there is no way he would countenance cutting corners, said one former narcotics unit official. That's the thing: The system works to a degree. But in a Police Department of around 35,000 members, some people will go astray.
