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Drug holes.
The district I work in happens to have some of the largest grow/sell houses for narcotics in the County.
The CST (Crime Suppression Team) is the companion team to the squad I’m on, a Jump Out squad (JOS).
CST’s main function is narcotics and drug holes, while the Jump Out squad’s main functions are violent crimes, robberies, burglaries and all in progress calls that have a subject on scene where the situation could need specially trained Officers to respond.
For the past month CST has been watching a drug house on a street and arresting everyone that is seen making hand to hand transactions outside the residence as they get far enough away to not be seen by the people at the house actually selling.
What arresting the people that buy from the house does is create a case load. That case load can then in turn be made to establish a Warrant to search the house for Narcotics.
CST drive around in unmarked cars. Once an unmarked car is spotted by the ‘bad guys’, its now considered ‘burned’ and not usable in any future operations.
A part of not ‘burning’ a car is being able to eyeball the bad guys without them being able to eyeball you. In order to accomplish this, you do certain things that don’t bring attention to your vehicle.
Things like, parking several blocks away, not facing the residence, having a good pair of binoculars and above all turning the car off, because a running car in the same spot for 8 hours tends to draw attention.
My squad was gathered around my partner and I because we just detained a Federal Corrections officer for soliciting prostitution, along with the prostitute of course. He also had his service pistol in the car and an AK -47. Being that he was a Federal employee, my Sergeant was also there and we were deciding on the best course of action.
I ended up letting the Corrections officer go with several criminal citations and arrested the prostitute due to her having an AC Warrant.
My Sergeant asked my partner and I to drive over to a staging area about 2 blocks from the house that CST was currently Eyeballing.
I pulled up and there were several units getting ready to raid the house. I got out of my car and started walking over to my Sergeant when I heard one of the CST guys get on the air, “I’m 9’d, I’m 9’d!!”
99 is what the ‘lookouts’ for the drug holes scream out when they see police. So the term 9’d means you’ve been spotted.
One of the crack heads that were walking up to the drug hole apparently noticed the car that was out of place, running, facing the residence with a white boy in the driver seat and told the dealer at the house there were cops watching his house.
The dealer not believing the crack head actually walked outside and down the block with the crack head up to the Officers car and started tapping on the window.
As soon as the units heard the eyeball had been burned they rushed over there.
I couldn’t go. I had an arrested person in the back of my car so my partner and I just sat there and waited for another patrol unit to come by and pickup our prisoner.
The units arrived at the eyeballs car and arrested both subjects that walked up to the car. Then they started running towards the house as the other 7 people in the house started to run in all directions.
A perimeter was setup and 3 were caught immediately.
1 of the subjects ran back into the house, followed immediately by a CST/JOS unit, SGT and LT.
They took him into custody and then took a good look around the house they just ran into.
Guns, guns, drugs and more guns.
I arrived on scene and helped out with what I could once my prisoner was out of my custody.
After the dust settled and everyone that needed to be arrested was arrested, the next step was to get consent to search the house from the home owner.
The home owner was the first guy arrested, the main dealer and he wasn’t giving any sort of consent.
So, the Warrant process started at Midnight and wasn’t finished until 8AM the next day.
Search incident to the Warrant revealed 80 grams of Cocaine, 5 pounds of Marijuana, 3 shotguns (1 being a riot auto-repeater), 4 rifles (AK’s, AR15s) and several hand guns along with $12,000 in cash.
$6000 of the cash was counterfeit so the secret service was called in to handle that aspect of the arrest.
After everything was completed, the squads that came in at 4PM the night before, didn’t leave to Noon the day after.
That’s one less dope hole in our District and we made a dent. That’s all that matters.
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