marijuana around it was not unusual for some to be lying out on the coffee table. You didnât need a search warrant in those days, so literally, if I saw one marijuana cigarette on the coffee table, your whole house belonged to me.â When suspects started confessing their sins, Detective McKewen, in this pre-Miranda era, wasnât obliged to interrupt and advise them that they had a right to get a lawyer before they spilled their guts like this. âIf you were a smart drug dealer, you paid your parking tickets, because thatâs how I made a lot of cases.â
By 1967 marijuana was fairly streaming across the Mexican border into California, secreted in hollowed-out surfboards, hidden in false bottoms of bulk gas tanks, stowed under the floorboards of VW campers, in the engine compartments of sailboats. One notable smuggler even paid people to bring it over a desert border crossing at night in a caravan of electric golf carts. But until George entered the picture, the pot runs usually involved a lot of little people bringing in small quantities, rather than large shipping operations. The biggest bust McKewen helped make during those days was a hugely complicated, multidepartment effort involving only fifty kilos of pot. It had been purchased by American smugglers in Tijuana and driven over the border at Chula Vista in the trunk of a car bristling with fishing poles, spear guns, and other vacation camouflage. McKewen and the fifty or so other state and local cops involved in the operation had planned to follow the car up to Manhattan Beach to find out how the dope was going to be distributed. U.S. Customs, in a departure from normal policy, agreed to allow the shipment to go through the border untouched, but only if the local police promised to arrest the smugglers before any of the dope hit the street. Driving up on Route 5, however, the smugglers broke a water hose just north of San Diego and had to pull over to the side of the road. Not wanting to spoil their surveillance plan, the whole cavalcade of about thirty unmarked police cars drove right by the stalled vehicle, pulled off at the next exit, and came back going the opposite way, circling their prey like Indians around a wagon train. âWe drove around them for three hours before they finally got the damn hose fixed,â says McKewen.
By late in 1967 George had given up the pile-driving business and gone into the pot trade in earnest. On the wholesale market in Manhattan Beach heâd pay sixty dollars for a kilo-size brick, or 2.2 pounds, break it into thirty-five 1-ounce bags, and move those on the street for ten dollars apiece. If he did 10 kilos a month, and performed all the chores himself, George could make a profit of nearly three thousand dollars, this in the days when fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year could support a family of four without too much scrimping. Through the stewardesses he knew and all the other California friends heâd made during the previous two and a half years, George soon found he could sell pot as fast as he could wrap it up and move it out. To expand the business, however, he now had to tie in with bigger suppliers. âThe way I saw it,â he says, âbeing in the drug business was like being an executive in any business: If you wanted to climb the ladder, you sought out people and pursued those who were better and bigger than you were, and you tried to ingratiate yourself. Then you find theyâre not as big as you thought they were, and so you go beyond them, and before you know it theyâre working for you. Anyway, thatâs the way I wanted it to work.â
The person George needed to get friendly with was an ex-marine-turned-hairdresser by the name of Richard Barile, another refugee from the East and the lynchpin of the local drug culture. Only five feet two inches tall, with a receding hairline, Richard had dark eyebrows and a dense black beard that put one in mind of the
By 1967 marijuana was fairly streaming across the Mexican border into California, secreted in hollowed-out surfboards, hidden in false bottoms of bulk gas tanks, stowed under the floorboards of VW campers, in the engine compartments of sailboats. One notable smuggler even paid people to bring it over a desert border crossing at night in a caravan of electric golf carts. But until George entered the picture, the pot runs usually involved a lot of little people bringing in small quantities, rather than large shipping operations. The biggest bust McKewen helped make during those days was a hugely complicated, multidepartment effort involving only fifty kilos of pot. It had been purchased by American smugglers in Tijuana and driven over the border at Chula Vista in the trunk of a car bristling with fishing poles, spear guns, and other vacation camouflage. McKewen and the fifty or so other state and local cops involved in the operation had planned to follow the car up to Manhattan Beach to find out how the dope was going to be distributed. U.S. Customs, in a departure from normal policy, agreed to allow the shipment to go through the border untouched, but only if the local police promised to arrest the smugglers before any of the dope hit the street. Driving up on Route 5, however, the smugglers broke a water hose just north of San Diego and had to pull over to the side of the road. Not wanting to spoil their surveillance plan, the whole cavalcade of about thirty unmarked police cars drove right by the stalled vehicle, pulled off at the next exit, and came back going the opposite way, circling their prey like Indians around a wagon train. âWe drove around them for three hours before they finally got the damn hose fixed,â says McKewen.
By late in 1967 George had given up the pile-driving business and gone into the pot trade in earnest. On the wholesale market in Manhattan Beach heâd pay sixty dollars for a kilo-size brick, or 2.2 pounds, break it into thirty-five 1-ounce bags, and move those on the street for ten dollars apiece. If he did 10 kilos a month, and performed all the chores himself, George could make a profit of nearly three thousand dollars, this in the days when fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year could support a family of four without too much scrimping. Through the stewardesses he knew and all the other California friends heâd made during the previous two and a half years, George soon found he could sell pot as fast as he could wrap it up and move it out. To expand the business, however, he now had to tie in with bigger suppliers. âThe way I saw it,â he says, âbeing in the drug business was like being an executive in any business: If you wanted to climb the ladder, you sought out people and pursued those who were better and bigger than you were, and you tried to ingratiate yourself. Then you find theyâre not as big as you thought they were, and so you go beyond them, and before you know it theyâre working for you. Anyway, thatâs the way I wanted it to work.â
The person George needed to get friendly with was an ex-marine-turned-hairdresser by the name of Richard Barile, another refugee from the East and the lynchpin of the local drug culture. Only five feet two inches tall, with a receding hairline, Richard had dark eyebrows and a dense black beard that put one in mind of the
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