then, when that would happen, I’d get the yes, and the first thing I would do is [search] the person, ’cause if you got a weapon or something like that he’s gonna get me with it.… Basically it’d be squeezin’ the pockets, you know, you can tell when you’ve got a weapon. Or the crotch, hit the crotch. That’s where a lot of drugs were, in the crotch. Then if I found something in the crotch I would just tell him, ‘OK, I’m gonna reach inside there and take that out or you can remove it for me. What have you got in your crotch? Most of the time it would be drugs. Well, all the time it would be drugs. When you found an object, it was drugs.”
His signal to make the arrest was to say “cigarette,” like a magic word. “Boy, I’d like to finish this up and have a cigarette.” Or, “I could use acigarette.” And then he and his partner would grab the person and cuff his wrists behind him.
Curious, Brennan started asking those he arrested why on earth they had consented, “and it was just amazing why people told us, ‘You can search the bag,’ ” he said. The answers fell into three categories: First, they thought the police had information on them specifically, which meant, in effect, that they had already been caught. Although informants’ tips were often matched to Amtrak passenger lists to guide searches of those still aboard, those who had already left trains were unidentifiable, free and clear until something about them caught Brennan’s attention.
Second, they told Brennan that they believed he would search anyway, even if they said no. “ ‘It didn’t matter, did it?’ he quoted a generic reply. “ ‘If I told you no, you’re definitely gonna know I had drugs. So I had no choice but to say yes and try to make some excuse after you found them, if you found them. Or, I was hoping you wouldn’t find them.’ ”
That was the third reason Brennan heard: “They think they have the drugs so well hidden that they won’t be found.” He once discovered a sixty-gram cookie of crack cocaine disguised as cheese in a sandwich, complete with lettuce and tomato. “You know it’s not water soluble, you can’t hurt it,” he chuckled. “In the shoes, in the socks, in the baby diapers, in the false-bottom cans. One guy on the train had a can of oil. Who in the hell travels from Miami, Florida, to New York City with a can of oil? And you take the bottom off the can, and sure enough, there’s a half a kilo of coke in there. Potato-chip bags. That was a big thing, too. Potato-chip bags and cereal boxes. They would take out a portion of the cereal and a portion of the potato chips and reseal the bags. You know, just a dollar-ninety-nine-cent bag of potato chips. They’d remove the potato chips, leave some in there, and put in the cocaine. When you pick up the bag … you say, Yeah, I got it. You’ve never seen a potato-chip bag filled to the top. When they’d take out the chips, they’d fill it all the way up to the top. When you squeeze the top of a potato-chip bag, it’s only half full. But this bag is full to the top. And then it weighs about 2.2 pounds—I got a kilo in here. Fantastic.”
Ingenious hiding places for both drugs and guns were displayed on the bulletin board of the D.C. police department’s Narcotics Branch, where Brennan now headed a unit that included undercover officers. Behind the dashboard of a Chevy Suburban, a void had been fashioned large enough to hold a 135-pound woman, or plenty of drugs. A rifle rack had been concealed in a truck’s wide visor. Drugs had been placed in live African snails imported to England, in a car’s gas tank that could bereached from the back seat, and in tampons that had been sliced open and resealed.
An entrepreneurial spirit had brought inventive devices to the marketplace. Police had found a Pepsi machine whose front opened to reveal a huge gun locker. A baseball cap contained a pouch, secured by Velcro where the visor met the
His signal to make the arrest was to say “cigarette,” like a magic word. “Boy, I’d like to finish this up and have a cigarette.” Or, “I could use acigarette.” And then he and his partner would grab the person and cuff his wrists behind him.
Curious, Brennan started asking those he arrested why on earth they had consented, “and it was just amazing why people told us, ‘You can search the bag,’ ” he said. The answers fell into three categories: First, they thought the police had information on them specifically, which meant, in effect, that they had already been caught. Although informants’ tips were often matched to Amtrak passenger lists to guide searches of those still aboard, those who had already left trains were unidentifiable, free and clear until something about them caught Brennan’s attention.
Second, they told Brennan that they believed he would search anyway, even if they said no. “ ‘It didn’t matter, did it?’ he quoted a generic reply. “ ‘If I told you no, you’re definitely gonna know I had drugs. So I had no choice but to say yes and try to make some excuse after you found them, if you found them. Or, I was hoping you wouldn’t find them.’ ”
That was the third reason Brennan heard: “They think they have the drugs so well hidden that they won’t be found.” He once discovered a sixty-gram cookie of crack cocaine disguised as cheese in a sandwich, complete with lettuce and tomato. “You know it’s not water soluble, you can’t hurt it,” he chuckled. “In the shoes, in the socks, in the baby diapers, in the false-bottom cans. One guy on the train had a can of oil. Who in the hell travels from Miami, Florida, to New York City with a can of oil? And you take the bottom off the can, and sure enough, there’s a half a kilo of coke in there. Potato-chip bags. That was a big thing, too. Potato-chip bags and cereal boxes. They would take out a portion of the cereal and a portion of the potato chips and reseal the bags. You know, just a dollar-ninety-nine-cent bag of potato chips. They’d remove the potato chips, leave some in there, and put in the cocaine. When you pick up the bag … you say, Yeah, I got it. You’ve never seen a potato-chip bag filled to the top. When they’d take out the chips, they’d fill it all the way up to the top. When you squeeze the top of a potato-chip bag, it’s only half full. But this bag is full to the top. And then it weighs about 2.2 pounds—I got a kilo in here. Fantastic.”
Ingenious hiding places for both drugs and guns were displayed on the bulletin board of the D.C. police department’s Narcotics Branch, where Brennan now headed a unit that included undercover officers. Behind the dashboard of a Chevy Suburban, a void had been fashioned large enough to hold a 135-pound woman, or plenty of drugs. A rifle rack had been concealed in a truck’s wide visor. Drugs had been placed in live African snails imported to England, in a car’s gas tank that could bereached from the back seat, and in tampons that had been sliced open and resealed.
An entrepreneurial spirit had brought inventive devices to the marketplace. Police had found a Pepsi machine whose front opened to reveal a huge gun locker. A baseball cap contained a pouch, secured by Velcro where the visor met the
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