The Bakers’ Dozen Trilogies: Pib Investigation # 434 Operation Tarnished Shield

By Dale L. Sollars

During the 1980s through 1990s, Washington, DC, leadership was in shambles following the arrest of Mayor Marion Barry on drug charges. When Barry was reelected as mayor after being released from prison, the outraged United States Congress slashed every cent possible from the city budget, a decision that would ultimately take revenge on the entire city. The Congresss retaliation was swift and widespread throughout the city government . . . and the Metropolitan Police Department.

Congress defunding the citys metropolitan police had a devastating effect on everything from crime rates to the restructuring of the entire department. Not one cent was budgeted for the police department. Congresss view of city management echoed that of a national opinion in that a city reelecting a jailbird as their mayor deserved everything it got.

Long-established hiring practices that had once made the Metropolitan Police Department a premiere agency were all but eliminated. Many times, the hiring of new officers was left to the discretion of a few persons within the agency. Cronyism was rampant, and hiring standards were lowered. The friends of some city officials were hired as police recruits even though their drug arrest convictions would have excluded them from being hired under earlier standards.

During the late 1980s, one recruit class had over 40 percent of their recruit officers subjected to department disciplinary action or were terminated during their very first year of service. One academy class was embarrassed by the arrest of seven new recruits for outstanding felony warrants. Apparently, no one had bothered to check the applicants names through the National Criminal Database for outstanding warrants. Or perhaps had this been a carefully planned strategy to hire unqualified and unemployed city residents and lessen a growing unemployment problem?

Either way, anyone with a prior arrest record and fortunate enough to have friends in high places could be a police officer. One high-ranking police official was heard to privately comment, Hire them now, fire them later.

Operation Tarnished Shield is the third fictional story in the Bakers Dozen series of novels. This is based on an actual criminal investigation that was conducted by the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Departments Office of Professional Standards (OPS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the mid-1990s that led to an eighteen month investigation and the subsequent arrest and conviction of twelve metropolitan police officers.

Had the entire operation not been hastily closed down because of the impending murder of one of their own, its certain that there would have been more officers arrested, making it a bakers dozen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543413854

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Copyright © 2017 by Dale L. Sollars.

ISBN:      Softcover            978-1-5434-1384-7

              eBook                 978-1-5434-1385-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 05/02/2017

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Mixing a Bakers Dozen …

Chapter 2 Each morning we wake to a virgin light shining through our window. It’s how we see the light that makes us different.

Chapter 3 Gambling is a trait of the beginner. A good player never gambles.

Chapter 4 It’s easy writing about what you know because it’s true. The hard thing is having others believe the truth.

Chapter 5 Managing an investigation is like arranging a puzzle

Chapter 6 The squeegee theory

Chapter 7 The hard thing is having others believe the truth.

Chapter 8 Being in Law enforcement makes you curious about those small things, wanting to know the truth … no matter the consequence.

Chapter 9 You don’t have to know everything; What you need to know is where to find it.

Chapter 10 What’s with Beech Craft 99 Tango?

Chapter 11 Be cautious … Be slow … Document.

Chapter 12 If you bait your trap with pussy, you’ll always get your man.

Chapter 13 An operation is like a Broadway show … its Showtime!

Chapter 14 There are two kinds of pigs … the cute ones that don’t eat much … and the ones that eat a lot, grow big and fat and … then go to slaughter.

Chapter 15 I’ll never get caught.

Chapter 16 Welcome aboard Miami Air

Chapter 17 Everything comes loose …

Chapter 18 Accountability?

Chapter 19 Money is no object for a good prosecution.

Chapter 20 Double play … things begin to come apart …

Chapter 21 Repercussions after the arrests

Epilogue

About the Author

Preface

Sergeant Lou Savelli (Retired) NYPD

During the 1990’s, Washington DC was a hot-bed of corruption, greed and criminal activity. During that time, Dale Sollars was a Detective Sergeant with the Metropolitan D.C. Police Department and stood as a figure of integrity and courage. He worked tirelessly through many investigations and often under the radar of high level brass and corrupt politicians.

It was during this time I met Dale Sollars whose righteous beliefs were only overshadowed by his honesty and commitment to the truth. Dale dedicated his life and career to valor and the relentless pursuit of what is right. In fact, it was then he became recognized as the nation’s leading expert on detecting deception.

The story you’re about to read is based on an actual investigation which took place in Washington, DC over the course of two years. Known unofficially as, Death City Washington was like the Wild West. It had death, political shysters, corrupt officials, and some of the most violent criminals ruled the streets.

Sergeant Sollars is a close friend and colleague that I have known both personally and professionally for nearly three decades. His dedication and commitment has made him a credit to his profession and friend to every decent law enforcement officer, everywhere.

Dale was part of a group of dedicated investigators who worked diligently, often at great peril to their careers and personal safety, to disclose one of the nation’s most scandalous criminal investigations ever.

It has been my honor and privilege to know Dale and I respect what he stood for and what he still stands for - Integrity.

I know you will enjoy reading his latest novel.

Sergeant Lou Savalli (Ret.) NYC Police Department

I first met Dale in November 2002 while attending his Identifying Deceptive Behavior Course TM at the Northeast Counterdrug Training Center, Fort Indiantown Gap Pennsylvania. When I registered for the class I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a class with a name like that.

The class had approximately ninety participants from other police departments and agencies. Dale introduced himself, gave his biographical information, and his investigative experience as a detective and student of criminal behavior. During his introduction he stated that he didn’t know everything about of police work, but he was good at two things, and he was learning more every day. That statement caught my attention immediately. I was not expecting an instructor to make such a statement, especially in front of a room full of cops. I have to admit I was a little skeptical about some of the information Dale provided, but I kept an opened mind.

Then Dale added, but I know how to get people to talk to me, and I know how to use a person’s deceptive phrases against them, to tell me more, and more about them, and then I close cases based on their answers to my questions. His statement made me listen closer to what he said in class, and I’ve been a student of IDB TM ever since.

After the third day of class, I was anxious to try out the information I had learned. The next day, my partner and I arrested an individual for possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute. My partner advised the individual of his rights and we proceeded to ask him questions. I told my partner to continue to ask questions as I sat there and watched.

It was amazing! The cues Dale described in his class were being displayed right in front of me. I was careful to listen to what the person was saying to us, being careful not to have a, False Positive as Dale had warned us about in class. My partner and I took a brief break and compared our thoughts. We both observed the same cues. We went back in the interview room and confronted the individual about his statement. A short time later, he gave us a complete confession, and then gave us more information that led to a couple of search warrants.

I have been successful with the techniques I learned in Dale’s Identifying Deceptive Behavior TM classes. I have encouraged other members of my department to take his course. So far, over a thousand officers and investigators from my area have taken his class.

Dale’s is a fantastic speaker, and his class is a mixture of lecture, PowerPoint, audience participation, handouts, and humor. I highly recommend attending his class, and look forward to attending another.

I’ve read an advance copy of the novel you’re about to read. It’s based on a real investigation about the worst type of police corruption. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

Detective Robert W. Dickason

Norfolk City Police Department, Norfolk, Va.

Chapter 1

Mixing a Bakers Dozen …

Cashel is high, high on heroin, high on life … and high on the short list as a rising star on the fast-track career to self-destruction. With his bloodshot eyes squinting, they slowly opened to the reflection of a flickering beam of light that shown through the dirty, dilapidated window blinds in his cheap hotel room on the Southeast side of town.

This was nothing new to Cashel. This had become an all too common type of morning for him. Glancing at a digital clock that sat on the distressed night stand next to his bed, the flashing image of 2:58 … 2:58 … 2:58 … was meaningless to him. He gave little concern to what time it was.

Each morning was just like the last …

Every night was anticipated as New Year’s Eve …

Waking each day to a Christmas morning…

But even with all of this, Cashel wasn’t in the mood to care much about himself, or anyone around him. He lived only for the moment.

The only reason he would leave the hotel room was to make his way down the dirty stairwell to make another score of heroin. On his way to his short-lived happiness, he always kept an eye out for anything he could steal and sell for another high. As a small-time drug dealer, maybe something would come his way so he could quit his low-level drug schemes and become a bigger player.

In time he will be part of a corporation, albeit a small part, whose corporate statement consists of a loosely governed set of principles; Power and influence on everyone. His job will be to keep his focus on corporate profits. Their company structure will include powerful people who take care of him. He won’t be the CEO of the company, but nonetheless, he will become a member, a manager, so to speak.

Unbeknownst to him, the bosses will take care of him when he needs help. His life membership in the corporation and his management skills will make it easy for him to avoid performing any type of real work in his other chosen profession.

In a few months Cashel will swear allegiance to, and join a small group of employees who’d make a similar commitment to the, corporation. For all Cashel knew, the CEO of the corporation was a kingpin in a drug cartel that had invaded Washington DC. He will be led to believe that the corporation is responsible for the majority of drugs sold to City residents, and visitors from surrounding areas.

In time, Cashel will recruit others to join his group. A group he will be led to believe that profits from the sales of street narcotics sold primarily to young people.

But he was yet to meet the drug king pin who would ultimately ruin his life. For now, he was in it by himself along with a few close-friends who sold drugs, robbed other drug dealers, and then resold their goods. He never considered the lives that were affected by what they were doing, or the products they sold. The way he saw it, the people who bought his product knew exactly what they were doing when they made the buy. His product had the reputation of being some of the best in the City. His clients liked his particular brand of cocaine, and heroin, and Cashel prided himself on his reputation.

Cashel kept his product strong to keep his customers coming back, even when things didn’t go just right with the, cut. Nevertheless, people overdosed and died, and Cashel made money.

Cashel actually smiled when he read the headlines in the Washington Post newspaper,

Heroin Epidemic Rampant on Washington Streets.

That kind of exposure meant more business would be headed his way.

He never thought about the mothers that cried over their dead sons. For many of the drug players the outlook was very bleak for them with no prospect of getting out of the City, and finding stable employment. During the 1990s, the dropout rate in high schools in the District was near a record high of 55%. School administrators, City managers and the citizens of Washington D.C. did little to help. Throwing money at the rising dropout issue, desperate City administrators doubled the amount of money they were already spending per student; Spending twice the amount of money given to neighboring public school systems in Maryland and Virginia. Still, the dropout rate increased. And this was good for Cashel’s business.

The way Cashel saw it, he was only providing something to those who wanted to buy a good, high. Some of them bought from him every day. He had a steady line of customers hooked on his product. It was the best, and he thought he was the best, at his game.

Lately, he’d become his best, non-paying, customer.

Cashel had methodically slid into a life of drugs, women, sex and money. To his way of thinking he wasn’t doing that bad for a poor kid from Southeast DC who’d never seen things any other way.

Today he’d be late for work. But he wasn’t concerned. They had his back. A real sociopath, Cashel cared only about himself. But his attitude toward life in general, and those he worked with were about to cause real problems for him.

Cashel should have learned from others who earned a living as he did. Many of them had already visited the finest funeral parlors in Washington and meticulously planned, and prepaid the undertaker, for elaborate funerals. They knew too well that their life was a short-lived venture. Live fast, die young, and make a grand exit at your funeral.

The days of working at his other career, as a Metropolitan Police Officer in Washington, were growing short.

Danny Larrs awoke at the same hour, on the same day, but to a different flicker of light than shone through Cashel’s window. Danny’s light was much brighter, and as it cascaded down the bed room wall it cast a gray shadow on everything in the room.

Danny began his day as always. He kissed his pretty wife of 9 years and hugged his two small children. He then begins dressing for work. His uniform is a neatly pressed suit and tie. He stands in front of his bathroom mirror checking that the bottom of his tie lines up with his belt line. Danny is a sharp dresser, always was. As he looked in the mirror he thought of his younger days, a long time ago, when he sold shoes at a ghetto shoe store at Seventh and D Street in the Northwest section of DC. He’d begun working there when he was a kid at age thirteen, lying about his real age and telling the store manager that he was really sixteen.

Danny learned to dress sharp because in his line of work people look at you and gauge your success in life in a mere three seconds. That’s right! He knew that when you meet someone for the first time they have three seconds to size you up, and in another eight seconds, decide to either like you, or dislike you, and then buy from you, or someone else.

Danny knew too well that you are judged by the shine of your shoes, the cut of your suit, and the way you wear your hair. And he used this to his advantage at every opportunity. And he was good at it. He was good at making a good first impression.

At that time he had no way of knowing that in a mere fifteen years he would be assigned to an elite unit within the Metropolitan Police Department looking into allegations of corruption by City employees, and City officials.

As he looked in the mirror, he saw that same young kid, who at thirteen years old rode a City bus that included two transfers to get to his job. Then he’d repeat that process every night to ride the bus home. While riding on a City bus he’d learned to sit as close as he could to the bus driver. Riding a Metro bus at night is a risky event, and even more so for a young white kid from suburban Maryland.

He passed his time riding on the bus by watching other riders as