Snitchin’ in Augusta, Georgia

By Bret Steele

Augusta, Georgia, like many other American cities, is sharply divided along racial and economic lines. In the 1990s, the Augusta Police Department found itself battling the crack cocaine epidemic that turned at-risk kids into dangerous drug dealers. As these young dealers sought to get rich, the realization was a life of despair and danger from the competition, customers, and cops. As the nation fought a very public war on drugs, law enforcement officers faced their own pressure to make arrests and seizures.

Ricky grew up poor. Drugs were always around, and dealing was the only life he ever knew. As he worked to move up the ladder as a dealer, my career was advancing toward becoming a narcotics detective. In a life full of danger and loss, Ricky was forced to make one tough decision after another.

Narcotics detectives see dealers like Ricky as both targets and tools, and they are willing to use what some may think are questionable tactics to persuade him and other reluctant informants to cooperate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543480962

Bret Steele

Bret Steele was a decorated law enforcement officer for twenty years in Augusta, Georgia. During his career he served in numerous capacities including as a patrol officer, narcotics detective, SWAT team member, and training officer. Bret left law enforcement in 2010 to teach high school in the same neighborhood he once patrolled. Bret holds a Masters Degree in Education and teaching certifications in Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security, Economics, Political Science, U.S., and World History. Bret has been married for over 25 years, and has four adult children., His oldest son is also a teacher. Brets daughter has a degree in engineering, and one of his other sons has a degree in computer science. Brets youngest son proudly serves his country as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army.

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Copyright © 2018 by Bret Steele.

Library of Congress Control Number:             2018901181

ISBN:                   Hardcover                                   978-1-5434-8098-6

                            Softcover                                    978-1-5434-8097-9

                            eBook                                          978-1-5434-8096-2

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.

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Rev. date: 02/13/2018

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Rookie Years

Chapter 2 All About Money

Chapter 3 Friends Like You

Chapter 4 All Kinds of Justice

Chapter 5 Back on the Bottom

Chapter 6 Ready, Set, Snitch

Chapter 7 Rolling On

Chapter 8 Out of the Game

Chapter 9 Four Strikes

Chapter 10 Straight Arrow

Chapter 11 Burning Bridges

Chapter 12 When it Rains

Chapter 13 Drug-Related

Chapter 14 Every Man for Himself

Conclusion and Reflection

A FTER LEAVING LAW enforcement, I had the privilege to teach high school, which at times had its challenges. The school I taught at served some neighborhoods that even law enforcement officers won’t go into without backup. Many of the school’s students grow up poor, surrounded by gangs, drugs, and violence. The story of Snitchin’ in Augusta, Georgia involves people making bad decisions, decisions that impact the direction of their lives, decisions they can never take back.

This book is dedicated to the students, not just at the school I taught at but at all the schools in underprivileged neighborhoods around the country. The years I spent teaching gave me the opportunity to meet kids I would have never encountered during my police career. These exceptional students thrived in this difficult environment, and they would have excelled at any school in America.

Snitchin’ in Augusta, Georgia does not tell the success story that happens each day when kids reject joining a gang, selling or using drugs, or committing violence. These are children who choose to excel in the face of adversity. They tune out the distractions by going to school even when many around them do not. They ignore the easy money that comes with crime and instead work part-time jobs for minimum wage. The kids I taught, like most of us, will not likely find fame and fortune. What they will find is something that school seeks to instill in all its students—pride.

INTRODUCTION

A UGUSTA, GEORGIA, IS a dichotomy of two cities as different as Bobby Jones, the gentlemanly golfer and founder of the Augusta National Golf Club and Masters golf tournament, and the flamboyant James Brown, who grew up in Augusta and went on to international fame as the Godfather of Soul. Both men have streets named after them: Mr. Jones, an expressway; and Mr. Brown, a two-lane road in one of the crime-ridden areas of town.

Throughout its history, Augusta has experienced racial, social, and economic change. White affluent residents moved out of the city over the decades to what is called the hill area, near the Augusta National Golf Club. High-income African Americans followed suit, leaving the city with abandoned and dilapidated structures among several housing projects scattered around. Middle-class white and black residents also avoided the city, living in the west and south sides of Augusta.

The history of law enforcement in Augusta, Georgia, can be traced back to the pre-Revolutionary War colonial times. The Augusta Police Department has a rich history that ended with the dissolution of the department in 1996 following consolidation with the county.

In 2017, former officers of the Augusta Police Department were serving as sheriffs of three Georgia counties, each citing their time as Augusta Police officers as valuable experience. A lot of that experience was fighting against rising crime rates associated with drugs and gangs.

When you think of the war on drugs, images of Colombian cartels or Los Angeles street gangs may come to mind. The war on drugs, fought on every street and in every city in America, has spawned terms such as black-on-black crime and mass incarceration.

Drug-related and gang-related are terms that often accompany news stories regarding violence and death on American streets. By attaching gangs and drugs to a story, average Americans sleep easier, feeling as though by controlling their own behavior, it can reduce their risk of being a victim. While drugs and gangs permeate every corner of our society, the violence associated with them is often isolated to low-income areas, once again making those who do not live in low-income areas feel safe.

While most Americans may feel immune to the violence plaguing the inner cities, that does not mean they are insensitive to the tragedies that occur daily. To combat the epidemic of violence, we flood our cities with police officers who are often seen as unwelcome oppressors of the poor and forgotten. Many officers enter the profession energized and idealistic but can quickly become soured and slip into an us versus them mentality.

Those citizens who turn to drugs and crime as opportunities to make money find law enforcement a threat to their livelihood, freedom, and lives. An even greater threat to individuals who engage in criminal activity comes from competing gangs or drug dealers. Battles over turf, respect, and revenge are the catalysts for thousands of murders.

In the 1990s, my hometown of Augusta, Georgia, like many cities, experienced a surge in drugs and violence that led to the city acknowledging for the first time ever that gangs even existed. On a national level, to combat the growing violence, the nation implemented the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also known as the Clinton Crime Bill. The new law introduced mandatory minimum prison sentences for offenses related to crack cocaine, though not powder.

Within a few years, the term mass incarceration would become a buzzword, as prison populations rose by almost a million. Anti-gang units and narcotics investigators concentrated their efforts and resources on cleaning up neighborhoods with the highest violent crime rates. With the crack cocaine trade dominated by African American street gangs, the prison populations became disproportionately black.

The increase in officers and arrests in minority neighborhoods to combat the growth of gangs and drugs did not have the desired effect. Instead of the police being seen as helping African Americans in low-income areas, the public used the increase in law enforcement to build on existing images from the civil rights area when police were used to enforce segregation and suppress voting rights.

While most officers perceived what they were doing as trying to save and improve lives, they were oblivious to the aesthetics of how aggressive law enforcement played to the public. Officers view critics and protesters as misguided opponents of social order. For law enforcement to determine success in the war on drugs, victories were measured in arrests and seizures. For many departments, the profits from taking money from drug dealers became a part of their budget, which impacted salaries and equipment. The strategy for fighting drugs was by cultivating informants, and the tactics used to create informants saw no limits.

To be a successful narcotics officer, having CIs (confidential informants) was everything, and there were several popular ways to develop them. Paid informants are often helpful, but they can cross paths with only so many dealers before the word gets out that they are a snitch. Paid informants can become unreliable as they continue seeking ways to make money once they’ve burned themselves.

Another effective way of developing a snitch is by giving an arrested person a chance to have charges reduced or dropped. This is called working off charges, and it can produce great results. Some of the best snitches may not be paid or working off charges but instead are tricked and manipulated into thinking they are being investigated or about to be charged. To find these types of snitches, officers often fish by stopping and confronting people in drug areas or those who fit profiles. Drug dealers and users are inherently paranoid anyway, so they may be likely to believe they are being watched or investigated. By creating snitches who turn on friends and families along with making so many arrests, animosity between the police and minority communities grew quickly, as many people saw themselves as targets.

The anti-police protests, riots, and attacks seen today are rooted in aggressive law enforcement that emerged across the nation in the 1990s. The following story is based on true events and focused around a portion of my twenty-year law enforcement career and individuals I encountered during that time. I invite you along for an inside look at a career that included time as a patrol officer, training officer, SWAT team member, and narcotics detective.

CHAPTER 1

The Rookie Years

T HE FIRST BULLET felt like a bee sting just below my right kneecap, the pain quickly becoming a sharp burning pain at the point of entry. The deafening sound of gunfire ripped into the quiet night as it escalated on the narrow city street. My partner and I returned fire toward the car with each caliber of gun making its own distinct popping sound. As I pulled the trigger repeatedly with a perfect aim on the driver, I could feel the gun wasn’t recoiling, and I knew it wasn’t firing. My training of tap, rack, and roll kicked in, which was meant to remedy a jammed gun. The first part was striking the palm of my hand on the magazine loaded into the gun to dislodge a stuck round, then racking the slide on top of the gun repeatedly while rolling the gun so a jammed round could fall out. The gun should have cleared and chambered the next round so I could get back in the fight, but my frantic efforts fa iled.

My eyes were off the shooter when the second round seared into my hip and dropped me to the asphalt. Defenseless, I could still hear the exchange of gunfire but no longer see the shooter leaning out of the driver’s window of the car. Unexpectedly, the vehicle sped away, leaving me uncertain if my partner had survived the gunfight. I got up and dove into the patrol car’s driver’s side, grabbing the radio mic and screaming 10-78, the code for officer needs assistance, followed by I’m hit! Before dispatch repeated my words, I could hear the sirens—first low and then louder as they got closer—then the tires screeching to a stop as they arrived.

I held pressure on my hip as blood flowed freely, turning my hand red. I could hear an officer trying to comfort me, saying that an ambulance was on the way. I took several short breaths to try to slow my breathing and looked at my hip to see if the bleeding had slowed. Officer Welker, who had been on the shift about six months after retiring from the Army, knelt beside me. After asking what he should do I instantly told him to forget the ambulance and get me to the hospital. He opened the back door of the patrol car and I quickly got in, still holding the pressure and telling him to go.

The hospital was only a few blocks away, and once we arrived, Officer Welker, with an arm around my waist, helped me walk in as he shouted for help. A nurse helped me onto a bed, and with other emergency room staff, she started cutting off my uniform. As they went to cut my bulletproof vest, I grabbed the nurse’s hand and told her I would get it. The vest fastened at the shoulders and sides with Velcro, which I snatched away to allow the vest to fall off.

I don’t remember the nurse starting an IV, but I recall seeing a needle in my arm and a bag of fluid hanging. I felt safe as the workers scrambled to take care of me . . . until I heard someone say my blood pressure was dropping. That was the first time the thought of this could be what dying is like entered my mind. I thought about my mom and how worried she was when I became a police officer. I thought about my pregnant wife, my five-year-old son, and my three-year-old daughter all growing up without me.

I tried to calm down by saying a silent prayer, asking God to spare me and for my family to be okay. My next thoughts as I closed my eyes were of my first day on the department two years earlier.

I could still remember the sound of the concrete stairwell as it echoed loudly with each step down. My first trip to the basement of the police station was to pick up my gear before I started my first shift later that night. The basement also housed the 911 center for the police department, sheriff’s office, fire department, and ambulance service. As I got closer, I could hear a radio squelch and voices talking over one another. At the bottom, I pulled a heavy steel door open and faced black plastic signs mounted on the wall with arrows pointing left beside the words Dispatch and Roll Call and one pointing right, which read Equipment Room.

The Augusta police wore black uniforms, but the old-timers swore it was a dark policeman blue. I met the chief for the first time two weeks earlier when I was sworn in. He was a burly man and spoke with a deep Southern drawl compounded by a lisp that made him difficult to understand but easy for people to impersonate.

The interview process consisted of the chief telling me not to wreck any of his cars and which day to come pick up my uniforms and equipment, which was today. The sergeant who ran the equipment room was overweight with slicked-back silver hair. He waved me in, and without an introduction, he slid a large cardboard box out into the middle of the floor. While racks of new uniforms were hanging all around, the sergeant reached into the box and pulled out a couple of crumpled black shirts and pants. I’d like to say I was insulted, but I held back a smile as I received the worn-out uniforms adorned with the APD patch on one shoulder and the American flag on the other.

After getting the rest of my gear, a gun belt, handcuffs and case, and baton, I was handed a stainless-steel .38-caliber revolver. The sergeant quickly gave me directions to the firing range, and without a goodbye, turned back to paperwork on his desk. This would be our first and last words, the sergeant would be robbed and killed by members of a local gang in a parking lot a few weeks later.

Before going to the range, I returned home to put on my uniform for the first time. The uniform seemed to hang over my six-foot-two-inch 190-pound frame as I looked in the mirror, pinning on my collar brass and badge. I had turned twenty-two years old a couple of months ago and still had a clean-shaven baby face.