Cause of All the Fuss
The Drug Task Force
From James Donahue’s Journal
Sometime after President Richard Nixon the Ronald Reagan promoted the nation’s War on Drugs, federal money began seeping into state and local coffers to establish special police units to seek out the narcotics traffickers and put them out of business.
At the time Sanilac County did not seem to have a drug problem. When the local police departments organized a county Drug Task Force unit I thought it was going to be a waste of tax money. Our kids confirmed what I thought I already knew . . . there appeared to be no problem of drug trafficking in the area. They said they hadn’t heard of it.
It was not long after the task force began operations, however, that I received an early morning telephone call from the dispatcher at the Sheriff’s office. I was invited to ride along with the police on a raid of homes all over the county to arrest people . . . mostly youths . . . that had sold marijuana to undercover narcotics officers.
The raids were conducted by police from nearly every community in Sanilac County. Within about two or three hours there was a roundup of about 23 “offenders” at the county jail for booking, then sent directly into District Court to answer charges. Most were charged with possessing, manufacturing and selling small amounts of marijuana. It amounted to a complex, all-day operation at the courthouse. I waited with the other reporters in the hall as the arraignments and plea bargaining continued. In the end, since nearly all of the young people scooped up in that morning dragnet were first-time offenders, there was a plea-bargain deal to misdemeanor crimes and in some cases the charges were all but dismissed. It took a few days before I was able to round up all of the information and get a story on the outcome of each case.
In the end, what first appeared to be a major “drug bust” by the new Drug Task Force, was reduced to a lot of show, a mountain of paperwork for everybody involved, but only a mass arrest of a number of teenagers playing with marijuana. I always wondered who supplied the marijuana since folks in the area did not recognize this substance as a problem before the Drug Task Force came into existence. When I asked the police why the Task Force wasn’t concentrating on the suppliers rather than the small-time street peddlers, I could not get an answer.
During the long wait in the hall outside the courtroom all of the participants in the police drug sting became exposed. I met many of the characters “hired” by the Task Force to work as undercover officers. Some were police officers from other units, all of them with beards, long hair and scuffed down in an attempt to “blend in” with the drug culture on the street. This struck me as funny because I had never confronted gangs that dressed and looked like that in our farming area. It was as if the police were trying to manufacture a culture that did not exist. The youth brought in that day were all overage looking, mostly high school aged young adults. I recognized some of these officers who were trying to disguise themselves as being anything but the police. They still had that arrogant air about them, however, that distinctly marks a cop.
There were some of the arresting officers however, that lacked that unique air of the police. I got in conversation with one gruff-looking stocky and bearded man that had participated in the entrapment operation in the Lexington and Worth Township area. I learned that he was a member of a large and well-known motorcycle gang operating in the Southwest who was “volunteering” to assist the Sanilac County Drug Task Force. He did not say it but I strongly suspected he was working off a court sentence after getting caught in his own narcotics rap.
There were many other morning drug raids after that, but none of them amounted to the large number of arrests made in that first one. I participated in a few, but they became so common and the net snagged only two or three young people that ended up getting charged with nothing worse than possession with intent to sell, that I grew tired of jumping out of bed at five in the morning and sitting for hours in squad cars waiting for a couple of uniformed officers to pounce on local children.
There were three or four raids, however that were well worth losing sleep over. One involved a house in the heart of Sandusky that had been converted throughout to be a marijuana farm. This two-story frame house located on the main street, located only about a block from the downtown business district, looked like any other middle-American home from the outside. But once police led me through the front door, everything was changed. Every room throughout that house was carefully converted for gardening, complete with special lighting and watering equipment. Marijuana plants of every size were growing in beds filled with special soil filled with fertilizer and other foods that made the plants grow fast and healthy. Marijuana was growing on the second floor and even in the basement of that house. On the day of the raid, there was nobody in the house, which was not a surprise. The police chose to go in at six in the morning when the owners of that multi-million dollar operation would be still home in bed. I never understood why they did that. As I remember, the officers knew the name of the person directly linked to the house, but had a difficult time finding the accomplices and proving their involvement.
Another raid involved an airplane filled with bags of marijuana that landed at a private airstrip just south of Marlette. Somehow the narcotics unit got word that this plane was coming in and planned to be there to meet it. I was invited to go along. That case involved staying up most of the night, waiting with the police on a stake-out on some country roads leading up to the air field. After a long light, we saw a row of landing lights on the ground suddenly switch on and then watched as a single-engine aircraft touched down for a landing in what looked from the road like a farm field. There was a van and other vehicles parked at the end of the runway, also in wait for the plane. The police moved in and made their arrests of the pilot and the characters on the ground that had been waiting to pick up the cargo. Police also seized bags and bags filled with cultivated and dried marijuana. Under a new state asset forfeiture law that gave police the right to do it, the police also seized ownership of the airplane, the van and I think there was a car parked at the scene. Everything was later sold at public auction and the money pumped into the county narcotics unit.
After that particular raid, the police all gathered at a little early morning restaurant at Marlette to enjoy a hearty breakfast. Since I was riding with them, I had breakfast with them. They were pretty upbeat that morning after pulling off such a successful bust. After we ate, the police all got up and left the place without paying. I went up to the cash register and offered to pay for my breakfast. The waitress looked surprised. “Aren’t you with them?” she asked. I said I was. “Then your breakfast is on the house,” she answered. I realized that the police were enjoying benefits that most people in the area were not aware of.
After the asset forfeiture law went into effect, it seemed that the Sanilac Drug Task Force went into extensive operation. The local narcotics problem intensified. Police began using helicopters to do summer flyovers to locate fields of marijuana growing in hidden places, then rush in and chop down all the plants and carry them off to some hidden place for “disposal.” I began to wonder just where they were taking those truckloads of marijuana plants and how they were being disposed of.
I attended a meeting of the special governing board that was overseeing the operations of the task force. This was comprised of the State Police Post commander, the Sheriff, and Chiefs of Police from all of the larger cities and towns. It was not usual for me to be present for these meetings but I was allowed in, mostly because, by law, the meeting could not be held in secret. They asked why I was there and I said I had a question. I wanted to know where all of the narcotics, guns and money seized in the many drug raids occurring in the county were going, and how they were being disposed of. I was told that they were all being kept in an “evidence room” until the arrested suspects made their way through the courts. After this, the marijuana was taken to a remote place and burned. I was not told, but I suspected that the money and guns became the property of the narcotics unit under the rules of the forfeiture law. I asked next who burned the marijuana and what assurances did the group have that the marijuana was really destroyed. This question seemed to really anger some of the chiefs. They assured me that it was not something I needed to be concerned about. I was not happy with the answer I received.
The most dramatic narcotics case that I covered involved the murder of a man who turned out to be a major state cocaine dealer who was living in an elaborate farm home near the south Sanilac County line, just north of Yale. He was murdered by his live-in girlfriend after a violent argument. When police got there, they found cocaine, marijuana and other narcotics in the house. The girl friend was strung out on cocaine. And investigation revealed just who this guy was. The Drug Task Force got involved immediately. That case turned out to be a big haul for the task force. They used the forfeiture law to seize the property and everything that was on it. That included a really nice speedboat on a trailer, an elaborate motor home, several high priced cars and trucks, and a house and barn filled with things owned by the very wealthy.
It was not surprising to me that the Sanilac Drug Task Force joined other narcotics units throughout the state in going corrupt during those years. They were using the forfeiture laws to get their hands on a lot of money. Unfortunately, property owned by a lot of innocent people also was getting grabbed up by the police and it was not long before badly needed changes were made in that law. That, however, did not stop the Sanilac police from using the drug culture I always believed they created to continue living the high life.
From James Donahue’s Journal
Sometime after President Richard Nixon the Ronald Reagan promoted the nation’s War on Drugs, federal money began seeping into state and local coffers to establish special police units to seek out the narcotics traffickers and put them out of business.
At the time Sanilac County did not seem to have a drug problem. When the local police departments organized a county Drug Task Force unit I thought it was going to be a waste of tax money. Our kids confirmed what I thought I already knew . . . there appeared to be no problem of drug trafficking in the area. They said they hadn’t heard of it.
It was not long after the task force began operations, however, that I received an early morning telephone call from the dispatcher at the Sheriff’s office. I was invited to ride along with the police on a raid of homes all over the county to arrest people . . . mostly youths . . . that had sold marijuana to undercover narcotics officers.
The raids were conducted by police from nearly every community in Sanilac County. Within about two or three hours there was a roundup of about 23 “offenders” at the county jail for booking, then sent directly into District Court to answer charges. Most were charged with possessing, manufacturing and selling small amounts of marijuana. It amounted to a complex, all-day operation at the courthouse. I waited with the other reporters in the hall as the arraignments and plea bargaining continued. In the end, since nearly all of the young people scooped up in that morning dragnet were first-time offenders, there was a plea-bargain deal to misdemeanor crimes and in some cases the charges were all but dismissed. It took a few days before I was able to round up all of the information and get a story on the outcome of each case.
In the end, what first appeared to be a major “drug bust” by the new Drug Task Force, was reduced to a lot of show, a mountain of paperwork for everybody involved, but only a mass arrest of a number of teenagers playing with marijuana. I always wondered who supplied the marijuana since folks in the area did not recognize this substance as a problem before the Drug Task Force came into existence. When I asked the police why the Task Force wasn’t concentrating on the suppliers rather than the small-time street peddlers, I could not get an answer.
During the long wait in the hall outside the courtroom all of the participants in the police drug sting became exposed. I met many of the characters “hired” by the Task Force to work as undercover officers. Some were police officers from other units, all of them with beards, long hair and scuffed down in an attempt to “blend in” with the drug culture on the street. This struck me as funny because I had never confronted gangs that dressed and looked like that in our farming area. It was as if the police were trying to manufacture a culture that did not exist. The youth brought in that day were all overage looking, mostly high school aged young adults. I recognized some of these officers who were trying to disguise themselves as being anything but the police. They still had that arrogant air about them, however, that distinctly marks a cop.
There were some of the arresting officers however, that lacked that unique air of the police. I got in conversation with one gruff-looking stocky and bearded man that had participated in the entrapment operation in the Lexington and Worth Township area. I learned that he was a member of a large and well-known motorcycle gang operating in the Southwest who was “volunteering” to assist the Sanilac County Drug Task Force. He did not say it but I strongly suspected he was working off a court sentence after getting caught in his own narcotics rap.
There were many other morning drug raids after that, but none of them amounted to the large number of arrests made in that first one. I participated in a few, but they became so common and the net snagged only two or three young people that ended up getting charged with nothing worse than possession with intent to sell, that I grew tired of jumping out of bed at five in the morning and sitting for hours in squad cars waiting for a couple of uniformed officers to pounce on local children.
There were three or four raids, however that were well worth losing sleep over. One involved a house in the heart of Sandusky that had been converted throughout to be a marijuana farm. This two-story frame house located on the main street, located only about a block from the downtown business district, looked like any other middle-American home from the outside. But once police led me through the front door, everything was changed. Every room throughout that house was carefully converted for gardening, complete with special lighting and watering equipment. Marijuana plants of every size were growing in beds filled with special soil filled with fertilizer and other foods that made the plants grow fast and healthy. Marijuana was growing on the second floor and even in the basement of that house. On the day of the raid, there was nobody in the house, which was not a surprise. The police chose to go in at six in the morning when the owners of that multi-million dollar operation would be still home in bed. I never understood why they did that. As I remember, the officers knew the name of the person directly linked to the house, but had a difficult time finding the accomplices and proving their involvement.
Another raid involved an airplane filled with bags of marijuana that landed at a private airstrip just south of Marlette. Somehow the narcotics unit got word that this plane was coming in and planned to be there to meet it. I was invited to go along. That case involved staying up most of the night, waiting with the police on a stake-out on some country roads leading up to the air field. After a long light, we saw a row of landing lights on the ground suddenly switch on and then watched as a single-engine aircraft touched down for a landing in what looked from the road like a farm field. There was a van and other vehicles parked at the end of the runway, also in wait for the plane. The police moved in and made their arrests of the pilot and the characters on the ground that had been waiting to pick up the cargo. Police also seized bags and bags filled with cultivated and dried marijuana. Under a new state asset forfeiture law that gave police the right to do it, the police also seized ownership of the airplane, the van and I think there was a car parked at the scene. Everything was later sold at public auction and the money pumped into the county narcotics unit.
After that particular raid, the police all gathered at a little early morning restaurant at Marlette to enjoy a hearty breakfast. Since I was riding with them, I had breakfast with them. They were pretty upbeat that morning after pulling off such a successful bust. After we ate, the police all got up and left the place without paying. I went up to the cash register and offered to pay for my breakfast. The waitress looked surprised. “Aren’t you with them?” she asked. I said I was. “Then your breakfast is on the house,” she answered. I realized that the police were enjoying benefits that most people in the area were not aware of.
After the asset forfeiture law went into effect, it seemed that the Sanilac Drug Task Force went into extensive operation. The local narcotics problem intensified. Police began using helicopters to do summer flyovers to locate fields of marijuana growing in hidden places, then rush in and chop down all the plants and carry them off to some hidden place for “disposal.” I began to wonder just where they were taking those truckloads of marijuana plants and how they were being disposed of.
I attended a meeting of the special governing board that was overseeing the operations of the task force. This was comprised of the State Police Post commander, the Sheriff, and Chiefs of Police from all of the larger cities and towns. It was not usual for me to be present for these meetings but I was allowed in, mostly because, by law, the meeting could not be held in secret. They asked why I was there and I said I had a question. I wanted to know where all of the narcotics, guns and money seized in the many drug raids occurring in the county were going, and how they were being disposed of. I was told that they were all being kept in an “evidence room” until the arrested suspects made their way through the courts. After this, the marijuana was taken to a remote place and burned. I was not told, but I suspected that the money and guns became the property of the narcotics unit under the rules of the forfeiture law. I asked next who burned the marijuana and what assurances did the group have that the marijuana was really destroyed. This question seemed to really anger some of the chiefs. They assured me that it was not something I needed to be concerned about. I was not happy with the answer I received.
The most dramatic narcotics case that I covered involved the murder of a man who turned out to be a major state cocaine dealer who was living in an elaborate farm home near the south Sanilac County line, just north of Yale. He was murdered by his live-in girlfriend after a violent argument. When police got there, they found cocaine, marijuana and other narcotics in the house. The girl friend was strung out on cocaine. And investigation revealed just who this guy was. The Drug Task Force got involved immediately. That case turned out to be a big haul for the task force. They used the forfeiture law to seize the property and everything that was on it. That included a really nice speedboat on a trailer, an elaborate motor home, several high priced cars and trucks, and a house and barn filled with things owned by the very wealthy.
It was not surprising to me that the Sanilac Drug Task Force joined other narcotics units throughout the state in going corrupt during those years. They were using the forfeiture laws to get their hands on a lot of money. Unfortunately, property owned by a lot of innocent people also was getting grabbed up by the police and it was not long before badly needed changes were made in that law. That, however, did not stop the Sanilac police from using the drug culture I always believed they created to continue living the high life.