The most efficient way to stop people grassing them up is to be terrifying. “Every year the police get better at catching drug gangs, and the gangsters’ most effective way of fighting back is upping the use of fear and intimidation against potential informants. This wasn’t an overdose epidemic, he realised, but dealers literally getting away with murder, making their victims’ deaths look like just another accidental overdose. Woods had wondered why heroin fatalities in Brighton were five times the national average. In Northampton, Woods discovered a chilling new punishment for informants – gang rape of a girlfriend or sister – and every heroin addict in Brighton warned him that if the local dealers thought he had talked, the next hit of heroin he bought would kill him. “But I told myself I was fighting the good fight, and that the ends justified the means.” This moral justification seemed more compelling with each new assignment, due to the ever-escalating violence deployed by dealers to deter communities from talking to the police. He did feel guilty about jailing the hapless addicts who led him to the dealers. By his calculation, he consigned drug offenders to more than 1,000 years behind bars. Woods even helped formulate national guidelines for undercover operations, and trained officers all over the country in his skills. But the commendation awards kept piling up. One dealer tried to run Woods over, another held a knife to his groin, another pulled a 9mm Glock handgun on him. Particularly when it’s dangerous.” The dangers grew every year, as dealers cottoned on to undercover police tactics, and grew increasingly suspicious of a new face asking for drugs.
It’s a great thrill to be able to successfully deceive people. “And I loved the development of the skill. “Oh, but I loved the art of deception,” he offers. It’s a struggle to reconcile the faux junkie Woods used to be with the articulate ex-policeman taking me for tea and cakes. The biggest danger at the start of any job is that you’ve landed from Mars – and who are you?” Using a new cover story each time, the undercover drugs squad officer would gradually befriend destitute addicts, ingratiate himself with their dealers, buy drugs from them – and then have the whole lot sent to jail. Street slang is very regionalised, even just specific to a town, so you have to adapt quite quickly. “I was a sponge for colloquialisms and mannerisms. “It’s all about stomach cramps.”įor 14 years, Neil Woods would leave behind his wife and two young children, put on stained “charity-shop scally tracksuit bottoms”, and turn up in a town somewhere in England as a drug addict. “It’s all in the stomach,” he grins when I’ve caught up. “And this is how you walk when you’re going to score heroin.” Subtly hunched over a sunken midriff, he strides ahead, as fast as he can without breaking into a run. “So, you wanted me to show you how I used to look?” He draws in his stomach, rounds his shoulders, paws imaginary sweat from his cheeks, and suddenly I’m looking at a junkie – jumpy, wheedling, begging for a fix. "I saw three officers enter from the gate and go to the backyard and they told me to wait,” Cavallo said.W alking beside me through a market town centre is a lean, healthy, 46-year-old man. He came home to an armed truck, police with their guns and K-9s. "It was like an army of cops,” Cavallo said.Ĭavallo lives on 46 th Street. If you attack an officer, you're attacking the community, you're attacking children."Īs Miami-Dade Police surrounded the Buena Vista neighborhood, Adrian Cavallo was coming home from work but quickly found out he couldn't go home.
"I'm tired of being here at the hospital, four times already for injured officers being shot and attacked, and this has to stop," he said. Officials haven't released the identity of the two suspects or said what charges they'll face.Īt his news conference Wednesday, Ramirez expressed frustration over several recent attacks on his officers. No pedestrian or vehicle traffic is being allowed within this area. TRAFFIC ALERT: Due to a police investigation with we have closed NW 2-6 Avenues from NW 39-46 Streets.
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