A Day in Their Life : Drama Is Real for N.Y. Drug Agents

Special Agent 01 goes to work in blue jeans and a plaid shirt--no “Miami Vice”-style designer suits for him. And he cruises the streets of Queens in an inconspicuous Oldsmobile, not the powerful sports cars favored by television cops.

But the major difference is that this is reality, not a TV drama. Agent 01 is a New York-based undercover operative for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. A day in his life makes it clear that real-life narcotics agents are more like chess players than urban commandos. Shoot-outs a la “Miami Vice” are less common than 12-hour days spent in patient, cautious watching and waiting.

Right now, Agent 01 is following a man who has just sold cocaine to an undercover agent. He hopes the man will lead him to a drug kingpin from Colombia, which is a major source of the addictive, potentially deadly white powder that is flooding the United States.

Following the Dealer

On this cool autumn evening, the tall, clean-shaven agent is content to follow the cocaine dealer through a crowded Colombian neighborhood of restaurants and shops to the house where the drug money will be turned in and more drugs will be picked up.

“Patience is the key,” Agent 08, who made the buy from the man Agent 01 is following, said later.

Agent 01, one of 2,200 DEA agents deployed nationwide, heads a 10-member team of local, state and federal officers trying to crack an international drug trafficking ring that has branches in cities across the United States.

The day begins before noon, with office work; it ends the same way around midnight. In between, 01 stakes out several residences suspected of being “stash houses,” follows several suspects, discusses strategy in cryptic radio conversations with his teammates--and hopes that in the end his work will take a bite out of the city’s mountain of cocaine.

Uphill Work, Agent Says

Agent 01 said the task force has already picked off many of the drug ring’s dealers in the last eight years, seizing cocaine, records, millions of dollars and numerous weapons. But he admits it has been uphill work.

“As soon as we bag some people, they just send more people in,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like a little kid running to the dike and putting his finger in it. The coke keeps coming.”

His task force sometimes arrests drug sellers on the spot. But it increasingly shuns “buy and bust” maneuvers aimed at drug ring small fry in favor of building cases against mid-level traffickers--using bugs, buys, wiretaps, visual surveillance and informants to gather evidence.

The goal is to make the mid-level people “flip”--provide information on the people at the top of the drug organizations, or “cartels.” “Go for the head,” said Agent 01. “You don’t kill a snake by chopping off its tail.”

On Right Side of Law

As Agent 01 speeds through a quiet middle-class neighborhood on the trail of his latest suspect, a Queens policeman pulls him over. But 01, leaping out of his car and shouting, “On the job!” quickly satisfies the officer that he, too, is on the right side of the law. Back behind the wheel, 01 admits that even federal narcotics agents cannot speed through city streets at will: “Once in a while, we get caught.”

Agent 01, one of about 150 members of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, talks as fast as he drives. “It’s the Adrenalin,” he said--and it also helps him fight fear. Narcotics agents, he acknowledged, love the excitement of “the hunt.”

Robert Stutman, 01’s boss as agent in charge of the New York DEA, cites the challenge of “getting people to do what is the stupidest thing they can do in drug trafficking: deal with a federal agent.” The challenge is heightened, he said, because “we have to play the game with rules, and they don’t have any rules.”

Several Sensational Murders

After 14 years, Agent 01 said as he drives through Queens, he is still “surprised at the violence of these people.” He has seen the results of several sensational drug-related murders, including one in which a whole family was found shot in a late-model car on a highway.

Throughout the long shift, during which Agent 01 skips breakfast, lunch and dinner, messages crackle over his low-powered radio--sometimes unintelligibly. Drug agents have complained for years about their radios.

They have grown accustomed to the state-of-the-art technology arrayed against them--the drug dealers’ aircraft, night-vision goggles and modern communications equipment. Few complain about their long hours, the strains on family life. Even the relatively low pay compared with that of their adversaries doesn’t seem to faze them.

Money Is ‘Just Evidence’

“Monopoly money” is the way many describe seized drug cash. “It’s just a piece of evidence,” 01 said.

Agents themselves handle huge sums of “buy money.” They say temptation is not a problem, although they acknowledge that “bad agents” exist. Most, said 01, are hard-working lovers of the hunt.

On this day, the hunt takes its most dramatic turn at 7 p.m., when Agent 08 makes his drug buy.

The buy is conducted in a car. Agent 01 is close enough to see the car but not to see inside it. Another agent, close enough to see the occupants, sends a reassuring message--”Still talking”--over his radio several times during the 30-minute transaction.

Undercurrent of Tension

In the end, it is routine--a quiet arrangement between supposed business partners. But there has been an undercurrent of tension, in part because an undercover agent making a drug buy never knows whether he will be blown away by a dealer who has “made”--identified--him or who feels he is not being paid enough.

Why do they risk such danger? Agent 08’s answer: “When you see babies born strung out, you know why I do it.”

After midnight--with the cocaine sent to the lab, some unused buy money returned to the office and their reports finished--several agents sip beers and plan the next day. It will begin at 9 a.m.

A week later, the team’s efforts bore fruit: seven arrests, including a Colombian kingpin who was taken into custody after trying to flee when Agents 01, 09 and 11 surrounded his Toyota. “It’s a good feeling.” Agent 01 said. “The Adrenalin was flowing. This was another step. But we’ve got a long way to go.”