From Drug Agent to Drug Dealer: A N.Y. Cop’s Downfall : intro Law Enforcement: It cost this detective his family, home, career, respect--and finally his freedom. The seized heroin and cash were seen as ‘spoils of war.’

Jeffrey Beck remembers the cardboard box stuffed with cash, more than $200,000 resting on the seat of his surveillance van, and how the bills felt slippery as he shoved them into a coat pocket.

It was two weeks before Christmas, 1991, and Beck, a detective assigned to the prestigious New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, was awarding himself a little holiday bonus--a share of $7,000 in heroin proceeds found in a Bronx apartment by his partner, Detective Joseph Termini.

The theft was not Beck’s first, nor would it be his last, but this one seared a hole in his conscience. For several days, the money sat untouched in a sock drawer at his Upstate New York home, hidden from an unsuspecting wife he feared might unearth his terrible secret. Eventually, he used some of it to buy Christmas gifts for his two young children and expensive dinners for his family.

Beck even did his part for the homeless, at one point thrusting a rolled $100 bill into the hand of a Manhattan panhandler who, moved by the gesture, tried to embrace him through the car window. The startled Beck gunned the accelerator, leaving a trail of unanswered “God Bless You’s” in the chill December air.

“I can’t tell you how guilty I felt,” Beck said in a recent interview. “The thinking was, we busted our ass on this case, and we won’t get a pat on the back from anybody else.

“We thought they were the spoils of war.” Beck paused. “And it was wrong, dead wrong.”

Beck’s plunge into the quicksand of police corruption cost him his family, a career he’d chased since the age of 5, the comfortable home in Putnam County, N.Y., and the respect of his professional peers.

On Monday, it cost him his freedom.

Beck, 35, surrendered at a federal penitentiary in Butner, N.C., for the start of a 57-month prison term, the penalty for his 1991 theft and a 1992 heroin-trafficking conspiracy that led to his arrest.

Beck spoke openly and often tearfully about a pattern of ripping off drug dealers and arranging an unwitting heroin sale to an undercover police officer. The interview summoned a flood of memories--some shameful, still others a source of pride--and provided a rare glimpse into an officer’s transformation from drug agent to drug dealer.

Those exploits were recounted in great detail during the recent Mollen Commission hearings, the first wide-scale examination of police corruption in New York City in more than 20 years.

But Beck said in the interview that he was unable to fully explain how an officer talented enough to earn assignment to the prestigious task force, one of the nation’s most honored law enforcement outfits operated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, could succumb to such temptation.

It’s a question, Beck said, that may forever haunt him.

“I’m not trying to put blame anywhere else,” he said. “If I was strong enough, I would not have done any of it. Maybe I was lacking in character. I just didn’t have enough strength to say no.”

Beck, Termini and a third task force member, New York State Police trooper Robert Robles, were arrested in March and charged with selling $24,900 in heroin stolen by Termini from a DEA evidence vault.

“In the back of my head somewhere, I knew that one day this would end,” he said, blotting moist eyes with a yellow napkin. “I didn’t think this would end like this.”

Beck blames his misconduct for casting a cloud over the once-vaunted task force. Former bosses and colleagues have unforgiving words for the fallen officer.

“I feel bad for the guy,” said retired police Lt. James Wood, the former task force supervisor who was Beck’s friend and mentor. “But there’s a haze over my whole career.”

Wood retired last year after suffering a disabling back injury, but was yanked back into task force business a year ago when he got a call from a trusted informant who said that Beck wanted to fence stolen heroin through him. Wood went to the police Internal Affairs Bureau, triggering the most sweeping investigation of the unit ever.

When he appeared in October before the Mollen Commission, Wood offered a wrenching story of personal betrayal, especially by his onetime protege, Beck. “He broke my heart,” Wood said. “When he did that, he became just another drug dealer.”

It was a far cry from Beck’s introduction to the task force in 1986 after two exceptional years as an undercover officer in the Bronx Narcotics Division. Soon, Beck said, he was indoctrinated into the ways of his task force group. Beck became a regular participant in the so-called “Pizza Fund,” in which an agent in charge of an investigation would routinely skim money from cash seizures and buy food and beer for the group.

At first, Beck said he resisted the practice, but quickly joined in. “There is a certain mystique about it, doing little things that are not exactly above board, so I don’t know whether it was exciting, or taboo,” said Beck. “It’s hard. I always tried to be the righteous guy.”

It was but the first, tentative step along a destructive path to bigger corruption, he conceded.

In 1990, Beck was reunited with Termini, with whom he had worked briefly in Bronx narcotics. They first stole in September, 1991, Beck said. The two detectives had grabbed $2,000 or so in a raid and were sitting in a surveillance car. Beck said Termini glanced at him and raised an eyebrow.

“It was weird,” Beck recalled. “You get a look like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money, I wonder how much is there.’ I didn’t like it, I didn’t know how to deal with it. So I took it.”

“He (Termini) called me an amateur, and he was right. Even the last time, he said, ‘You’re pathetic.’ ”

Mark Pomerantz, Termini’s lawyer, would not comment on the case or Beck’s allegations. Termini has pleaded guilty to the same charges as Beck and awaits sentencing. Robles is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Minnesota.

Beck said he didn’t commit crimes strictly for the money; he drove a 1983 Toyota Corolla that had racked up nearly 160,000 miles. But he spoke of myriad pressures--bosses who demanded big arrest numbers, marital problems, constant urging by his parents to leave the task force for fear it was changing him for the worse.

Indeed, Beck said he asked his colleagues and Wood about a transfer in 1991, saying he felt drained and in desperate need of a break from undercover work.

But the idea of seeking psychiatric help through the task force was anathema to DEA supervisors who wanted mentally tough cops able to produce headline cases, he said.

In four cases, including the final heroin sale, Termini was the one who encouraged him to steal, insisted Beck, who also admitted taking part in the theft of $3,000 on two occasions in September and October of 1991.

Assistant U.S. Atty. David Fein, who is prosecuting the task force case, said there were two other occasions on which Beck broke the law, the theft of $800 in April, 1991, from a drug dealer, and a house burglary in January, 1992. Beck was never charged with those crimes.

U.S. District Judge John Keenan could have imposed a tougher sentence at Beck’s Nov. 5 sentencing in Manhattan, but refrained. “He already has brought greater punishment on himself than any court could impose,” Keenan said.

Laura Beck, fired from her job as a court stenographer in the Bronx after her husband’s arrest, filed for divorce in July and took their children, ages 2 and 4, with her when she left.

“It preys on my mind; there’s nothing tougher than being a cop in prison,” Beck said. “But it doesn’t compare to what I did to my family. It’s terrible that my parents, wife and kids have to go through this because of something I did.”