Kick Ass (15 page)

As expected, Rivera’s toughest critics were those most intimate with the narcotics business. Lou Garcia, a retired smuggler I’ve known for several years, tuned in to Geraldo’s performance Tuesday night and quickly became disgusted. “It was a joke,” he said. “I didn’t finish. I switched over to HBO.”

The problem wasn’t the subject matter, but the show biz approach. Rivera gets so excited by the sight of his own face on camera that he darn near hyperventilates. You want to put a cold compress on his forehead and make him lie down for a while.

The program’s goofiest moment came when Geraldo announced that he was going undercover to do a drug deal himself. The first time, he looked like he was on his way to a casting call for Pirates of Penzance. You had to see this getup to appreciate it. As luck would have it, the drugs turned out to be fake, too.

The next time, Geraldo waited alone in a “plush” Fort Lauderdale hotel, where he posed as a cocaine customer from New York.

(Of all the police departments in the country, leave it to the Broward Sheriffs Office to go along with this nutty scheme. Imagine how they must have explained it to their liability lawyers: “OK, guys, what we thought we’d do is get one of the most recognizable TV journalists in America and let him go into a room to buy a kilo of coke from a bunch of armed criminals, just for fun

“)

So guess what happened. The bad guy recognized Geraldo. And why not, since this time his entire disguise consisted of Brylcreem and a pair of sunglasses. He might as well have worn an ABC blazer and had Barbara Walters on his arm.

Anyway, after a bit of bluster the deal gets done, the cops burst in and Geraldo gets the last laugh. Afterward, a Broward detective chortles at the hapless coke peddler: “You’re now the most famous dope dealer in America.” Make that the dumbest dope dealer in America.

The apparent message of this little escapade is that any media yahoo can do a drug agent’s job, though I’m not too sure. Last week a coke dealer opened fire on three DBA agents in Miami, and I’m kind of sorry Geraldo wasn’t there to see how the part is really played.

Maybe Media Vice Cops will become an exciting new weekly series. I’m sure that Nick (Prime-Time) Navarro, the Broward sheriff, would happily sign on as celebrity technical adviser.

Personally, I’d tune in anytime to see Jane Pauley try an undercover drug deal. Granted, it would have to be an unusually perky drug deal, but I bet the Nielsens would be monstrous. Likewise Dan Rather could probably be persuaded to score a dime of black-tar heroin, if he were careful not to get beat up.

Pretty soon they’d all be lined up to take a turn undercover in the fast lanePeter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, all the big shots, with the possible exception of Irving R. Levine. I don’t think smugglers go for bow ties.

From Michigan, direct to you: drug-free urine

March 27, 1987

The job of a U.S. postal carrier grows more perilous every day. A bottle of urine arrived in Wednesday’s mail. The package was open; fortunately, the bottle was not.

I don’t know whose urine it was, but I know whose it is now.

Mine. I paid for it-more precisely, the newspaper paid for it. And with all due modesty, I think this little gem belongs in the Expense Account Hall of Fame: “Two ounces of urine$19.95.”

People all over the country are buying other people’s urine. The reason is to decoy drug tests, implemented by many companies to identify employees who have recently used marijuana, cocaine or other substances.

As the urinalysis craze grew, it was only a matter of time before somebody cashed in. In recent months several companies have sprung up offering “clean” urine to anyone who wants to pay for it.

The bottle that I ordered came in a brown envelope from a Michigan firm called Insurine Labs, a pioneer in this exciting new field. The urine-by-mail business is going so swimmingly that Insurine’s founders say they’ve expanded the operation.

“It’s a growth industry,” says business manager Al Robinson. “We started it. We’re No. 1. We send out a good product.”

Since Consumer Reports has yet to test mail-order urine, and since I wasn’t about to attempt any comparisons myself, I had to take Al’s word on the quality issue.

“We’ve got distributors in 33 states,” he went on. “We’re franchising in Canada. We’re in London.”

I asked him where the stuff comes from. More to the point, who it comes from. “We’ve got two labs in California that hire donors,” Al said. He described the donors as normal, healthy persons trying to make a little extra money. He said they get $5 a shot, but they don’t get paid until the urine sample tests clean.

Each bottle arrives with a piece of paper stating that the urine contains no detectable amounts of amphetamines, barbiturates, methadone, opiates, metabolized cocaine, benzodiazepine or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

And at the bottom of the chart, highlighted (fittingly) in yellow magic marker, is this disclaimer: “THIS PRODUCT IS SOLD AS ADVERTISED AS A SPECIMEN ONLY. INSURINE LABS DOES NOT IMPLY OR SUGGEST THAT IT BE USED IN ANY UNLAWFUL OR IMPROPER MANNER.”

I asked Al Robinson what his product might be used for, other than rigging a drug test. “People use it for what they want to use it for,” he said. “They can wash their small car with it, you know what I mean?” A second warning on the Insurine urine chart says: “NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHAT SO EVER [sic].”

So Al isn’t taking any chances.

At first, he said, he and Insurine founder Meryl Podden considered the urine-selling scheme “a novelty.” Originally they sold the samples for $49.95 “and there was no sales resistance at all. None.”

The price came down with the competition. After Insurine was mentioned in U.S. News and World Report, orders shot through the roof. Al says the company is doing so well that he and Meryl decided to franchise, so they’d no longer have to do the shipping.

I said this sounded like the ideal set-up, not having to handle the stuff yourself.

Al said there have been no problems, no complaints from unsuspecting postmen. He said the packages must be sturdy to withstand the frigid Michigan winters. Each sample is sent in a clear plastic bottle with a screw top.

“They don’t leak,” Al added. “And there’s no law against it. Nowhere in the country.”

Customers who don’t intend to use the sample for a drug test might have trouble deciding what else to do with it. As a gift idea it leaves something to be desired, though the bottle itself is attractive enough. A mischievous sort might be tempted to leave it on the cologne counter in a big department store, but of course this would be wrong.

Yacht-pot policy makes zero sense

May 11,1988

Sleep well, America. Your borders are safe.

Last Saturday, the Coast Guard cutter Tampa seized a luxury yacht in the Yucatan Channel after a search turned up 1/10th of an ounce of marijuana, scarcely enough to roll a joint.

The capture of the 133-foot Ark Royalwas executed under Operation Zero Tolerance, a new policy that encourages the Coast Guard to probe the crannies of private boats. Guardsmen spent the weekend stopping vessels in South Florida; eight have been seized locally, including a shrimp boat carrying a misdemeanor amount of pot.

This isn’t Zero Tolerance, it’s zero intelligence.

Of all the idiotic ways to waste money and manpower, this is one of the all-time tops. It ranks with the infamous Florida City Roadblock of 1982, when hundreds of cars northbound from the Keys were stopped and randomly searched for drugs and illegal aliens.

The roadblock resulted in only a few seizures, and the State Attorney’s Office refused to prosecute because of constitutional questions. Out of pure embarrassment, the debacle was not repeated.

Now comes Zero Tolerance, which permits the confiscation of any vessel carrying even minuscule amounts of drugs. Forget the fundamental questions of guilt or innocence: Who had possession of the stuff? Who carried it on the boat? Did the owner even know?

The ostensible point is to punish recreational drug consumers for their role in the nation’s hellish narcotics problem.

On Sunday the Ark Royalwas towed to Key West amid much fanfare and many mini-cams. What a blow against the drug cartels: a swank $2.5 million yacht in tow, all because of 1/10th of an ounce of pot!

Before you start cheering, consider this: The Ark Royal’sowner was far away in California when his boat was seized. Not a shred of evidence connected him to the teaspoon of marijuana, or to any narcotics involvement. Yet he’s the one who had to pay.

The Coast Guard returned the Ark RoyalTuesday, but what of the other Zero Tolerance cases? The U.S. government (meaning taxpayers) will spend a small fortune pursuing the seizures, only to get pounded in court.

The policy is rotten with holes: indiscriminate, inequitable, ineffective. Do charter captains now have to strip-search their customers before heading out for a day of deep-sea fishing? And what about the big cruise linerswhy isn’t the Coast Guard boarding the S.S. Norwayfor a cabin-by-cabin shakedown?

Taking Zero Tolerance to its logical extreme, perhaps we’ll see a day when the Coasties confiscate one of our own aircraft carriers because some dumb sailor stashed a joint in his bunk. Think of what the U.S.S. Nimitzwould bring at public auction!

The very idea of using the Coast Guard for this headline-grabbing nonsense is an insult to the men and women who serve in the agency. If search-and-rescue has been officially replaced by search-and-seizure, then at least let them go for tonnage, not tokers.

All this year we’ve heard the Coast Guard brass complaining about the $100 million shortfall in the current budgeta deficit that’s forcing cutbacks in the agency’s interdiction efforts.

But if this is what they wanted the money for, then their budget deserves to be hacked. Give the extra millions to the DEA, or to local police. Shut down some crack houses. Put some real smugglers in jail.

There’s no question that casual drug users fuel the underground narcotics economy, but confiscating private boatswhether it’s the Ark Royalor a leaky dinghywon’t change a thing. It certainly won’t change anyone’s mind about using grass or cocaine. That takes education, and education isn’t as splashy as a fancy yacht.

Zero Tolerance is a stunt that displays the sinking desperation, and hypocrisy, of the so-called war on drugs. While Reagan’s boys secretly negotiate a cushy exit for a dope-dealing tyrant in Panama, the Coast Guard is snooping after ski boats off Crandon Beach.

Drug czar would scare any pusher

June 24, 1988

Pablo Escobar and the rest of the South American drug barons are undoubtedly quaking in their Guccis, following the announcement that Florida soon will have a full-time “drug czar.”

This promises to be a thrilling mission, at least the way Gov. Bob Martinez describes it.

He promises that the new czar will have broad responsibility for fighting narcotics on all fronts. The governor went so far as to say that the drug czar will have his very own task force, and that this task force will actually have the power to make “recommendations.”

I can already hear those lily-livered liberals crying whoa, let’s not get carried away! A task force is so

extremewhy not start with a committee, or maybe a small advisory board?

But I say bravo, Governor! Throw down the gauntlet. Take off the gloves. When the going gets tough, the tough make recommendations.

Martinez proposes urine testing for bus drivers and the death penalty for drug kingpins, and he stands the same chance of achieving either one. One of the governor’s boldest ideas is to unleash the National Guard to do battle against the cocaine titans. This should certainly liven up those long weekends at the armory.

The governor was not terribly specific about exactly what the National Guard is supposed to do, but this is why you need a drug czar, to nail down the details.

Another important priority of the $6o,ooo-a-year drug czar should be thinking up snazzy code names for investigations.

You’ve noticed that every major drug bust has a clever-sounding name to go with itOperation Grouper, Operation Black Tuna, and so on. Unfortunately, after so many years and so many big cases, we’re running short of catchy code words. Now you hear things like Operation Dead Flounder, or Zero Tolerance.

We desperately need a drug czar to make sure that all future nicknames sound good on TV and fit neatly into newspaper headlines.

“Czar” itself is a word that newspapers love because it’s short, and it has a “z” in it. Headline writers almost never get to use the letter z, so in the months ahead you’ll be seeing many news items such as: “Drug Czar Says Crack is Very Bad.”

Or: “Czar to Smugglers: Stay Out of Florida!”

One of the czar’s most vital jobs will be to call press conferences in order to “put the drug smugglers of the world on notice.” This should be done at least twice every year.

One problem facing the new czar is that so many different law enforcement agencies are fighting Florida’s drug war, it’s hard to know who should get the praise for a big seizure.

To avoid having Customs and DEA and FDLE and the Coast Guard and the FBI and OCB and ATF trample each other dashing for the microphones at press conferences, we need a drug czar who can claim credit for each and every kilogram, and do the speaking for everybody.

We also need someone who knows something about camera angles, so that the contraband can be displayed in a fashion that is dramatic, without being garish.

To show that he means business, Gov. Martinez gave his new task force exactly seven months to come up with its first batch of recommendations. You can bet that Escobar and his pals are marking that time on their calendars, knowing that the clock is finally running out.

Of course, they should be careful not to confuse the Governor’s Drug Czar’s Task Force with the Vice President’s South Florida Task Force, or the Blue Lightning Strike Force, or the Congressional Task Force, or the joint DEA-FBI Task Force, or the Joint Legislative-Executive Task Force, or any of the other nine jillion task forces already deployed in the war on drugs.