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Even the suburbs have seedy underbellies. This area, with its access to I-95, has a need for

February 6, 2005 1:09 am

THE DETECTIVES LURK in the shadows, their car engines a quiet rumble, steamy clouds of exhaust licking at the windows.

With evening darkness descending and the moon rising, the Street Crimes Unit of the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office begins surveillance.

Tonight, the year-old unit plans to run "reversals," using an undercover officer to sell imitation drugs to willing customers. It is just one tactic the four-man undercover unit uses in its efforts to curtail the county's drug traffic.

Through binoculars, detectives watch the massive 6-foot-8 outline of an undercover deputy trolling the parking lot for customers. Inviting red neon glows in the distance.

Inside the unmarked surveillance cruiser, a crackling transmitter relays every sound from the wire Deputy Shaun Jones wears: his feet scuffing across sand-covered concrete, the groan of truck tires against pavement, the playful shouts of children who circle on bikes.

"Yo, yo, whassup, dude?" Jones asks. "Wha's goin' on, baby?"

In the pouch of Jones' bulky hooded Sean John sweatshirt are a handful of rocks--fake crack cocaine. The Hammer. Twenty dollars for a small off-white rock, a fraction of a gram. Two hundred bucks for a 2-gram nugget.

Detectives with the Street Crimes Unit cooked it up earlier this afternoon in a microwave: BC headache powder coated in Blistex. Now they need to find a customer.

"See the guys on the pay phone?" Detective J.S. Cielakie asks his partner, staring intently into one of the county's two open-air drug markets. "That one guy looks dy-no-mite."

Almost one year ago, Sheriff Howard Smith pulled his four most aggressive deputies off patrol and formed the Street Crimes Unit. Concerns about increasing gang activity and drug trafficking in Spotsylvania fueled his decision.

"I wanted to send a message out to gangs that they're not welcome here," Smith says. "We're going to do everything to keep them from setting up in our county."

So four men traded brown uniforms for blue jeans, a clean-shaven look for scraggly faces. They tamed their patrolman's urge to pull over people who run stop signs. Their focus became solely drugs and gangs.

In 11 months on the streets, the four-man unit has made almost 250 drug arrests. They recorded the county's largest Ecstasy seizure at the Haymaker Music Festival last May, confiscating nearly 5,000 pills from a New Jersey man.

Last year, the unit was responsible for more than a third of all drug arrests in the county.

They aren't the only law enforcement officers with pierced ears and long hair. Undercover narcotics detectives play a role in departments throughout the area, and some cooperate in regional task forces.

But Smith says the Street Crimes Unit has a different mission. Instead of building large-scale investigations of mid- and upper-level criminals, its officers go after nickel-and-dime dealers and users.

They chase down the small-time guys who sling crack in Spotsylvania convenience store parking lots and in motels on U.S. 1.

"It seems kind of petty, but it frequently leads to other information," says William Neely, Spotsylvania's commonwealth's attorney. "We can oftentimes flip it into who's their supplier, who's that person's supplier, who's the money man."

Authorities see links between that chain of command and some gangs operating in Spotsylvania. Although gangs such as MS-13 have been responsible for high-profile machete attacks in Northern Virginia, authorities say they have not established a presence in the area.

But the Street Crimes Unit has evidence of at least 18 smaller local gangs they describe as wanna-bes.

School resource officers have seen the local gangs trying to recruit members in Spotsylvania high schools. Neely said they're responsible for at least six home-invasion robberies and drive-by shootings during the last two years--in addition to numerous graffiti and intimidation cases.

The Street Crimes Unit works closely and shares intelligence with a special investigative grand jury established four months ago that is solely focused on ferreting out gang activity.

The grand jury hasn't issued any indictments yet and is still investigating. But it has access to financial records and information the Street Crimes Unit doesn't.

The grand jury can grant immunity and compel witnesses to testify. In turn, Neely said, the undercover detectives serve as foot soldiers for the grand jury.

Busting crack dealers is not like a TV episode of "Cops." Hours of boredom are punctuated by moments of exhilaration. Detectives say it's like a fishing trip.

The bait has to look good, the angler has to dangle it convincingly. And once they've cast, they have to wait patiently for a bite.

The Street Crimes Unit has a host of lures available. Many of its drug-buying arrests are arranged through confidential informants.

On a recent Friday night, the officers try reversals for the first time. Deputy Jones is sure he'll be the best fake crack dealer the Street Crimes Unit has seen.

But the sky fades from violet to black, and he hasn't negotiated a single deal. The convenience store manager threatens to kick him off the property, a man he knows spots him, another man is sure they are old friends.

After an hour, two men walking into the convenience store recognize the deputy. They announce it to the parking lot.

"We know you. Five-oh, right?" one says, using a popular street term for police.

So much for this spot.

Or is it?

A kid sidles up and starts asking questions. He hasn't heard the men. The kid and the deputy start talking: where they're from, trading cell phone numbers, what drugs they're looking for. The kid wants marijuana.

"You wanna get some trees, yo?" the kid asks.

"Yo, yo, can you get me a QP [quarter-pound]?" the deputy replies.

In his excitement, the undercover officer has made an outlandish request. Not a dime bag, not an ounce. A quarter-pound. Detectives keeping watch over him start laughing. Now they're sure his cover is blown.

"Shaun just ordered up a QP," Cielakie announces on his radio.

Silence follows. The speaker crackles back to life.

"He just ordered up a QP?"

Time to find a new fishing hole.

When two other locations don't produce any buyers, detectives turn their focus to interdiction, checking familiar parking lots, places where they frequently make cocaine arrests.

While Cielakie and Detective Scott Williams pull over a weaving driver who turns out to be wanted for military desertion, other detectives begin surveillance at the Super 8 motel on U.S. 1.

Reports pop over the radio. Detectives spot two men walking into a motel room with McDonald's bags. The men didn't come from the nearby restaurant. One has a car with Maryland tags, the other North Carolina tags.

"It may not be anything," a detective says on the radio. "But it's a little coincidental, don't you think?"

Detectives time visitors coming and going from the room. Two minutes. Three minutes. They're sure drug deals are going down.

When one man leaves, the unit decides to take him down. The call goes to Cielakie and Williams, who are hiding in the empty shadows of a nearby parking lot.

Williams flips on his headlights, and zooms south on U.S. 1, pulling in behind a beat-up copper-colored Honda Accord at a stoplight.

This is the guy they are looking for. White male, white hat, blue-jean jacket.

Cielakie immediately recognizes the car and its driver as a 44-year-old man living in a nearby motel. He arrested him in August on a charge of cocaine possession.

"You think he'll run?" Cielakie asks.

"Probably not," Williams replies.

Their eyes are fixed on the dirty sedan, on every small movement inside. They know the driver spotted them. They are poised to swoop, but the stoplight is red, and they don't want to flip on their blue light. Not just yet.

"Watch him in case he eats it," Williams says.

"He won't eat it," Cielakie replies.

The driver looks in his mirror, and his hand flashes up toward his mouth.

"Oh, [expletive], he might be eating it," Cielakie says.

The light turns green, and they launch, blue lights flashing. A swarm of cruisers descends, officers circling, a swirl of flashlights, questions, peering eyes and steamy breath.

The driver emerges into the bitter cold, his scraggly red face expressionless, eyes shielded beneath a sweat-stained Brickyard 400 cap.

They cuff him, Williams pats him down and asks him to open his mouth. It looks empty.

Then he lifts his tongue.

A glimmer of white catches Williams' attention.

"Is that gum?"

Other detectives draw close. The man has inadvertently flipped a small white rock wrapped in plastic onto his tongue.

What happens next is an adrenaline-fueled blur of yells, scuffling and split-second reactions.

"Spit it out!" one detective shouts. "David, spit it out! You're destroying evidence! Spit it out!"

Four detectives throw themselves on him, trying to keep him from swallowing.

"SPIT IT OUT!" they shout. "SPITITOUT SPITITOUT!"

They force his jaws open, and the rock falls to the cold asphalt. The four angry officers tackle the suspect and pin him to the ground.

"David," one shouts, "you're under arrest for possession of [expletive] cocaine!"

The suspect quickly admits buying the rock at the motel, from the room with the powder-blue door on the second floor at the end of the building. Room 45. Four men are inside, he says.

Detectives have what they need. They call for the Emergency Response Team, the county's SWAT unit.

An hour and a half later, with a search warrant in hand, nine black-camouflage-clad team members stealthily creep down the second-floor walkway, automatic weapons drawn.

They pound on the door. Someone inside opens it, and the team pounces.

"Police! Search warrant!" they shout. "DOWNDOWNDOWNDOWN!"

Once inside, detectives arrest a city man and charge him with possession of cocaine after finding digital scales and razor blades with cocaine residue on them. Another man isn't charged.

Two men are gone, a disappointment. But after nine hours on patrol, they've made two cocaine arrests, a success.

The detectives are realistic about their goals. Williams admits the unit isn't going to eradicate all the county's drug traffic--an unwinnable battle. All officers can do, he says, is chase it each shift, each day.

And the Street Crimes Unit will continue doing just that. Sheriff Smith says the first year of operation has exceeded expectations.

"I don't think I could've asked any more out of that group than what they're performing now," he says. "The numbers speak for themselves."

To reach ROB DAVIS: 540/374-5418 rdavis@freelancestar.com