Lights and Sirens
Part 57 of A Policeman's Tale of the American Riviera
“When a thing like that happens, when the roots of a man's faith are torn out and examined, he can do one of two things; he can bind them to himself all the more fiercely, or he can let them go.”
~Thomas Heggen, Mister Roberts
The Numbers Game
BATF Investigation Number —————— Report Number: 1
NARRATIVE:
SBRNET Agent C. Rullman advised SA Rusk that he received information from a confidential and reliable informant that Thomas Edward DOMINGUEZ was involved in a narcotics and firearms trafficking organization operating in the city of Santa Barbara. DOMINGUEZ has prior arrests and convictions for narcotics and weapons possession. DOMINGUEZ is also currently on parole for felony narcotics offenses. DOMINGUEZ is also associated with the Bravados outlaw motorcycle gang.
Agent Rullman related that the informant advised DOMINGUEZ frequently sold narcotics and firearms from his father’s residence, located at ………… in the city of Santa Barbara, CA. Agent Rullman said that according to the SBRNET confidential informant, DOMINGUEZ is involved in dealing powder cocaine, methamphetamine and fully automatic firearms. The informant also identified Robert MAYNEZ Jr. DOB ……., as being a part of DOMINGUEZ’ narcotics distribution network. MAYNEZ also has arrests and convictions for narcotics possession. This investigation is continuing.
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When BATF Special Agent Josh Rusk who, perhaps more than anyone else, midwifed Operation Gator Roll from a thought bubble into a reality, walked into the narcotics office at the Santa Barbara Police Department it was clear that something was wrong. He came in without his usual banter and light-hearted Fed-Swagger, and fell into a swivel chair next to the door with a heavy sigh.
Rusk was that rare Agent of the Federal Government who didn’t take himself too seriously, which made him a great partner. A Texan, Rusk had been to the wars after postings in the Deep South, where he honed his investigative and gunfighting skills while smashing some of America’s worst criminal turds. In the years-long wake of a disastrous raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, BATF was much maligned and even dreaded, particularly amongst America’s estimated 200 million gun owners and Sovereign Citizen types. BATF wasn’t perfect, and nobody else was either, but they also weren’t what continuous criticism in the press and the subsequent public perception made them out to be.
From a cop’s perspective, Rusk was the kind of Federal Agent you hoped existed somewhere, anywhere, after repeated exposure to the Federal Bureau of Investigation diminished your faith in those agents and that institution beyond repair. It was widely known, and a source of endless derision, that the vaunted FBI, whose Ventura field office was perched above a bank, and where the men’s room was complete with newspaper racks carefully draped with daily editions of the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, could do nothing to prevent the bank from being knocked over every six months. While FBI Agents were upstairs taking power dumps and reading Peggy Noonan columns, hoodlums were running out the front door of the bank downstairs with cash and dye packs stuffed into duffel bags.
You had seen FBI Agents pull some incredibly ignorant stunts in the field, including demanding that La Colonia gangsters be un-handcuffed after a joint search warrant service in one of the worst gang neighborhoods in Oxnard, California—a city known for exactly two things: lettuce farms and bad gang neighborhoods. But the Agent insisted, which is when you said: Fuck no. They stay in cuffs, and prevented him from endangering everyone on scene by allowing angry meth-baboons the use of their hands. He stood there glowering from out of his raid jacket and aviator sun glasses, maybe unused to any mere local telling him to pipe down. What you wanted to say was: Stick with forensic accounting, hotshot, it’s your wheelhouse, but you had a pile of violent parolees and drug dealers on the curb and stoking the internecine friction wasn’t worth what would certainly devolve into an on-going pissing contest.
