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Cops And Robbers

How the Dallas police and FBI pulled off the city’s slickest undercover operation.
By Janice Tomlin |

THE SET-UP.



Charlie blinked his eyes in an effort to see through the smoky haze in the dimly lit bar. “All persons entering this bar must show ID,” warned a large sign with peeling paint. Two broad-shouldered officers in uniform brushed past him, leading a handcuffed male without a shirt outside. Charlie smiled at the thought of showing them his identification. He tried to picture their surprise at discovering that the scruffy-looking man they’d just brushed by was actually an undercover cop.

He shot a glance at his partner, Ray. Charlie knew Ray didn’t want to be at this sleazy strip joint any more than he did.

“Have we been here before?” Charlie whispered.

“1 don’t think so,” Ray said. “Well maybe. They all look the same, don’t they?”

Methodically, Charlie surveyed the room. The tacky decor. The vacant-eyed dancer, wearing glitter pasties and tiny purple panties, rotating her hips in time to the blaring jukebox music. The table of half-drunk men. The bartender, absently wiping spilled beer off the counter.

“You think this guy will show?” asked Charlie. Things didn’t feel right. He flashed on the idea that they were being set up. Had someone found out about the operation? Found out that they were cops posing as ’”fences” for stolen goods? He tried not to think about it.

“He’ll show,” Ray said, interrupting Charlie’s thoughts. “I got a feeling about him this afternoon.”

The man had called the warehouse about 2 p.m.

“You guys interested in a big deal?”

The man had shown up 20 minutes later, dressed in cheap polyester slacks and a shiny jersey shirt with a gaudy flowered pattern.

“I heard you guys might be interested in picking up some merchandise,” he said.

Charlie had nodded.

“We’re going to pull a big job tonight. Been planning it for a long time now. There’s this Rolls. Yeah, a damned Rolls-Royce. And the guy who owns it leaves it in his driveway at night. Tonight’s the last night this guy’s gonna have his Rolls.” The man had laughed.

Charlie and Ray had agreed to meet the man at the strip joint on Harry Hines. While the three played pool and drank beer, the car would be stolen, driven to the bar and exchanged for the $800 Charlie had in his pocket.

Before long, the man walked into the bar with a red-haired girl, about 21 years old, hanging onto his arm. They spotted Charlie and headed toward his table.

Now, the second wait began. The man eyed his watch. “They’ll be here any minute now,” he repeated every 10 minutes. He laughed nervously, smoking one cigarette after another. The girl yawned, obviously bored.

“Something’s wrong,” the man finally admitted, pulling free from the girl. He hurried to the phone. Charlie watched as the man grew agitated by the conversation. He slammed the receiver down.

The man was embarrassed when he returned. “Tonight wasn’t a good night. It didn’t come off. Tomorrow, okay? Or maybe Thursday. I’ll call you, okay?”

Charlie swallowed the last of his beer and stood up to leave. The night had been a waste. But maybe for once he could make it home before midnight.

The man looked alarmed. “Hey, don’t go. I’ll buy you another beer.

“Look, uh, I’ll level with you guys. I’m really hurting for some money.” The man spoke quickly, shifting in his chair. “I mean, well, I was really counting on this deal to come off tonight, you know what I mean?”

Charlie knew. The man was a heroin addict. He was hurting all right.

“Look, you interested in a good time?” He nodded to the girl. “My girlfriend here, she’ll show you both a real good time for $20.”

Charlie shook his head. “No thanks.” He stood up to leave.

“You sure? Hey, you can take her for free, okay? I mean, look, if you’ll loan me some cash to hold me until this deal goes through, both of you can take her, you know. Jesus, I really need the money now though.”

Charlie took out a bill. “Here, I’ll give you $20 for your ring.” Without hesitation, the man slid the band off his finger and handed it to Charlie.

“Thanks.” He smiled, becoming a confident businessman once again. “I’ll call you tomorrow about the Rolls.”

Charlie nodded. He didn’t really expect to hear from the man again, but maybe he’d pass their business card, which read “Trend Associates,” on to his friends. Besides, it was worth $20 to get out of that bar.



THE COP.



Charlie couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t wanted to be a police officer. His dad was a cop. So were two of his uncles. He’d never seriously considered doing anything else. After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School, he went on to college and majored in criminology. He’d been an officer for six years now, and he loved his work. He’d jumped at the opportunity to work on the fencing assignment. He’d always wondered if he could pull off an undercover job.

He’d been handpicked by the chief for this assignment; all of them had.

The fencing operation was first conceived in November 1975 by Dallas Police Chief Don Byrd and Ted Gunderson, special agent in charge of the Dallas office of the FBI. Their objective: to get the habitual criminal off the streets.

Dallas applied for a Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) grant to fund the project. Almost a year later, the $296,000 grant was approved and the operation began in earnest. Ten men were selected for the undercover assignment – five from the Dallas Police Department, five from the FBI.

Chosen for their “street sense,” the agents began scouting local bars and pool halls, spreading the news of their interest in “fencing” stolen merchandise, establishing their credibility in the underworld. Business cards were printed and distributed. In January 1977, a warehouse off Industrial Boulevard was transformed into a store front and “Trend Associates” was officially opened for business.

To the casual observer, 114 Parkhouse looked innocent enough, with its brown paneling, gold carpet and mirrored back wall. Because the store front had been set up to resemble an electronics firm, glass shelves lined one wall, stacked with electrical gadgets and supplies. A chest-high counter ran from one side of the room to the other, a small “Cross Counter at Own Risk” sign taped on one side. Behind the counter, three glass shelves were attached to the mirrored wall – an informal bar arranged on the shelves. Otherwise the room was unfurnished.

No one doing business with Trend Associates would suspect that the store front was an elaborate trap with one-way mirrors, hidden cameras and an intricate communication system. And no one would suspect the non-stop activity hidden behind the paneled walls.

Here’s how it worked:

All suspects were required to call the warehouse before delivering any merchandise. “I’m on my way,” they’d tell Charlie, and Trend Associates would swing into action. Charlie and Ray would take their positions behind the brick counter. The cameraman switched off the lights in his room behind the mirrored wall and began warming up the Sony video equipment. The security man, wearing a bullet-proof vest, adjusted his headphones and checked his gun. Watching the transaction through a two-way mirror, he was inches away from the suspects in case of trouble. Back in the monitor room, two officers hooked themselves into the communication system, adjusting the television so they could monitor events in the main room. A phone sat on a table nearby to maintain communication with Charlie and Ray during the transaction.

Under the counter, Charlie and Ray could monitor any activity picked up by the cameras on a hidden screen. Two warning lights, yellow for “caution” and red for “duck,” were mounted near the bottom shelf. Two handguns and a sawed-off shotgun lay on the top shelf.

The walls of the warehouse were filled with sandbags. In the event of gunfire, no bullets would pass outside.

When a suspect arrived, the cameraman filmed his approach up the driveway, zooming in on the license plate for identification purposes. The camera followed the suspect to the door, where he pressed the intercom button and identified himself. Behind the counter, Charlie released the lock to the outside door and the man advanced to an anteroom, where he was visible through a small window. A second camera recorded a profile view of the man. Charlie would then release the lock on the inside door and the man would enter the main room. Now the cameraman switched to a third camera and began recording the actual transaction.

It was Charlie and Ray’s job to get the suspect to admit stealing the merchandise he had just delivered and to obtain as much information as possible about the man’s activities. Where had he stolen the items? When? Did he work alone?

The cameraman worked to record anything that might be valuable as court evidence: tattoos, other identifying marks, ID numbers etched on stolen goods.

During the transaction, officers in the monitor room took notes, ran license checks on the suspect’s vehicle and made an effort to trace the stolen goods.

The security man stood by, ready to activate the warning lights behind the counter, and, if necessary, come out shooting.

When the transaction was concluded, Charlie would buzz the locked doors and the suspect would leave the warehouse, his departure recorded by the hidden cameras.

At 5 p.m., when the officers closed Trend Associates for the night, all surveillance equipment and monitors were removed from the storefront in the event of break-ins.



THE OPERATION.



Everything was set. They’d spent five months getting ready for this. Charlie was excited and optimistic, but still, a knot formed in his stomach. What if the suspects didn’t go for it? He glanced around the room. It looked too set up he thought. Would a thief, already nervous, go for a place he couldn’t leave until the guy behind the counter unlocked the door? And what about the mirrors? If the suspects figured it out, would they start shooting? Maybe kill them all?

Charlie glanced in the mirror for reassurance. He didn’t look like a cop. He’d grown a beard for the operation, let his blonde hair get scraggly in back. He still had a boyish innocence about him, but no one would suspect him of being the police.

The phone rang, jolting Charlie back to attention.

“Trend Associates, this is Ray speaking. Hey, how’s it going? You at the corner? Okay, we’ll be looking for you in a few minutes.”

The first buy was uneventful. A 27-year-old black, his hair plaited tightly to his head, drove up in a brand new Cadillac Seville. “Li’l Rick gave me your card,” he said. “Said to tell you he sent me.” The man quietly took his money, promising to contact Trend again the following week.

Back in the monitoring room, an unseen officer quickly traced the car. A local dealership had reported it missing several hours before. The suspect, easily identified, had a record of car theft and first degree burglary. He had been out of jail less than a month.

The following days were not as predictable. Sometimes they would get as many as six callers in one day, other days the phone was silent. But before long, Trend had a regular following. Thieves like Frank and Skinny, who decided they’d found a reliable, “safe” fence for their burglarized goods.

Frank and Skinny brought two television sets by one day, exchanging them for $100. Less then two hours later, they returned, their arms loaded with machine guns, rifles and shotguns.

“Jesus, what all have you got?” Charlie asked, trying not to sound impressed.

“We didn’t take time to look,” Frank laughed.

Charlie arranged the firearms on the counter, turning some toward the hidden camera. An address was written plainly on the case of one hunting rifle.

“I might want to sell these down the street. I want at least $25 for this gun here,” Frank said, indicating a long-barrelled .44 magnum revolver.

The phone rang. “Offer them about $150-180forallofit,”an FBI agent in the back room advised. Charlie nodded, faking a conversation. “Hey babe, how are you? Great . . . great. Look, I’m doing some business . . . yeah, talk to you later.”

Charlie turned back to Frank. To his horror, Frank was aiming a high-powered machine gun around the room. “Pow, pow, pow,” he yelled, as imaginary bullets wiped out the light fixture.

“Hey Frank, how much you want for that machine?” To Charlie’s relief, Frank set the gun down on the counter.

“Fifty dollars. No less.”

Skinny let out a whistle. “You want too damned much, that’s what.”

“You stay out of this,” Frank bristled. “I’ll handle everything.”

“Do me right on this, okay Charlie?” Frank said. “You can sell these easy.”

Charlie surveyed the pile slowly, stalling for time. He waited for Frank to calm down a bit. Half the guns were loaded for sure. He didn’t want to make anybody mad.

Finally, he offered $180 for the entire haul.

Skinny let out a gasp. “That sounds good. Damn good.”

“Shut up.” Frank ordered. “I can get $25 each out of them down the street. I got $60 worth of bullets alone.”

Charlie shrugged.

“Okay, all right.” Frank was tired of negotiating. At least he had a buyer. Besides, Frank was scared of Trend Associates. Once he’d asked if Charlie and Ray were part of the Mafia. Charlie hadn’t answered and Frank let the matter drop. Getting the criminal element to respect them, to be afraid of them, was good, Charlie thought.

Charlie counted out $180 to Frank, who gave $50 to Skinny. “Hey, that’s a lot of green,” he laughed.

“Not when I got a damn lawyer I gotta pay,” Frank replied.

“You ought to stay out of trouble,” Charlie said with a grin.

Then he shook his head. Frank was committing up to six burglaries a day. But he was a damn good reference. Several times a week somebody would call saying, “Frank told me you guys might be interested …”

It hadn’t surprised Charlie to find out that Frank was making his friends buy into the operation. One man had paid $100 just to be introduced. And Trend gave him $20 for every new face he brought in.

Charlie knew paranoia struck deep in criminal circles. Regulars like Frank helped establish Trend Associates’ credibility. “Hey, I been dealing with Charlie for three months now and I’m not busted,” he’d heard Frank tell a friend.

That, in fact, was what made this operation unique. Most police operations busted a suspect after two or three transactions. It didn’t take long for it to hit the streets that “the heat” was involved. That news made for a short-lived operation.

They cut some regulars off though. Like Stan. At the beginning, he’d introduced some of his closer friends, but then he’d gotten selfish. They had an iron-clad case on him and he was of no further use to Trend Associates. They had him set up.

Stan used his phone call at the county jail to ask Charlie and Ray to post bond. It never occurred to him that it was Trend Associates that put the finger on his criminal activity.

Mostly Trend had purchased the run-of-the-mill items one might expect from third-rate burglars. Color televisions, new cars (usually right off the dealer’s lot), stereo equipment, guns. Occasionally they’d get a surprise, though. A man they had never dealt with before called asking if they’d be interested in jewelry. “Sure,” Charlie had told him. The “jewelry” had turned out to be a $90,000 diamond. The man, dressed in a cheap leisure suit, admitted stealing the diamond during a burglary in a well-to-do North Dallas area. He pocketed the wad of bills and slipped out of the warehouse. Charlie and Ray were left speechless, staring at the huge jewel.

They had met another suspect, a young chicano with coal-black, shoulder-length hair, at a donut shop several miles from the warehouse.

“I got a cat,” he’d told them in a voice barely audible over the breakfast chatter of the other patrons. “A 150-pound lion cub. You interested?”

Charlie caught himself before refusing. If they didn’t purchase the lion, chances were it would never be traced to its owner.

“Sure,” he told the man, wondering how he’d explain this downtown.

Nothing really surprised Charlie anymore, but some of the characters they had attracted to Trend Associates were hard to believe. One 25-year-old rip-off artist had vehicles stashed all over Dallas. He’d stolen them weeks, maybe even months before. No matter where he was in Dallas, he could always get his hands on a new car or two when he found a fence.

“Can you use a Lincoln Continental?’’ he’d asked Charlie one evening after two beers at a club.

“How hot is it?”

The man laughed. “I think it’s one I stole about two weeks ago. I got it stashed in a parking lot out in Garland.”

This guy was like a squirrel. He’d go on a spree, steal a bunch of stuff and store it away for winter.

Another guy had come in bragging about how he’d ripped off some little old lady. “That’s the easiest job I pulled in a long time,” he declared. “I’m going back to get the rest tomorrow.”

Charlie notified police headquarters to stake out the woman’s house, to protect her in case the creep did go back.

Then there were the really big buys, the tractor trailers loaded up with tires and batteries. The loads themselves were worth up to $100,000. Trend Associates would pay $3,500, maybe $4,000 for the entire haul. When you bought the load, they’d discovered, the truck was part of the deal. Now they’d hit the Big-Time: the interstate trucking rings.

There had been a few episodes of confusion. Because of the top-secret nature of the operation, only a few members of the Dallas Police Force were aware of Trend Associates’ sanctioned activities. More than once, an officer on patrol had reported “suspicious” activities in the vicinity of the warehouse. Once, a rookie officer spotted a blue 1977 Cutlass Supreme that had been stolen in a recent robbery parked behind the warehouse. Charlie and the others inside the warehouse watched from the window as several officers arrived on the scene and began investigating the area. Finally Charlie called the coordinating officer downtown. “Call ’em off,” he’d said with a laugh, explaining the dilemma.

Another false alarm occurred during a transaction with a new suspect. Ray had stored a .45 caliber Thompson machine gun behind the counter to impress visitors to the warehouse.

“Look what we bought yesterday,” he’d bragged, whipping out the gun.

Ray unloaded the gun, displaying it proudly to the duly impressed suspect. He replaced the clip and returned the gun to the shelf under the counter.

While Ray continued to banter with the suspect, Charlie picked up the ringing phone.

“Charlie,” a tense voice warned. “Charlie, do not let Ray touch that machine gun again. He’s activated it by accident. It’s ready to shoot.”

Charlie nodded, knowing the gun had a hair trigger release. As he hung up the phone, Ray grabbed the gun and began playfully demonstrating his Clyde Barrow stance. Charlie ducked, expecting the gun to begin firing at any instant. Nothing happened. Tentatively, Charlie looked up. Ray, dumbfounded by this strange behavior, was staring at him curiously. The agent in the back room had been mistaken. Ray had safely locked the catch after all.



THE ROBBER.

Vern left the warehouse feeling good. After all the bad luck he’d had during the last few months, it was about time something good happened to him. He fingered the roll of bills in his hand. $75. All for taking some guy he’d never seen before over to meet Charlie and Ray. Charlie had agreed to give him 20 percent of the purchase price of any merchandise he got someone to bring in, plus $25 a head.

Stealing didn’t come easy for Vern. That embarrassed him a bit. Oh, if he spotted something unattended, he’d pick it up fast enough. But breaking into people’s houses – that was something else.

Still, you had to survive. What he was doing was a necessity, he told himself. He had a police record. Employers weren’t easy to find as it was, but one look at his record or the tracks in his arm and the interview was over, thanks-for-coming-by. And he’d be damned if he’d go on welfare.

Vern was bringing a lot of new faces to the warehouse. Sometimes he’d run into a friend; other times he’d get to talking to a total stranger in a parking lot. He’d always manage to turn the conversation around to selling merchandise. Almost everybody had something to sell. Sometimes it was stolen, sometimes not. Vern knew people in the drug culture would sell everything in their houses if they needed a fix bad enough.

Vern remembered the first time he’d gone to the warehouse storefront. He felt uncomfortable. The place was too fancy, things were too neat. He eyed the mirrors. Was somebody behind them like in the movies’? His friend Billy had told him that he’d known Charlie and Ray for years. He trusted Billy. If he said Charlie and Ray were all right, that was good enough for him.

Besides, Charlie couldn’t be a cop. He was breaking the law, buying stolen merchandise. Advertising it all over town that Trend Associates would buy new cars, stereo equipment . . . anything that didn’t eat or spoil, he’d told Vern once.

Vern didn’t want to think he was being set up. He didn’t know anywhere else in town where he could make deals like this. The money was good. Easy money. He hadn’t figured Charlie and Ray out yet. They weren’t stupid, that was for sure. They handled themselves like businessmen. But they sure were gullible. Most fences haggled with you over the price, but Charlie usually gave you whatever you asked for. He smiled, remembering the bike he’d bought for $4 on the street. Charlie had given him $15. Maybe they were just big spenders. He just hoped it lasted.

He’d met Charlie and Ray a half-dozen times at various bars around town, usually to introduce them to a friend of his. He remembered that last week he met them at a pool hall on Cedar Springs. He wasn’t certain why he was being wined and dined by these guys, but hell, he wasn’t complaining. They sure spent a lot of money on him, always picking up the bar tab.

They shot pool for awhile, then Charlie suggested they play poker. He’d been skeptical the first time they offered to play cards with him, figuring they were trying to win back their money. Turns out they couldn’t play worth a damn. Once he’d even wondered if they were trying to lose. He couldn’t figure it out. They had a lot of money, that was for sure. That was about all he knew for sure.

Vern knew he could count on Charlie. He was a good guy, he’d help out a friend. He’d gotten into some financial trouble a couple of times, but Charlie had always bailed him out. Charlie called it a loan, but he never said anything about paying it back.



THE FINALE.



After almost six months, the decision was made to wind down the Trend Associates operation. On the final day of business, Chief Byrd scheduled a news conference for 5 p.m.

Charlie and Ray were in the middle of. what seemed like their 1087th game of pinochle when the phone rang. “I hope it’s not someone wanting to do business,” Charlie groaned. “The press conference is in a couple of hours.”

“Hullo, Trend Associates. What!? You’re kidding,” Charlie’s eyes got wide as he listened. “We’d better get out of here.”

Ray and the others looked up from the game, curious about the outburst.

“The Times Herald has a story on the front page about the whole operation . . . We better get out of here before somebody we’ve been dealing with spots it and decides to come over.”

Most crooks knew they had to pay their dues now and then. Charlie had heard it more than once. “It’s a game,” they’d tell him matter-of-factly. “Getting busted is just one of the risks I got to take.”

Charlie remembered several regulars had brought in friends or a wife. “If I ever get busted,” they’d say, “I’d appreciate it if you’d do business with so-and-so here to help me out.” They planned ahead, down to raising money for their bond. But Charlie knew some guys were less well-prepared. And they would be furious when they found out that good-old-Charlie-and-Ray were, in fact, undercover police officers.

Within ten minutes, 114 Parkhouse was deserted.

The next day Charlie was emptying his desk when the phone rang.

“Hello. Yeah, this is Trend Associates.” He sat up slowly. “What have you got? Sure, we’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

Was it possible? The fencing operation had made banner headlines in both Dallas newspapers and every television and radio station in the area had carried the story the night before. Had the two callers really missed the news?

“Hey, we’ve got two suckers who haven’t heard about Trend,” Charlie announced. “Ray and I will go stall them while you guys put this place back together. We’ll be back in about 30 minutes.”

The two men had contacted Charlie the day before, but he didn’t figure they’d keep their appointment after they heard about the set-up. He was wrong.

Charlie and Ray treated the callers, both in their early twenties, to hamburgers, french fries and chocolate shakes. Charlie couldn’t help thinking this was their last supper. The men followed them back to the warehouse. Their haul: $20,000 in furniture and machine parts.

“How much?” Charlie asked.

“$600.”

“How hot is this stuff?” Charlie asked.

“Hey, we took this more than a month ago. Ain’t no way they’ll trace this sonof-abitch now.”

Charlie Figured the haul was less than 24 hours old, but let it pass. It didn’t really matter. The man had admitted stealing it. The rest was unimportant.

He offered the men $600. They nodded.

The FBI agent behind the counter pulled out his badge, identified himself, and told the two they were under arrest.

Charlie smiled. The operation had been a success. A slick, smooth success. More than $2 million dollars worth of stolen merchandise had been purchased by Trend Associates for slightly less than $70,000. At last count 215 burglaries, robberies and auto thefts had been cleared by the 144 indictments handed down by Henry Wade’s office. And 29 more indictments were expected to be returned. More important, Charlie thought, was that 45 defendants were actually behind bars. Off the streets.

Only 11 suspects remained unaccounted for. And before long, they too would surface, Charlie knew. That was a chance they’d have to take. To get right back on the street and start doing business. There wasn’t a job in the world that could support a heroin addict.

Within days of the operation’s much-publicized finale, two defendants had come up for trial. Vernice Rowe, Jr. was the first to plead guilty, to one charge of burglary of a building. He and seven others also faced federal charges. It was impossible to dispute the videotape screenings shown in court. Vern had tried to plea bargain, but the evidence was there. He was sentenced to not less than two or more than nine years imprisonment in the Texas Department of Corrections.

Vern smiled wryly. Yeah, the operationhad been a success all right. A slick,smooth success.

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