During the two years that Dan Leger worked undercover down South as a narcotics officer, he had more than his share of dumb criminal encounters. And he was constantly amazed at the “cop folklore” circulated among criminals—the widespread misinformation about the law and police procedure. He tells this story about his all-time favorite dope:
“I was working undercover narcotics, deep cover. I looked like the nastiest of the nasties. I infiltrated the independent bikers and tapped into some large distribution systems. Over the course of a few months I made several buys from a fairly large supplier. We got to be pretty good acquaintances.”
One night Leger and the dealer were sitting around talking, and the dealer got going on the subject of how undercover cops work. Leger could hardly keep a straight face as he listened to the man’s ignorance.
“I can always spot a cop,” he bragged, “the way their eyes move around a room and the questions they ask.”
Then he went on to relate an old hippie myth that originated in Berkeley or someplace similar. The gist of it was that years ago a city council somewhere decreed that undercover officers had to identify themselves as police officers if they were asked a direct question three times.
“Sort of defeats the purpose of going undercover, you know?” Leger laughs. “Now, if that were the law everywhere, you wouldn’t have any undercover officers, because they would all be dead now. But this guy has heard this story, and he lets me in on the secret: ‘This is the trick the cops don’t want you to know. If you ask an undercover cop three times if they’re a cop and they don’t tell you, then it’s entrapment, and the case gets thrown out.’
“It’s really hard to look impressed when inside you’re laughing your ass off, but I nod my head like I’m committing his every word to memory.
“Then he did it. He really pissed me off. He said, ‘I can smell a cop a mile away.’ I was sitting about two feet away from him at the time.”
Leger had to bite his tongue to keep from saying something right then, but he knew he’d have the last laugh in the near future. And sure enough, about three weeks later he took that dealer down with a rock-solid case.
“I relished the moment,” Leger remembers. “I whipped out my badge and got right up in his face and said, ‘Guess what? I’m the Man, and you are under arrest.’ His face got as pale as a cadaver, and then I just couldn’t resist rubbing it in.
“I was an inch from his nose.
“How do I smell from here?”