DEA AGENTS ON DOORSTEP BRING DRUG WAR HOME

The government's war on drugs recently came to my front door, and it scared
the hell out of me.

I was getting ready for bed when there was pounding at my door, and when I
answered I found three large, menacing-looking men. They were not in
uniform, and they looked like they had just left a biker bar.

One of them was holding what looked like an 8-inch black metal pipe.

I thought I was going to get beat up and robbed.

One man flashed a badge while another said, "We're from the DEA." The flash
was so quick I couldn't make out the badge.

"Are you serious? Is this real?" I asked.

"Oh yes, this is very real," one of them said. "We want to come in and
clear some things up."

As the police reporter for The Capital Times, I spend my days reading
police reports, talking with cops and writing about crime. I occasionally
hear people who are stopped by police talk about how intimidating some
officers and their tactics can be - especially when it comes to drugs.

But I never fully comprehended what it is like to be a target of the drug cops.

I knew I was innocent. Agents would not have found any drugs in my house
had they searched every nook and cranny.

But I found myself shaking with fear. My voice cracked when I talked. I was
confused. It wasn't the reaction I thought I'd have in such a situation,
but there it was.

"You look nervous," one of the men said. "If you haven't done anything
wrong, there's nothing to be nervous about."

That made me even more nervous.

I asked the men if I was required to allow them into my house. "It's in
your best interest," one said.

"What is this about? What do you guys know about me?" I asked.

"We'll ask the questions," one said.

I told them that this situation was very strange and that I was a
professional police reporter.

They asked for ID, but when I made a move to get it, one of them put a hand
on my shoulder.

"We have a problem with that," he said.

I asked them if they knew there were two Jason Shepards in Madison. I told
them that about a year ago, my bank made a mistake and canceled an ATM card
for me, when it was really for another person by the same name.

One of the agents asked for my birth date and relayed it to someone on a
cellular phone. They admitted they may have mixed me up with someone else.

They left without an explanation, or an apology. But one of them did leave
his card. I called him the next day.

"It was just a misunderstanding," said Drug Enforcement Administration
Special Agent Craig T. Grywalsky. "We hope we didn't alarm you."

I asked him what that weapon-like thing had been in his hand. He told me it
was a flashlight with a long grip. He said it was dark outside.

Grywalsky said they did visit and arrest my doppelganger, Jaeson Shepard,
the mystery man with whom my bank account once crossed.

Jaeson is six months older than me and lives three blocks away.

"The person we were looking for was really similar to you," Grywalsky said.

The other Jaeson Shepard did let the drug cops in, and they busted him for
drug possession, Grywalsky said.

Shepard spent several days in the Dane County Jail and was charged Monday
with maintaining a drug house and possession of marijuana.

The agents, in a search warrant filed last week, said they nabbed two
people leaving Shepard's downtown apartment, one of whom had more than a
kilo of marijuana in his backpack.

The search warrant makes no mention of the mix-up and gives all indications
that agents were told of Shepard's address - not mine - by a criminal
informant who had purportedly bought drugs from Shepard.

I do know that the mix-up didn't end with the DEA agents. Police officials
in the Madison Police Department - the agency I cover - believed last week
that I, the reporter, was a drug dealer.

One of them told me so following a news conference last week after which I
was relaying the story to a police officer I knew well.

"We thought it was you," the official told me after listening to the
conversation between the officer and me.

Somebody else probably thinks I'm mixed up in drugs too: my next-door neighbor.

I asked Grywalsky, "How did you guys get into my security-locked house?"

"Your neighbor let us in," he told me, explaining that they buzzed her and
told her I was under investigation for drugs.

The whole ordeal was intimidating, worrisome and ultimately perplexing,
given the DEA agents' version of their investigation outlined in police
reports. It makes me wonder what else is left out in each and every police
report I read. And now I understand more than ever why people are
legitimately fearful of police - especially dogged drug agents.

My first newspaper editor back at a weekly in Wisconsin Dells advised me
once that "there's always more to the story than they're telling you." How
right she was.