DON'T GO BUST

A Turncoat Narc Offers TIps On How To Move Your Weed

He looks like a good cop. He's got the 'stache, the short-cropped
hair, the pushed-out chest and the shiny badge. He sounds like a good
cop too; drawled and official. He's got a TV reporter's microphone in
his face and a brick of marijuana in his hand, and he's answering
questions--not in the "I just accidentally Tasered an old lady" kind
of way, but with a grin of accomplishment. The total bust was in the
neighborhood of 275 pounds.

This is the old Barry Cooper. Top cop. Total prick. He claims more
than 300 felony drug arrests during his eight years as an officer in
Gladewater, Big Sandy and Odessa, and a former supervisor says he was
damn good at his job, even if he doesn't agree with Cooper's latest
get-rich idea.

The video cuts to a decade later, a few months ago. "That was me,
Barry Cooper," he says, "top narcotics officer." His hair is longer.
That 'stache is now a full-on goatee. The top cop has become a dude.
"I'm going to show you places that I never found marijuana hidden." He
talks with his hands, like a mellowed-out P.T. Barnum. "I'm going to
teach you exactly how narcotic-detector dogs are trained, and I'm
going to answer that age-old question: Do coffee grounds really work?"

It's quite the pitch: Former drug warrior sees the light, goes to the
dark side and makes a video, Never Get Busted Again, with shady tips
on how to fool the fuzz. Stoners rejoice. The new beginning of the end
of prohibition is near.

"The drug war is a failed policy, and the legal side effects on the
families are worse than the drugs," Cooper says. "I was so wrong in
the things I did back then. I ruined lives."

Cooper now sees himself as the new face of marijuana reform, and he
just might be right. He's got the credentials. He's got the charisma.
He's got the shiny new DVD. Sure, his former colleagues don't approve,
but that's to be expected. What's surprising is that Cooper has also
managed to piss off some of the old guard, the hippies-turned-reformers
who've been knocking on the back door for years, chipping away at the
legal system with talk of medical marijuana and overcrowded prisons.
He's a Johnny-come-lately, they say, an ex-narc looking to make a fast
buck. He claims he doesn't understand why they're against him, but
he's confident he'll eventually lead the flock:

"The people who take the time to know me will get on my
side."

Ask any parent what his greatest accomplishment is, and he'll probably
tell you his kids. It's a noble sentiment, for sure, but between that
pause and the talk of being the richest man alive, there's a hint of
disappointment, a resignation that comes with seeing your own dreams
swirl down the commode. Your greatest accomplishment should be your
kids, but shouldn't your second greatest accomplishment also be
something great?

"When I was 5 years old, I specifically remember being in the backyard
and it really felt like I had tens of thousands of people behind me,
and I was leading them, and they were following me because they liked
me, not because they had to," says Cooper, sitting on a couch in the
living room of his three-bedroom house in Big Sandy, one of those
small, pine-covered towns between Tyler and Longview. His wife and
their four kids--two his and two hers--are huddled together in a warm
pile on the other couch. Earlier today, he told one daughter he liked
her hair, although he wished she would've used more blue; the pink was
a tad overwhelming. "I want to be a freedom fighter," he says. "I want
to help people get out of jail."

Cooper says he's always felt like he was meant to lead an army, but
before he dreamt up Never Get Busted Again, he'd begun to think his
chance had passed. He'd been a good cop. "He was hard-working, and he
was talented," says Tom Finley, a private investigator in Midland who
used to be a supervisor with the Permian Basin Drug Task Force, where
Cooper worked between stints in East Texas. "He had trained his own
dog. He was good. He made a lot of arrests and found a lot of drugs on
the highway." But Cooper wound up on the wrong side of small-town
politics--busting a mayor's son for meth and a councilman for pot
didn't help--so he left law enforcement in 1996 to pursue two other
ventures: selling used cars and preaching the gospel.

His larger-than-life persona and big, toothy grin served him well. "I
was making more money in cars in a week than I'd make in a month for
the police department," he says. "Everything I do, I make money on.
That's my gift." As for the preaching, he had a congregation for six
years, although he's reluctant to provide many details, save for
abstract talk about how it ended: "The best I can tell, the Bible,
it's about love and being friendly and being kind, and the meanest
people you'll ever meet in your life are at church."

Cooper's not the kind of guy to sit still for long. He bounced around,
owning car lots, tire shops and limo services in the one-stoplight,
speed-trap towns of East Texas, eventually opening up a cage-fighting
league called Xtreme Fight Championship. It was a good fit for him.
Over the years, he's wound up in jail a few times, for unlawfully
carrying a pistol, for assault, for making threats, for failing to
return Jeepers Creepers and Jeepers Creepers II. All of the charges
were dropped down or dismissed, although he is guilty of having bad
taste in movies.

His feelings toward his former colleagues were already pretty low by
the time his ex-brother-in-law, a constable, showed up at the house
with an order to remove his daughters, he says, and take them to their
mother. Cooper says he wasn't there at the time, and the girls put up
such a fuss that they were allowed to stay, but he thought of them,
their tears and screams, and it all began to sink in.

"I started remembering back to all the lives I destroyed, and my
conscience was speaking to me," he says. He remembered kicking in the
doors of mothers and fathers, taking them away for pot possession.
"And then I realized our government lied to me, training me marijuana
was evil like all the other substances. I was lied to. So it angered
me. I got upset."

He had a mission, but he still didn't have a plan. "I had started
another little church where we had R-rated church services," he says.
"Kids had to go next door, 'cause I got real. Underground people came
from everywhere, but they didn't have enough money to keep it open. So
I was, like, 'How can I use my gifts to help people?'"

And just like that, just over three months ago, he came up with Never
Get Busted Again. At the age of 37, Barry Cooper had found his cause.

Cut to Cooper, driving down a drizzly interstate in a black Suburban.
He's demonstrating profiling techniques, and from the way he's
analyzing all the cars around him, it's easy to forget he's not still
a cop. That is, until he says, "If I injected you with adrenaline,
certain doses every day and all day long, like a cop gets, you would
become addicted to that adrenaline and need more and more and more and
more of it."

Cooper says he used to tell drug offenders they were under arrest and
not cuff 'em right away, hoping for a fight or flight. When pulling
people over, sometimes he'd light them up from far behind, just so
they could consider flooring it. The adrenaline was addictive. And
that high is what fuels the war on drugs, he says.

"Interdiction officers, narcotics officers, are not out here to help
the American people, and they're not out here to keep drugs out of the
hands of school kids. Drug dealers are not dealing drugs to your
10-year-old on the playground. For one, 10-year-olds don't have any
money. For two, 10-year-olds are not doing the drugs. That's all a
government ploy."

These aren't the kinds of things cops want to hear, and Cooper's
former supervisor can't help but wonder what he's getting at.
"Evidently he's starting this deal to make money, but there's lots of
ways to make money besides going in with the enemy," says Tom Finley.
"Truth is, he was a good narcotics officer. And I guess if he wanted
to switch sides and haul drugs, he'd probably be a good drug hauler,
and he'll probably make a good tape, but that don't make it right."

Tim Scott, current chief of police in Big Sandy, says he doesn't know
Cooper personally, but he echoes Finley's concerns. "Unless he's
running dope himself, and he's wanting to help his guys out so they'll
pay him, I really don't know what his deal is," he says. "I don't know
if he just got a bad taste or if he just decided he would make more
money helping the bad guys or what. I just don't understand it. I
can't see why he'd want to help the other side."

But there aren't two sides, Cooper says. The drug war is bad for cops
too. It encourages gang activity. It funds terrorists. It takes time
away from catching murderers and rapists. "My response to them is:
Just put your emotions aside. Look at the facts, not opinions and
beliefs, look at the facts of the argument and then you'll understand
and agree," he says. "They're just misinformed. They've had propaganda
pushed into their heads by our government, and they really believe
what they are doing is right."

He's received a lot of negative attention since the Tyler Morning
Telegraph first broke the story over Christmas. Fox News called him a
good cop gone bad. Anonymous comments on blogs said he was endangering
his former coworkers. Pro-legalization Web sites questioned whether he
was a narc in disguise. All of this has been good for DVD sales, but
it all came a little too fast. As of last week, Cooper was still
finishing the video. He says it'll be done just in time for the tail
end of his site's two-to-six-weeks delivery promise.

"If you have a DARE sticker or a Say No to Drugs sticker, that alerted
me to you," he says, tailing a car on the interstate. "You would not
believe the people I arrested with those types of stickers on their
cars. Cops do not trust people, period. Because they get lied to every
single day."

Number One: Don't put any stickers on your car. Nothing. Supporting law
enforcement, belonging to a frat, being a Vietnam vet-all of these make the
fuzz notice you, and your primary mission is to blend in. That means no
reckless driving, no overly safe driving. Blend.

Number Two: Add a woman to the mix. Nothing says "stoners" like a carload
of sausage.

Number Three: Hide your pot in food. It won't fool the drug dogs (they're
too smart for that) but it might confuse the handlers (no comment).

Number Four: Roll in the rain. No one likes to get wet, not even cops.

Number Five: If you're only holding a small amount of weed and a cop wants
to search your car, give him consent. That's right: Give him consent. "When
an American exercises his constitutional right to refuse consent to search
of a vehicle, that is a huge reasonable suspicion to a cop," Cooper says.
"A hundred percent of the time when somebody refused consent, I always
found something they didn't want me to see." If the police want inside your
car, they will get inside your car, even if that means hanging out on the
side of the road until a warrant or a dog arrives. Give consent, and they
probably won't look very hard. After all, you've got nothing to hide.

Cooper realizes some of his tips would also work for other contraband,
but he says it's "no different than when you order a DVD on how to
shoot a handgun accurately. That trick you learned, somebody can take
it and use it to murder somebody. That doesn't make the DVD bad." He
wishes coke, smack and meth could be wiped off the planet, but even if
folks do use his video to traffic the hard stuff, he says they don't
deserve to go to jail for the drugs. "The police say, 'Well, these
drug offenders are violent.' I say, 'Put 'em in jail for the violence.'"

He's now tailing a gray sedan, his windshield speckled with drizzle.
"Louisiana tags, rolling west. Two young white males. This would be a
money load. I'm thinking they're carrying money to Dallas to buy drugs
to carry back to Louisiana. Now get a good shot of these two," he
says, revving his Suburban. He's about to elaborate on why these dudes
are high-profile targets, but he gets distracted. "He is rolling a
joint in his lap right there!" he yells, and the dudes look at him, at
the camera, and speed off down the road. "Now, see, that's a good
example of what not to do. Do not roll down the highway rolling a joint."

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Marihuana Tax Act, which
effectively outlawed pot across the nation. It happened four years
after that noble experiment, the prohibition of alcohol, had been
declared a failure. Texas was actually ahead of the cannabis curve,
criminalizing the stuff in 1919. One of the main reasons cited was
that marijuana made Mexicans crazy. That rationale has been tweaked
over the years, but the war goes on. In 2005, almost 700,000 arrests
were made in the United States for marijuana possession, another
90,000 for dealing, according to FBI statistics.

"I realized long ago that when uniformed officers arrested a robber or
a rapist, the rate for that particular crime went down," former cop
Jack Cole says in a speech he shared with the Houston Press. "But when
I arrested a drug dealer, the crime rate didn't go down. I was simply
creating a job opening for a long line of people more than willing to
risk arrest for those obscene profits." Cole was a New Jersey cop for
26 years. He's now the executive director of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition, an organization of former officers who want an end to the
drug war. Barry Cooper joined LEAP shortly before news of his DVD got
out, but the organization quickly backed away.

"While LEAP is in sympathy with millions of people who have their
lives damaged or destroyed by the failed policy of prohibition, LEAP
in no way endorses the violation of the law, or any efforts to
frustrate the hard work of those sworn to uphold the law," says the
organization in a release. "The only reason people listen to us is
because they believe we are unbiased and present the truth about the
war on drugs. Much of that belief is based on the fact that we are not
a moneymaking organization."

Cooper is definitely profiting from his video-no doubt about it,
although he won't discuss exact figures. But the cash is what gives
his mission that extra kick. Plenty of former drug warriors have come
out against prohibition, but nothing says "look over here" like a
former cop actually making money off helping stoners hide their sacks.
And Cooper is custom-made for the attention. He's not a fried-out
hippie. He's not the stiff military type. He's a dude, tall and proud
and loud.

"It's called kicking some ass and saying what needs to be said and not
eking around," he says. "Hey, let's make marijuana legal, medicinal
marijuana, and try to eke something through. Let's be nice to law
enforcement because we're trying to join them. No, that's nuts. Law
enforcement is not nice to us-no violence against law enforcement,
you know that's not what I'm talking about. But law enforcement is not
nice to us, locking 750,000 of us up a year for smoking pot. Why in
the world would we extend the hand of niceness to them?"

Medical marijuana, he says, is just a way of pussyfooting around the
issue. It's a backdoor, and people on both sides know it. Just ask any
local stoner who's been offered nuggs of that good medicinal shit from
California.

Dean Becker, the deep-voiced, Houston-based host of the Drug Truth
Network, says there might be a "minor truth" to what Cooper says about
medicinal pot, but Cooper has "probably never sat down with an MS
patient and smoked marijuana with him." The effects of the pot are
almost instantaneous, he says. "You can see the blood flow return, you
can see the hands calm down, you can begin to better understand the
words they say." But ultimately Becker thinks Cooper has done a good
thing, even if the former cop wasn't as diplomatic with other
organizations as he could've been. "I think what he has done thus far
has been wonderful," Becker says. "I think it opened the dialogue,
because that's really what progress is all about."

But opening up dialogue has only gotten the movement so far. The war
on drugs isn't working, Cooper says, and neither is the war on the
war. "The drug reformationists, right now I think they carried the
ball to the 40-yard line or 30-yard line, and everybody's trying to
figure out how to get it into the end zone," he says. And that's where
his above-the-radar, guerrilla-style tactics could come into play.

The thing about revolutionaries who've been at it for a while, though,
is that they're often resistant to change. As word of Cooper's plans
bounced around the Internet, Keith Stroup, founder of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, penned an e-mail to
colleagues in which he said: "Let's not kid ourselves that this
ex-narc is suddenly a champion for civil rights; he is just trying to
make a fast buck. I would be cautious before inviting him to join LEAP
or any other reform organization. We should learn what we can about
beating the drug dogs, but we should not trust this scumbag who worked
for years locking people like us up."

When Stroup spoke with us, he said that e-mail hadn't been intended
for publication, but then he continued. "My point is still valid," he
says. "I went up and looked at his promo video-I suspect lots of
people have. It's one of the most disgusting pieces of marketing I've
ever run into in this area. I mean, it makes late-night gadget
salesmen look sophisticated. He's shouting. He's screaming. He's
jumping up and down." Stroup says he has absolutely no problem with
former drug warriors rethinking their positions; he just thinks Cooper
is all about the cash. As for the video, he says, "I don't suspect
there'll be a single person more or less arrested as a result of it."

Jerry Epstein, cofounder of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas, isn't so
sure. "I have worked with some of the best experts in the country for
years now, and they can't get on TV shows," he says, noting Cooper's
knack for publicity. "We're gonna take the opportunity to support
communication to the public about the problem, even if we don't
particularly like the package it got wrapped in."

Cooper has big plans. A second volume of Never Get Busted Again. A
video on search warrants called Never Get Raided with tips on how to
spot informants and undercover officers. He claims to love the study
of human behavior, and his best idea might be a little project called
50-50, in which he'll get 50 people in a room, have them drink booze
till 4 a.m.-ambulance on site-and record the results. Then he'll
replace the hooch with weed and do it all over again. Needless to say,
the first night, full of fighting and flirting and puking, will
probably make for better reality TV.

As for the old-guard reformers, he's confident he'll eventually win
them over. And even if not, "I'm young," he says. "I'm going to be
here a lot longer than they are." He might've just started out as a
cop with doubts-"Fifteen men in SWAT gear, kicking in a door on a
mom and dad and little kids, and I'm thinking, 'Dude! This is not
right!'"-but now he's got one up on many reformers. He's on the
line, a civil disobedient, basically begging the police to harass him.

"I watch everything, because I constantly think I'm going to be
arrested," he says. "I might be a little out there, but I produce, I
put money into the economy, I raise a good family, I'm not a dangerous
person, no history of violence, and I'm scared to go to prison. You
see why I'm making the noise I'm making? I have a chance at a national
level to say what all these other commoners want to say, but they
don't have the platform to say it. I truly believe I'm the mouthpiece
for millions of people across the U.S., and I'm not going to shut up.
I'm going to get louder. I'll use reason and logic, but I'm going to
use everything in me, to stay in the spotlight, to end this shit,
whatever it takes."