BIG COCAINE BUST WAS YEARS IN THE MAKING

Escambia Sheriff Discusses Operation Sandshaker

Some drug cases are easy. Deputies hear something, they check it out, they
make an arrest.

Other drug cases aren't easy. They take years of preliminary investigation
and groundwork, months of intensive work, a big commitment of manpower,
several agencies working together, court orders to carry out surveillance,
and perfect secrecy.

Operation Sandshaker, the much-talked-about cocaine case that came to light
in early December and has resulted in about 49 arrests and at least eight
guilty pleas so far, falls in the latter category.

Escambia County Sheriff Ron McNesby says Operation Sandshaker is rooted in
information that defendant Frank Yonker of Pensacola provided more than two
years ago in a major cocaine case that went by the name Operation Rollee
Pollee.

But, McNesby said, not until last fall did enough threads come together to
bring in the full and necessary resources of the local U.S. Attorney's
Office and the local offices of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Yonker, who ended up with a 27-year federal prison term, told sheriff's
narcotics Investigator Charlie Griffith Jr., the case officer in both
Operation Rollee Pollee and Operation Sandshaker, that he sold cocaine to
Mitchell "Jackie" Seale III of Pensacola Beach, the sheriff said.

Seale, 50, subsequently would be identified as the kingpin of Operation
Sandshaker, which took its name from the Sandshaker Lounge on Pensacola
Beach, where many participants congregated and cashed checks related to
drug activity.

He has pleaded guilty to a federal drug conspiracy charge and faces a term
of 10 years to life at his sentencing scheduled in late February.

"Operation Sandshaker has been like any other major drug case that we
work," McNesby said.

"We hear, and hear, and hear, and we devote time. You hear the same thing
over and over and over, then you intensify your efforts to bring things
together. Once we realized the magnitude of this thing, then we obviously
needed more help."

McNesby said the intense part of the investigation is "pretty much
completed," and officers do not have their eyes on a specific, local target
not yet in custody. But he said there likely will be more local arrests,
partly because some of those already charged are cooperating with
authorities by identifying their contacts.

"We do not know what names may crop up between now and the trial or even
during the trial," the sheriff said. "I don't think we know what might
transpire. A case like this has a way of growing."

Greg Miller, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida, also
anticipates more arrests.

"I don't expect this to be finished anytime soon," he said.

The first week the case went public, 43 people were arrested, including 11
on federal charges, who were deemed the most serious offenders, and 32 on
state charges.

Last week, state warrants were issued for nine more people, six of whom had
been arrested as of Saturday night.

Although some of the second-wave suspects were identified by the original
arrestees, officers already had other information on them from a wiretap of
a cellular telephone used by Seale, and a secret camera placed in his
residence, McNesby said.

"Sources are good for up to a point, but you have to substantiate the
information," Chief Deputy Larry Smith said.

In High Gear

Operation Sandshaker evolved slowly but cranked up to a blistering pace
over the last few months:

The Yonker Tip In Late 2001.

Yonker, now 47, owned America Pizza Products on Bridget Lane, off Mobile
Highway.

The main player in a seven-person ring that brought cocaine and marijuana
from Texas to the Pensacola area, Yonker was arrested in October 2001 after
a two-year investigation by local, state and federal officers.

Using the same undercover investigative techniques as in Operation
Sandshaker, investigators had tapped Yonker's phone and secretly placed a
camera in his business. When the business and several homes of associates
were raided, officers seized seven pounds of cocaine and $70,000.

Yonker pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana and
possessing a firearm. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson sentenced him to 27
years in prison.

Narcotics investigator Griffith said he didn't receive much useful
information from Yonker, the owner of a 30-foot fishing boat called Rollee
Pollee. But one thing Yonker did tell him was that he sold cocaine to Seale
when Seale couldn't get to his South Florida connection.

"That's how I got turned on to this Operation Sandshaker group," said
Griffith, a sheriff's officer for eight years. "It's a tight community.
It's hard to get into."

Griffith said Yonker, who lived off Pine Forest Road in Pensacola,
frequently visited the beach.

"We followed him many a night out there," he said.

Shortly after Yonker offered up Seale's name, Griffith said, another
informant "came in off the street" and also gave him Seale's name and his
cellular telephone number.

Seale Surveillance Begins In Late 2001.

Soon after receiving Seale's name from Yonker, sheriff's officers decided
that he would be their next target.

Working with DEA Special Agent John Johnson and FDLE Special Agent Chris
Rigoni, both of whom spend most of their time at the Sheriff's Office,
sheriff's narcotics officers began doing surveillance on Seale.

The officers also obtained a federal court order to place a pen register on
a cellular telephone used by Seale. The register gives instant information
about incoming and outgoing numbers but does not record conversations.

"We started looking at which way the volume of traffic was going, who was
calling whom," Smith said.

Griffith said he spent months "inputting information into the computer
about his calls."

Between the pen register and subsequent wiretap, there were more than
30,000 calls, he said.

Wiretap Authorized Last October.

On Oct. 9, Vinson authorized a wire intercept on the cellular phone used by
Seale.

That intercept was first approved by the U.S. Department of Justice; the
local U.S. attorney's office does not have that authority.

Once Vinson gave his approval, investigators closeted themselves in a
nondescript, locked room at the Sheriff's Office to listen to Seale's calls
day and night.

This is when officers developed more concrete information about who talked
to whom, where they lived, where they worked and with whom they associated.

It's also when the manpower demand increased dramatically, McNesby said.

The extra agents were needed because, based on the telephone monitoring,
officers had to be ready to do surveillance at a moment's notice.

The entire DEA office of four agents and six or seven agents from the local
FDLE office began working with as many as 20 sheriff's officers.

"If someone said he was going to go pick up a `beer,' when, in fact, it was
a drug deal going down, they had to go and verify that the meeting did, in
fact, take place," McNesby said.

"It took every available resource from this agency as well as the DEA and
FDLE. It's like the snowball rolling downhill. Once the thing gets going,
you've got to move. It's `them' that dictates the timetable; we don't."

Sometimes, the investigators wore headphones to listen to the
conversations; other times, they put the call on a speakerphone.

Later, the calls would be transcribed.

On numerous occasions, officers heard Seale and others arranging the
pick-up and purchase of cocaine or discussing other aspects of the
operation, according to a federal affidavit.

But sometimes, Seale and his cohorts didn't even have to say much for the
officers to know a cocaine deal was about to occur.

"When someone said, `Come see me,' Jackie would understand what that
meant," Griffith said. "They'd been doing it so long together."

Camera Authorized In Seale's Home.

On Oct. 18, Vinson authorized officers to surreptitiously install a camera
in Seale's home at 1107 Panferio Drive on Pensacola Beach.

Deputies were the ones who installed the camera, McNesby said. He wouldn't
say any more about the equipment, where it was located or how deputies got
inside.

But the sheriff said it's the first time that a camera has been placed in a
local residence; in Operation Rollee Pollee, the camera was in the pizza
business.

Investigators monitored the camera from the same Sheriff's Office room
where they listened in on the telephone conversations.

McNesby said the use of a surveillance camera is restrictive, so that a
person's every move cannot be monitored.

"You hear people say on talk shows that you can't even take a shower," he
said. "It's not for that purpose. It's for the purpose of monitoring that
illegal activity that you have built the probable cause to show is occurring."

Griffith said officers did not monitor the camera constantly and actually
learned more from the wiretap.

"He pretty much told us what he was doing," Griffith said. "After you study
a guy for two years, you pretty much know his pattern."

Sometimes, however, Seale would make reference on his tapped phone to
something that was about to occur at his home. And sometimes officers would
simply see something illicit happening.

For example, according to a federal affidavit, Seale and several suspects
were at different times observed snorting cocaine. Seale also was observed
cutting, weighing and packaging cocaine into individual plastic bags and
counting money from the sale of cocaine.

McNesby and Smith said the Sheriff's Office supplied the monitoring equipment.

"We've got the state-of-the-art stuff as far as wire intercepts, as far as
video cams," Smith said. "Our people have been to schools across the
country for various demonstrations of the latest technology."

Sgt. Larry Mainer, who heads the sheriff's three-person technical
surveillance unit, said that local expertise is routinely utilized by state
and federal agencies.

"We've been involved in every major case that the DEA, U.S. Customs and
FDLE have made in the past 20-plus years," the 23-year veteran said.

Charges Announced Last Month.

A federal grand jury heard testimony about the accumulated evidence, then
indicted 11 people on federal charges in early December.

Griffith wrote up warrants on the initial 32 state suspects, then on the
second wave of suspects.

Just as McNesby said the Sheriff's Office couldn't have handled the case
without federal and state involvement, U.S. Attorney Miller said federal
agencies couldn't have worked the case without local law enforcement.

"The Sheriff's Office carried the brunt in the beginning," Miller said.
"Then in manpower, they really played a key role in the development of the
case."

He said federal, state and local agencies don't always work so well together.

"It's a real tribute that they are able to work so well together in the
Northern District," he said.

But, most striking to Miller: "The need for secrecy is so incredibly high
and word never got out. It's quite an amazing effort on the part of law
enforcement."

Growing Pains

McNesby said he has received more comments on Operation Sandshaker than on
any case since he took office three years ago. On his daily rounds of
restaurants and meetings over the past month, the investigation has always
been at the center of conversation, he said.

Perhaps the thing that has captured the most public attention is that this
is a case that involves a big cross-section of people: There are suspects
who are Pensacola natives and suspects who are newcomers; there are
business leaders and attorneys as well as bartenders and unemployed people;
there are wealthy people and poor people.

The cross-section of suspects says a lot about cocaine, whether in the form
of crack cocaine or powder cocaine, McNesby said.

"It proves the power of addiction," he said. "A rock of crack or a baggie
of cocaine has no way of knowing how wealthy or how poor a person is who's
got it in their pocket.

"It does not choose a class. These people are from every walk. You see the
ones who own the nice house and boat; then you see the one with the little
wooden house. It does not know any economical base."

The sheriff said the case also is proof that Pensacola is growing, and none
too subtly.

"As you grow, the problems grow," he said. "The burglaries grow, and drugs
certainly do grow."

McNesby said a citizen's comment that impressed him the most came from a
retiree who came to the sheriff's table at a breakfast restaurant, a
newspaper in his hand.

He could not understand how so many middle-aged people with good jobs could
possibly be involved in cocaine.

"What's wrong with these people?" he asked the sheriff.

McNesby didn't have an answer. But he has been mulling over the question.

"What hit home with me is that this has shown it does not matter who you
are, drugs are addictive, and they change your life," he said. "It doesn't
matter what your status is if you're willing to chance it all. That's why
it's so bad."