BUSTED

Why Did It Take The Police So Long To Do Anything About Jocko's Rocket Ship
Bar?

Editor's note: All that remains of Jocko's Rocket Ship are pending
disciplinary charges against firefighters peripherally connected to the
now-defunct bar. Eight drug dealers were indicted after a 1999 raid on the
well-known drug establishment. The Wisconsin State Journal interviewed
police, bar customers and convicted cocaine dealers and reviewed more than
2,000 pages of police reports to find out how the bar survived as long as
it did.

As rifle-toting police prepared to storm his bar, Robert "Boot" Schuh sat
inside holding a defense lawyer's business card, bragging he'd never be
caught -- that he had connections.

Schuh was laughing with a friend, saying, "We're unstoppable. Let them try
... They can't make anything stick. I 'know' people," said a 22-year-old
UW-Madison student who was there during the Dec. 11, 1999, raid.

Schuh did know people. Many of his drug customers were affluent and
well-connected. But police said Schuh was dreaming if he thought his
well-heeled clientele, which included local lawyers, would protect him from
the law. In fact, police say they knew Jocko's reputation as a drug bar for
at least 15 years. They've been investigating it off and on since the late
'80s.

Why then did it take so long to close down the bar at 430 W. Gilman St.,
where customers were as likely to order cocaine as they were a drink?

From the Madison City Council president to Jocko's patrons, people have
suggested that police knowingly allowed Jocko's drug market to flourish.
"What message does it send when police go after black people who do deals
on the street and ignore a tavern where white, middle-class people do
drugs?" Council President Dorothy Borchardt asked. "I'd hate to think our
Police Department did that, but I think we have to ask the question."

Police Chief Richard Williams said he asked the same question when he
arrived to take over the Madison Police Department in 1993 and heard about
long-standing drug use at Jocko's.

"I was told it (the bar's inner circle) was really hard to infiltrate,"
Williams said.

Williams, who stands by the department's handling of Jocko's, said the
reasons police didn't move more quickly are complex. In the early 1990s,
police were focused on stemming crack cocaine sales in the city's troubled
neighborhoods. And an attempt in 1994 to stop the flow of cocaine into the
bar by nailing a chief supplier failed when a bit-player refused to betray
his drug source.

But the 1999 raid finally led to Jocko's demise and sent Schuh and eight
cocaine dealers to prison.

Did the Jocko's case pay off? Not if the goal was to shut down Madison's
cocaine supply. On this point, a Jocko's convict and a drug investigator
agree, saying the nine indicted weren't significant players in the Madison
drug scene.

"I would liken shutting down Jocko's to putting a Bandaid on a bleeding
artery," said James Leon, one of the nine convicted after the raid. "There
aren't too many bars in Madison where you can't get drugs, although they're
not necessarily as blatant as Jocko's."

Detective Tom Woodmansee, a lead investigator on the Jocko's case, agreed.

"We interviewed close to upwards of 100 people. Yet I still say there's a
lot more information we didn't get. I have no doubt there were higher
levels of dealing," he said.

'A seedy place' Jocko's "was a dark, seedy, disgustingly filthy place. The
dust on the fixtures was so thick it looked like a layer of frost," said
Lt. Bill Housley, commander of the Dane County Narcotics and Gang Task
Force, which took down Jocko's with help from state and federal agents. "It
actually made your skin crawl to walk in there. Yet you had people in there
with the financial means to do anything they wanted in life, but they were
there for the cocaine."

Straws for snorting coke were stored near the cash register. Men and women
snorted coke together in the restrooms, where paper folds used to hold the
drug littered the floors. The dealers chopped and packaged it in the
basement, where they always left some for Schuh.

In the late '80s, when police first started to investigate the bar, "there
were bigger dealers hanging around," said Detective Dave Bongiovani, who's
been with the Narcotics and Gang Task Force off and on since 1988. "I don't
want to name any names, because some of them are still out there and they
haven't been arrested," Bongiovani said, "but the bigger dealers are not
easy to get. It's not easy to get caught when you have three or four
customers, as opposed to 40 or 50. They're more insulated."

In comparison, the nine Jocko's dealers convicted this year "were mostly
old has-beens," Bongiovani said.

Crack diverts attention In mid-1990, police attention was drawn away from
Jocko's by the influx of crack cocaine. Open-air drug markets tore apart
already challenged neighborhoods. Police responded by creating the Blue
Blanket drug task force and cracked down on neighborhood street sales.

In the meantime, Jocko's flourished in its Downtown location just off State
Street. "Jocko's was a sports bar," said James Leon, 35, serving a 10-year
term as one of the nine convicted. "It had an eclectic crowd. A lot of my
(cocaine) customers were fairly prominent people and older. Insurance men
and people who owned their own businesses. They were all from the '60s
generation."

Police were close to a significant Jocko's drug bust in May of 1994 after
Leon drew attention to the bar. Two officers patrolling the alley behind
Jocko's, because of complaints people used and sold drugs there, saw Leon
holding a bindle of cocaine. It turned out Leon had $1,867 in cash on him,
as well as three film canisters commonly used to hold drugs. Only one of
the canisters had any cocaine left in it. Leon was convicted of possession
with intent to deliver a controlled substance and was given four years
probation.

Five months after Leon was convicted, the newly minted narcotics and gang
task force put Leon and two other men under surveillance. They monitored a
three-ounce, $3,750 cocaine sale and arrested Leon, then gave him a chance
to reveal his cocaine source.

Leon wouldn't do it. He spread word at Jocko's that he'd been picked up,
and his source left town. "I couldn't have lived with myself," Leon says
now. "I didn't see any point in ratting on somebody else."

Bongiovani was disappointed. "We could have bagged a few of them (big
dealers) with Jimmy Leon, no question about it," he said. "But he felt a
higher allegiance to them than he did to himself."

Patience gone, police arrested Leon for selling the 3 ounces. He was
sentenced to six years.

Complaints increase The murmurs and grumblings about drug sales at Jocko's
continued after Leon's arrest. By the late 1990s, police were getting
"complaints from the community and from people who had friends and
relations wrapped up in that scene, asking us why this place just
functioned with impunity," Housley said.

The task force committed to an intensive Jocko's probe late in 1998, after
Detective Tom Woodmansee went to Housley and asked to work the case. They
began sending undercover officers into the bar. "You could definitely tell
outsiders versus insiders. You could tell the clique," Woodmansee said. "We
knew the strategy would be to try to make acquaintances, so we went to
Housley and said, 'this is going to take a lot of time.' "

The big break came when undercover officer Henry Whyte got a job as a
Jocko's bartender in October 1999. He was in the thick of things the very
day he filled out the job application. He saw Schuh, Leon and another man
disappear into the basement, then return wiping their noses.

Later that night at the bar, Whyte bought $40 worth of cocaine from
Christopher "Deon" Mims, later convicted as one of the nine. Whyte also saw
a hand-to-hand exchange between Mims and a local TV personality, and he
observed a woman go to and return from the women's restroom area with
Curtis Lane, also later convicted of drug conspiracy.

The State Journal is not naming several people named in court documents
because they haven't been charged with a crime.

On Nov. 8, 1999, bartender Whyte won Schuh's trust by throwing a stranger
out of the bar because the man asked for drugs.

At closing time, Whyte cleaned the restrooms and basement, saving as
evidence torn baggie corners and dozens of paper bindles. After each shift,
Whyte wrote long reports naming who used cocaine.

Whyte also wore a tape recorder at Jocko's, making 18 incriminating tapes
between Nov. 2, 1999, and the Dec. 11, 1999, raid.

Whyte's four months of undercover work blasted open the case. After the
raid, the investigation continued six more months, with several cocaine
users and some sellers being given immunity in exchange for evidence
against the Jocko's nine.

"Henry's work as the bartender was pivotal, and it was dangerous,"
Woodmansee said. "It was just a fantastic break."

Even after the Jocko's case, police continue to investigate Madison's
cocaine network, Woodmansee said.

"I don't mind sending a message to dealers out there who are wondering if
we're done," he said. "The answer is 'no,' and they might want to talk to us."