A YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY TAKES A TOLL ON UNDERCOVER MEMPHIS OFFICER

She 'Was Always On Edge' In Her Role As A Junkie

April Leatherwood no longer goes by the name Summer Smith.

Summer's brown, greasy hair has been cut and bleached, highlighted to
April's honey blond. Summer's glasses have been removed to reveal April's
20/20 vision.

And Summer's feet -- once covered by the same filthy pair of socks for an
entire year -- now slide into April's black flip-flops with a fresh
pedicure and red toenail polish.

The physical transformation is complete -- a signal that one life is over
and another can resume.

Leatherwood always wanted to be a police officer, to wear the crisp, blue
uniform, the shiny, gold badge. After graduating from the police academy in
December 2005, she worked as a patrol officer and then in the
organized-crime unit, catching thieves and busting violent felons. She
loved the camaraderie of the department and its protect-and-serve mission.

Then the rumors started in fall 2008. April was unhappy. Police work left
her unfulfilled. She quit. Somebody said she moved to Miami. She stopped
returning phone calls from family and friends, even recruits she was
closest to in the academy. Nobody was sure what happened to her.

In fact, Leatherwood, the once-proud police officer, was living as Summer
Smith, the junkie.

Only April's parents and her former partner knew it was an elaborate ruse:
that she had been chosen by Memphis Police Department's undercover
operations unit to give up her badge and uniform and go deep undercover.

Overnight, Leatherwood became Summer Smith, in both name and persona, one
of fewer than 20 undercover officers in the city. The department won't
reveal the precise number in order to protect them.

Leatherwood was separated in every way from the department and job she
loved. Other than the police director, the undercover coordinator, her
handler and members of the undercover unit, nobody else in the department
knew her identity or her mission.

In a year's time, her work resulted in more than 280 arrests -- from
low-level drug peddlers to big-name dealers.

"Not only is she there to buy drugs, but she's there to listen and gather
intel," said Det. Paul Sherman, coordinator of the undercover operations
unit. "Every day she's not buying drugs. Sometimes she's just hanging out
with these people and listening to ... who broke in that store, who did
that armed robbery, who did that drive-by shooting."

Leatherwood, paid roughly $45,000 a year, was given a different Social
Security number and junkies' clothes. She roamed the streets of Memphis in
the same foul-smelling shirt. She didn't shower, brush her teeth or shave
her legs. She stood outside neighborhood corner stores, smoking,
befriending crack addicts so they'd take her to their dealers.

"No matter how much I would try to make myself feel like I was one of them,
no matter how dirty I got, no matter how much I did the things they did or
talked the way they talked or looked the way they looked, still in the back
of your head you know you're not one of them," she said.

"So it's uncomfortable. It's very scary. ... I was always on edge."

Undercover work is all about making and breaking relationships, Sherman
explained. And the gift of gab.

As Summer Smith, Leatherwood followed addicts into houses without
electricity or plumbing, where people defecated in buckets. Sometimes she
watched toddlers run around while their drug-dealer dads played video games
and sold crack to customers with guns lying on the table.

She talked her way out of unwanted sexual advances and always scanned the
room for a way out if a deal went bad.

She worked alone.

"The scariest times were when you felt like you were backed up in a corner
when it comes to guys talking to you like that," she said. "That was
probably my biggest fear."

Leatherwood's training taught her how to buy crack cocaine but not use it,
a tricky game to play with dealers. But she never used. Not once. She
passed every drug test the department gave her.

She also had to restrain her police instincts to break up a fight at a
convenience store or call social services if she saw a dealer hit his child
because being caught would compromise the larger goal.

She often met her handler, Louis Brownlee, a former Memphis undercover
officer himself, in seedy motels to receive assignments and relay messages
to her parents. He also provided moral support.

"This work is important because we as undercovers, can do things that the
regular police could never do," Brownlee said. "When the ward car is coming
down the street guys hide their dope. They straighten up. .. We come in,
and we get to see them as they are. We come in and the dope's not hidden.
The conversation is not censored.

"There are crimes that the undercover program has helped to solve because
of who we are."

Last week, April talked about her undercover experience to a group of
police officers from across the country who participated in the Memphis
Police Department's undercover school. At the behest of Director Larry
Godwin, Sherman created the program 31/2 years ago, modeling it after the
FBI's undercover certification course at Quantico, Va., where he trained.

Since then, 10 classes of officers have participated, three at the Regional
Counterdrug Training Academy at the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss.
There, officers attend presentations and role-play in a small area of the
base called Mount City, which is modeled after the FBI's Hogan's Alley.
It's like a movie set, with a two-floor motel, a trailer outfitted to look
like an inner-city row house, a pharmacy and other buildings.

Joe Pistone, the legendary FBI agent who infiltrated New York's Bonanno
crime family by posing as jewel thief Donnie Brasco, teaches in Memphis'
undercover school.

The Bluff City's undercover unit is unique, he said, compared with other
local law enforcement agencies' programs nationwide, which usually focus on
short-term dope busts.

"In most of the departments, the undercovers go home every night," Pistone
said. "They may work a case long term but not deep undercover like in Memphis."

Undercover work is not for everybody, even the most dedicated officers,
Leatherwood said.

In early August, she pulled herself out of the program. She felt depressed
and numb. She could feel herself slipping away.

Her departure from the program is one reason police officials allowed her
to speak openly about her experience.

"We want to let the public know and the individuals she was responsible for
arresting to know that she is a Memphis police officer and not an
informant," Sherman said. "These individuals look at informants totally
differently than a police officer. We protect informants, but sometimes
they don't take heed to the warnings to get out of town.

"But she will be protected at all costs."

Leatherwood's work came at a cost. She lost a three-year relationship, and
it changed the way she thinks about the world.

"Would I do it all over again? Yeah. Because it taught me a lot about me, a
lot about life. I live by 'everything happens for a reason,' " she said.

The day after Leatherwood left the undercover program, she drove down a
stretch of Summer Avenue, a drug dealers' haven and a place she spent so
much time during her undercover days, to run an errand. The weather was
nice, and small groups of people were hanging out on the street. Drug
dealers, prostitutes, addicts.

Suddenly, Leatherwood was elated when she realized she was no longer one of
them.

It felt good to be known by her real name again, as the 30-year-old woman
who graduated from Germantown High School, who played four years of
softball and earned a marketing degree from the University of Tennessee-Martin.

April Leatherwood.

Det. April Leatherwood of the Memphis Police Department.