DRUG CHIEF AMONG BEST IN COUNTRY

Springs Officer Worked His Way Up Through The Undercover Ranks

COLORADO SPRINGS - Kurt Pillard remembers the day he made his pastor feel
like a failure.

It was the early 1980s, and Pillard was roaring up to Taco Bell one
afternoon on his motorcycle, his hair wild and bushy, when he spotted the
church leader.

"I saw this aghast look on his face," he said.

Pillard, once a clean-cut young captain of the high school football team,
was now "Brian Jenkins," the undercover name he used to buy drugs and bust
dealers for the Colorado Springs Police Department's Metro Vice, Narcotics
and Intelligence.

These days, Pillard commands the unit - and better than any of his
counterparts in the country: He was recently named drug task force
commander of the year by the Office of National Drug Control Policy in
Washington.

"He's very deserving," said El Paso County Sheriff's Lt. Bob Mitchell, who
works in the unit. "He bends over backward to get the mission done." The
number of methamphetamine lab seizures has doubled, and others say the
relationship between police and other agencies has improved since Pillard
took over the unit two years ago.

If all commanders were as dedicated as Pillard, wrote a regional director,
"we would be much ahead in combating this problem." Born in Holyoke,
Pillard moved to rural Colorado Springs as a child. By high school, he had
become what an old friend describes as the quintessential all-American kid.

"He was the high school quarterback, the popular guy in school.

"He was a very good student . . . did all the things that the overachievers
do," said Gordon Goldston, who met Pillard in ninth grade. Goldston is now
a police sergeant in the city marshal's unit.

After school, Pillard worked construction.

"I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do," he said.

"After a few winters, I figured out I didn't want to work construction."
Goldston, meanwhile, had become a police officer and told Pillard stories
about his job.

Pillard applied and was hired. He spent his first several years on patrol,
running into the same people - like an old miner who would drink and pick
fights in bars.

In the early 1980s, he traded bar fights for drug deals, joining the drug
investigation unit. His facial hair soon followed.

"You get a chance to remove really vile people from the community," he said.

Along the way, however, he had to rub shoulders with people like Roger
Cullen, convicted in 1982 of shooting two dance instructors in the back of
the head as they knelt over a ditch. The victims had complained Cullen
shorted them when they bought marijuana.

Pillard was dealing with Cullen and another suspect as detectives
investigated the killings. "I was buying cocaine from Roger when they
murdered these people," he said.

During one deal, he recalled, Cullen placed a .45-caliber pistol on the
table, the same gun he had used to kill the pair.

Those were difficult years for his family, Pillard said. When he was
working for hours on end, away from a telephone, his wife, Beth, had no way
of knowing he was OK.

Such jobs can be difficult on police families, he said. But it didn't hurt
their relationship.

"We've been married going on 30 years," he said. "My wife grounds me." The
job of an undercover agent is actually one of the safest, Pillard said.
When they work, others are watching and ready to step in. Patrol officers
don't have that luxury.

Through the years, Pillard worked in other areas, including internal
affairs and investigations.

Since his return to the drug unit two years ago, Pillard has seen
methamphetamine become increasingly pervasive.

"The thing that bothers me is their toxicity," said Pillard, who works with
a coalition urging state legislators to create cleanup standards for places
used as labs.

He has also helped form a statewide association of drug investigators so
they can share information and work together.

Pillard downplays the award, crediting it to the people in the unit, which
was honored as the outstanding drug task force in the Rocky Mountain region
for 2003.

"It shows you the catbird seat I'm in here," he said. "If I want something
done, it was done yesterday and it was done right."