RAID TAKES SECONDS, PREPARING TAKES TIME

Police Spend Hours Readying For Drug Busts

Just before dusk, a nondescript car stopped in the middle of a lazy
Wichita Falls neighborhood where women in sundresses sat on porches
fanning themselves.

All four car doors popped open, and four men with "POLICE" emblazoned
on black shirts leaped out of the car, sprinted down the street and
swung their snub-nosed battering ram through the muggy air.

A solid clunk sounded, followed by shouts of "Police - Search Warrant
- - Get Down." It all took about five seconds. Of course, getting ready
for a drug raid takes a little longer.

Hours earlier, in a basement office of the Wichita Falls Police
Department, members of the city narcotics unit and the North Texas
Drug Task Force waited for their sergeant so they could make the raid.
One officer stared intently at his computer screen, clicking steadily
away at the game of Solitaire.

"I'm going to win this one. It's in the cards," he said. He didn't
smile. Another officer with a pistol strapped into a leg holster
rifled through a closet, occasionally tossing portable methamphetamine
test kits or jackets into a large black duffle bag.

"Hey, don't we have a bunch of book-in sheets somewhere?" he asked. He
got a mumbled response, and he kept looking.

Sgt. Jim Whitehead arrived with a bottle of water in hand, and the
pre-raid briefings began. The officers in charge jabbed their fingers
at a white board, explaining strategies for entering the houses and
giving out other surveillance information.

"There are some old people who usually sit there, so try not to knock
them down," the presenter said, tapping a section of the board with a
pen. Abandoning his Solitaire game, the first officer stood and
buttoned his jacket. A cigarette dangled loosely from his lips.

As the men filed out to the car, someone blurted, "Did anyone call for
patrol?" The men looked at one another.

Whitehead called patrol and waited for the call back. He glanced at
his pager and stood hunched over his desk, hands flat on the table.
When the phone rang after about three minutes, he snatched up the
receiver. "We let them know where we're at so if we get on the radio
and start hollering, they can find us," he explained during the drive
to the suspected drug dealer's house.

Whitehead's day had begun at 6 a.m. when he was training for honor
guard duty during Police Memorial Week. It'd been almost 12 hours, and
he still wasn't sure when he would go home.

During the drive, Whitehead had a short phone conversation and sipped
on his water. Serving drug warrants was pretty routine for his men, he
said. In fact, each warrant has its own "risk assessment."

The assessment is a checklist of danger. Whitehead said each house
gets points for criminal histories of the suspect, assault histories,
barricades and knowledge of weapons. When the checklist is tallied,
officers decide how risky each raid will be.

If it's really high risk, Whitehead said the SWAT team does the entry
for his officers. But mostly, they do it with their ram, pistols and
bulletproof vests pulled tight.

"The whole key to the thing is you get in there quick," he said.
"Usually you don't have any problems."

And, moments later, the raid was over. The narcotics officers
handcuffed a shirtless man, and he talked as they nodded. Several of
the officers immediately stripped off their sweaty jackets and tossed
them into the car. Waving flashlights in the strengthening dusk, the
officers swarmed around the room. Some plucked small plastic bags
filled with a white substance from a drawer as flashbulbs popped.

Once done answering questions, the shirtless man sat on a rust-colored
couch and looked at the floor. An officer came out of a side room
carrying a rifle. "Somebody call for a taxi?" barked a patrol officer
from an open window as he pulled up in a police car. He hopped out and
led the man, then with a shirt draped across his bare shoulders, into
the car. "Let's go. Meter's running. Tips are accepted. There's one
guy in there already, and he's not very friendly," the officer rambled
as the man silently sat in the backseat.

Meanwhile, the officers were wrapping up their investigation. Then,
the phone rang.

After a pause, one officer answered it, talked for a few minutes and
hung up. He lit a cigarette, looking pleased as he related the
conversation. "One of his buddies called him from the jail," he said.
"We said, 'He'll be there in a minute. You can talk to him in person.'
" Their work finished, the officers headed back with two shotguns, a
silver revolver and baggies filled with what they said were drugs. It
was the end of another night on the job, said one officer, although he
admitted serving drug warrants had once been different for him.

"My first year and a half on the task force, you could have called me
24 hours a day," he said.

He rifled through his pockets for his car keys and glanced at his
watch. "Now, I can miss one," he said.