You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Black Tar Heroin.
The 31-year-old drug suspect comes out of room 154 with his hands behind his back.
The Honduran national is blank faced, almost sad as the metro officer escorts him to the squad car.
“Hey Jaime, welcome to music city,” I say as the man shakes his head with a blank stare.
“No speak English,” he says solemnly.
My cameraman Hector knows Spanish.
“Hector, ask him about the 2 kilos of black tar heroin in that motel room.” I implore.
Hector is hesitant, then he blurt out a question in Spanish.
Surprisingly, the drug suspect responds, opening up to Hector.
After hours cooped up in a motel room with American police officers, perhaps he is happy to speak to someone in Spanish. Perhaps he just needs to bare his soul for his alleged sins.
Hector: Why’d you bring the drugs into the city?
Jaime: It wasn’t me. I didn’t bring it.
Jaime: They told me to bring that here.
Hector: What did they ask you to bring?
Jaime: I was told it was just a bag that is all.
Hector: You didn’t distrust them? you didn’t think to check the bag?
Jaime: I was passing through a very tough time and they offered me some money. I was offered $700.00 dollars. I needed the money.
Hector: You’ve thrown away your life for $700.00 dollars.
Jaime: I know. I didn’t mean to do it.
The officer walks the 31-year-old to the waiting police car and puts him in the back of the unit.
Earlier, a 16-year-old girl comes out of the same motel room. She also came down from Ohio with the heroin. What her link to this story is never clear. We are told she is a cousin, but we all highly doubt that.
The minor has long hair that she keeps in front of her face, obscuring her angst.
I ask her about the heroin, and she says nothing.
She continues walking like a sadder version of Cousin It
Undercover officers will tell me that heroin is a big problem and because it is cut with other substances, as diabolical as heroin itself, many people are over dosing.
“I’ve seen people comatose, needles stuck in their arms, the plunger half way depressed,” one drug agent tells me outside room 154.
We have a lot of time to kill.
We trade stories about life and drug raids and news.
The agents have to type up a search warrant for the room and the car. Then they need a judge to authorize that search warrant.
It takes time.
We wait outside the motel room for hours.
The sun is blaring and the humidity intolerable as a rain shower bursts upon us.
The downpour is sudden, but brief.
The sun reemerges. Steam floats off the dark asphalt around us like a third world sauna.
The agent tells us about the drug trade and how heroin is making a comeback.
He tells me what he knows from first hand interviews with drug mules he has busted.
Heroin sells for 100 dollars a gram. A kilo is 1000 grams. There is a 2 kilo brick of heroin in the room. That’s 200 hundred thousand dollars on the street.
“Heroin is usually sold 1 gram at a time. That’s possibly 2,000 individual drug transactions that won’t happen.”
That’s an interesting way to look at this situation.
2,000 drug deals that won’t go down.
“A lot of times these dope deals go down in seedy hotels like this,” he says. “But they also go down in the parking lot of the Home Depot and the hospital and the Marriott Hotel. Drug deals often are accompanied by violence.”
Suddenly, why everyone should care becomes obvious.
You should care about a brick of heroin on the other side of the tracks because you and your family can be at Whole Foods and a gun battle can erupt and you can get killed for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
My boss is not a big fan of drug busts as a whole.
But I am happy to do the story. It is a privilege to be invited by the officers. It’s a bigger honor since I am the only newsman on scene.
The story will air and hopefully the message will be received that the local p.d. is working hard to eradicate drugs so that you don’t get killed buying salad dressing in your upscale zip code.
To some viewers, it’s another drug bust.
To me, it’s exciting, an adrenaline rush. A chance to stand on the periphery of darkness and danger and listen to stories that most people don’t ever tell.
“I busted a guy who told me that the pants he was wearing weren’t his pants,” the officer says during a down moment. He is telling me how people in this shady world lie. “Really dude? Those pants you are wearing are not your pants? Yeah, he says. They are my buddie’s pants. Mine were dirty. I don’t know what’s in these pockets.”
We all laugh as a small cloud slips in front of a relentless August sun.
The shade, however temporary, feels delightful.
I watch the guys who put their lives on the line enjoy a moment of down time .
I am glad to be here.
I am glad to tell the story of heroin and the brave men who try and stop it from landing on area streets to keep you safe.
Life’s Crazy™