You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Dangerous Jobs.
I was visiting with an old friend the other day.
I met him when we were 14 years old. I had just moved to the neighborhood. I was lonely and unsure about this new place. I’m pretty sure I was angry at my parents for moving us.
I am in the driveway wondering how I will ever survive when suddenly this boy with long hair skateboards up to me and says “You the new kid?”
We’ve been good friends ever since. We double dated and went on vacations together and got into our share of trouble together.
Now he is a Narcotics officer in California and I’m a crime reporter.
We laughed how things work out in life. We were similar as teens and now our careers mirror each other in so many ways.
On a recent visit we are trading war stories about being shot at, spit on, and crack houses we’ve been in.
My favorite story is the one he tells me in the driveway as he is about to leave.
He tells me about a recent marijuana eradication effort in the mountainous terrain of his jurisdiction. It is a portion of Earth practically inaccessible from any road. It is on a steep mountainside, surrounded by barb wire like vegetation. The area is only fit for mountain goats and Mexican Cartel gang members he says.
He explains how Marijuana fields like this are the back bone of the cartel’s money supply that funds other illegal activities that lead to gang shootings and other crimes.
Like many law enforcement agencies, this grow operation is spotted by air. Marijuana has a different look than all other vegetation from 500 feet up. It’s not hard to spot. The problem is getting to it, especially in this furtive location.
“How do you get in?” I ask.
“A harness, a wire, and a chopper,” he says.
What?
He says they gear up wearing fatigues and vests and helmets and goggles. He says he carries as many guns as he can safely carry. Then he puts on a harness, and he and a 2nd drug agent are lifted by a helicopter hundreds of feet into the air.
He says the chopper pulls him along like a rag doll blowing in the hot California breeze.
“Sometimes when they hover, as they begin to lower us down,” he says reminiscing. “We start spinning like crazy.”
He describes it like a mad hatter tea cup ride.
“Oh yeah, you get dizzy,” he says in a calm cop kind of way.
“We’re on a swivel and it just won’t stop.”
He tells me how a young officer insisted on bringing his assault rifle with him even though he told the young man he shouldn’t.
“We’re twirling 200 feet in the air and this guy’s gun is just smashing me in the ribs. You happy you brought your rifle now dumb ass!”
He laughs at the absurdity of it all.
He tells me that the terrain is too steep and rough to land the helicopter, so he and the other officer are lowered into the pot field.
“The cartel members see us and hear us coming long before we hit the ground,” he says. “They usually scatter into their tunnels or their escape routes.”
That’s probably a good thing for my buddy, because until the next chopper can arrive carrying two more task force members, he is alone against who knows what.
“It’s like 100 degrees and we’re just covered from head to toe and we’ve got to secure this field and…”
And it’s dangerous as hell I think to myself!
He says they rarely make any arrests which he isn’t too upset about.
“If we catch em we have to walk the prisoners out of there.”
“Why not hoist them out by chopper?” I ask.
“They might get hurt,” He says.
“You might hurt the Illegal Mexican Gang members growing 500 marijuana plants illegally on the side of a mountain in the USA?”
He laughs at how absurd it has all become.
“Right. We might violate their rights, or they could sue us if they are hurt. If we capture anyone we have to walk them out. It could be 5 miles through terrain that’s impassable.”
California is crazy. Illegal drug cartel members have more rights than the cops that are being paid to enforce the law.
My friend tells me how they have to cut the fields and bundle the dope and then lift it out on the choppers. It goes out the same way he commandoed in.
“It’s unbelievably hard,” he says. “it can be 100 degrees and guys have damn near gotten heat stroke.”
What a tough job I think to myself.
I’ve been on a KC 10 refueling mission while an F-15 E flew beneath our plane while soaring over the pyramids in Egypt. I’ve been at bank robberies where bullets wiz by my head and I’ve watched the sheriff of my county die in the breezeway. I have seen a SWAT team accidentally shoot a hostage instead of the gunman in a barrage of red laser sights and explosion of bullets. I have watched a teenage drug dealer bleed out in the street, the blood flowing from his head an iridescent red in the hazy street light. I have had a brick thrown at my head on live TV, narrowly ducking, and still keeping my composure.
BUT I have never been pulled under a chopper at 50 miles an hour and lowered into a hot zone with drug cartel crazies.
Pretty radical, I think to myself.
I shake the hand of the man who has been my friend forever. I look back on our youth when we stole his dad’s car for a joy ride and took surfer girls to the beach and got in fights at high school parties.
Thinking back on it, we were pretty crazy kids, and it seems that we just continued where we left of.
And that’s Crazy.