You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The meth bust.
My alarm is set for 4am, but I’m wide awake.
It’s 3:30 am and I am tossing and turning.
I crack an eye lid and peek at the clock on the night stand.
Tick tock.
I close my eyes and try to sleep.
But the darkness of my brain is a projection screen of possibilities.
I see blue lights in my memories. I see the car door being pushed open from the inside and I see myself jumping out.
I see my boots hit the dirt.
Somewhere there is a dog barking and the cool crisp air finds an opening in my shirt collar.
I imagine officers racing toward a trailer, guns out, heading up a rickety porch to a flimsy door.
It’s uncertain, dangerous, anything can happen.
I open my eyes and look at the clock.
It’s 3:45 am.
The vision I am remembering is so vivid.
I’ve been on this raid a hundred times.
The names are different, the cops are different, but the raid always looks the same.
I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling.
I’m a bundle of wild energy.
I can sleep later, I think as I push the covers off at 3:55 am and jump out of bed.
I stand in the darkness. It’s cold and the raid is 2 hours from now.
I am awake. I feel alive. There’s a bee hive in my brain and its full of electrical restlessness.
I turn on the bathroom light and stare at myself.
I have a face full of scruff and though I’m energized, I look tired.
“How many times have you done this?” I mumble to the man in the mirror. “why didn’t you do some tequila shots before bed? that would have helped you sleep,” I muse running an old razor down my cheek.
Ouch.
I gotta pay more attention. I watch as a dot of blood surfaces on my skin.
I rinse the razor under the stream of water. I watch as shaving cream filled with razor stubble swirls around the drain.
It strangely symbolizes the rotting life of the tweekers we’re about to bust.
I place the razor on my cheek and slowly, lightly cut a square path down my angular face.
As I shave, I think about how it will go down?
Will it turn violent?
Will anyone get hurt?
will I get unfettered access?
I have been invited to a drug raid.
It’s huge as the Donald would say.
The headline? The biggest meth raid in the history of Tennessee.
I’m told it’s an 8 month investigation that has 100 defendants in four states.
I’m told it involves a quarter million dollars worth of meth already seized. I’m told that involves the DEA and the TBI and an alphabet soup of law enforcement officers.
And I have exclusive access to it all.
The enormity of the story is only now dawning upon me.
I pull out of my driveway.
The neighborhood is dark. There is not a car on the road, not a light on in any house.
While my neighbors slumber in peaceful bliss, I drive to work in the dark.
I put on the rock station and try to relax, but I’m anxious.
AC/DC is not exactly musical ambien.
The interstate is a breeze, free of traffic.
The off ramp is empty.
I pull onto Murfreesboro road and the lone hooker eye balls me with hope.
“Get a life,” I say aloud, not looking at her.
I pull into the station. The morning crew is already in, hard at work.
I get out and pop my trunk.
I pull out my Go-Pro and video camera.
A car approaches. Slayer is pounding inside the vehicle.
I can feel the drum beat through the metal.
I laugh.
The window lowers and the music fades.
“I’ve got a news hard on this big,” my photographer screams holding his hands a foot apart, showing me a version of what Wilt Chamberlain must have looked like in the shower.
I laugh.
I throw my gear in his back seat and we high tail it out of the parking lot toward Clarksville.
Along the way we talk about everything and nothing.
I tell him how hard it was to sleep.
“Me too!” he says with a laugh.
We’re both news junkies and this is the real deal.
“why do you think they invited only us?” I ask.
“Because they trust you,” he says. “they know you’ll tell their story right.”
I smile.
Throughout the day I will hear from multiple officers and the theme is the same.
They are tired of the negative perception of police. They want to represent something good. They are weary of being the badge that shot the kid who was holding a cell phone instead of a weapon.
I enter the conference room for the morning briefing.
I am met with the stoic gaze of more than a hundred officers.
It is clear to me that many did not know that we were coming to their Meth Party.
Some turn away. Others smile and wave. I even get a few text messages from people in the room.
I’ve been on the cop beat a long long time.
After a moment, the head of the DEA speaks. “Some locations could be a challenge,” he says to the assembled mass of deputies, cops and task force agents. “they are all bad folks so consider everyone armed and dangerous.”
He tells the gathering that he is proud to be a part of the largest multi agency take down in state history.
There is a prayer by the Sheriff that no one gets hurt and then like a football team breaking a huddle, the men and women quickly rush out the door.
Many get in their cars, armed with arrest warrants, and drive to their assignments.
My photographer and I team up with the head of a local drug task force.
He is a friendly man who wants us to have as much access as possible to tell this important story.
He straps an M-4 to his leg.
“There are two handguns in the center console,” he says calmly. “I don’t expect it to come to this, but if you have to defend yourself for any reason, I want you to know that you have my permission to use those weapons.”
I look at him curiously. I’ve never had a cop say this to me before.
“You think it’s going to get hot?”
“Our 2nd stop is the Outlaw Motorcycle Club. We got paper on a guy there. He’s the enforcer. Just saying.”
“What an enforcer?”
“He takes care of problems for the club,” the officer says getting behind a line of police units that head onto a windy country road.
Along the way we talk like 3 men at a bar.
We talk about rock and roll and the Walking dead episode from the night before.
But in the back of our minds, we all know that we are drawing closer to the Outlaw Motorcycle club and the what if at the end of the driveway.
We are the last vehicle in the procession and we stop 25 yards from the DEA and other agents, who are already out of their vehicles, approaching the run down looking club with weapons drawn.
It’s 8:30am. It’s over cast and cold.
I grab my camera and take up a position behind a police car. I rest the camera on the side view mirror and shoot everything that moves.
I am nervous, waiting for gunfire.
Just then a school bus full of kids slowly drives by. It’s surreal as the old lady driver waves to me.
I smirk. What a scene.
I watch the agents rush up the stairs onto the rear deck. They are strangely quiet as they enter the building.
It is a synchronized ballet of law enforcement silently securing the premises.
Within a minute, the tension level diminishes as I see an old man with no shirt on the porch. His hands are up and there are agents standing around him with guns at the ready.
I video the officers with their automatic rifles as cop cars zoom by.
After a few minutes the enforcer exits the building in handcuffs.
He is worn and withered. He has a beard like a meth induced Santa Claus. He is wearing pajamas and his hands are behind his back in cuffs.
I ask him if he is the enforcer.
He denies that moniker.
I ask him if he does meth.
He mumbles that he only sells it.
“You sell meth?” I ask as he stumbles to the waiting police car.
“I don’t sell meth,” he says clarifying his statement.
I smile. “You don’t sell meth?”
“No,” he snaps.
He gets in the police car, old motorcycle ass crack peeking out from his worn pajama pants.
SLAM.
The door is closed and another indictment is served.
Over the course of the morning I will walk down 4 more defendants. I will see cops carry a bag with needles out of the house. Inside the bag is an 8-ball of meth that is tightly wrapped in plastic.
I will see long guns and pistols carried out of homes.
I will interview 5 suspects who all act like they are as surprised as they can be to be under arrest this morning.
The drug agent driving us around is excited.
“It’s exciting to make a dent in the drug trade,” he says, his M-4 now in the back seat behind him. “A 100 count indictment is significant to say the least.”
I leave the station at 4pm, some 12 hours after my alarm was supposed to wake me up.
I’m tired and my head is heavy like it’s wrapped in lead.
The raid is exclusive and exciting.
I feel the same jam today that I felt 25 years ago.
It reminds me of why I do what I do.
Today it’s about the meth raid.
But it’s always about the story telling.
And that’s the jam I feel.
Life’s Crazy™