Narratives of the 'War on Drugs'.... From the inside.
A Traitor in our Midst. Is it me or is it you?
They weren’t bad people. In fact, I considered them friends. And a few searches on the Online Offender Lookup says that all of them excluding the top guy, Steven, are out of jail and haven’t done anything to go back. It turned out a lot better than it looked in 2016, it looked bleak for all of us back then. This was a family of hopeless people, trying to get by in a place of economic uncertainty. At a time when the demand was off the charts.
I met many odd characters in the line. Sometimes unsavory, sometimes unsettling. However, nothing was more unsettling than meeting an imposter in our midst. I’m sure there were others. After all, this place for three years. There were hundreds of pictures taken that, as it was found out later, I made an appearance in. But this was blatant. She was healthy. Her voice had too much…. hope? She wasn’t one of us and it was obvious. IT. WAS. STRANGE. She was saying things that someone whose education about drugs derived straight from a DARE Officer or the film Reefer Madness might say.
The Lady: Where do we go? Oh, up there?
Guy Who Hangs Out1: Yea, up there. To the window.
The Lady: Oh, there’s a line. No, wait. I’m supposed to buy directly from Steven. Where’s Steven?
Guy Who Hangs Out2: Steven’s not here. If you’re buying, there’s the line. If not, you gotta go. Can’t hang out here.
The Lady: “Ok.”
She gets in line. This was crazy for a number of reasons and made her look bad immediately. This happened real close to the end of the operation. Everybody in the county knew about this place. It seemed like she stumbled into the place and couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and she probably couldn’t. It was unbelievable. Think, lines at the grocery store on food stamp day, but for drugs. All the houses have privacy fences so you don’t know what you’re walking into until you’re in, and there’s no restriction on who can come in. You’re supposed to call ahead, as I always did, but a year in they lost most of their fuck-giving and dealt with anyone who came in. With that being said, when she came in, she said the right name, but she seemed very surprised she wasn’t dealing directly with him. Which hadn’t been the deal in years. I was somewhat of a friend, and I hadn’t seen him in at least six months. Then she commenced to speaking as if she was reading a script. Or maybe an earpiece was telling her what to say. Regardless, it didn’t seem authentic.
The Lady to a rando in line: Hi. Rough weather, right? What’s your name?
Rando: Ummmm…
The Lady: What are you here to get?
Rando: I’m here for my sister. I take Suboxone*.
The Lady: Oh, I like Subutex*. So, I can mix it with anything. I like to take ten of them and it Feels so good! Did they get any crystal in?
Rando: Umm mm…I don’t know.
*Suboxone is for getting off of opiates. It comes in many forms. It’s a compound of buprenorphine, which is a mild opiate with strong and kind of odd chemistry, and naloxone, an opiate blocker. The buprenorphine binds to the opiate receptors 10X better than naloxone, and has a half-life of 24-36 hours while naloxone, the blocker, has a half-life of 30-40 minutes. At the same time, other opiates which are much stronger have a half-life of 20-30 minutes. That’s how Naloxone blocks heroine but not buprenorphine.
*Subutex is for those allergic to naloxone so it has no blocker. Therefore it’s believed by people who have never taken it that it can be taken like any other pills. What I know anecdotally and from research that any more than 3 Suboxone in any form does nothing. It has a ceiling effect. 2-3 or 16-24mg of buprenorphine in 24hours is where it hits the ceiling. Past that you simply get sick as hell and pick up the new nickname ‘Pukey’.
There was an inauthentic vibe to everything she was saying, and some of it no one anywhere would EVER say. She claimed at one point that this house had the best heroine in town. Which no one anywhere believed. Not even Steven. This places success had nothing to do with quality. Timing, convenience, price, and opening up a 24/7 Wal-Mart for drugs during the Heroine boom when the boom hadn’t fully come to fruition. These things made this a multi-million dollar a year operation. That combined with her comments, propaganda-like drug talk, no one had ever seen her. And didn’t see her again. She was behind enemy lines.
Oh, and “I like to take ten of them” is something no one has ever said unironically, and described it that way, it “feels so good”. I’ve never heard someone describe drugs that way. Because they don’t. That’s what you say about a massage. Or something with your significant other behind closed doors. Something you’re feeling in real life. You know who would say that? Someone educated by 1950’s anti-drug propaganda. Who thought they talk like that. And no one had called meth “Crystal” since the 90’s.
My turn in line:
Me: Hey, it’s Jordan.
The Window: Yea. Whaddya need?
Me: Umm… One gram and one-and-a-half grams of h in separate bags. And a half gram of clear.
The Window: Alright, we’ll bring it to the door.
They were constantly changing the order of how things were done. Depending on who was working the window.
It’s her turn at the window. She pulls out what appears to be a Ziploc bag. A big Ziploc bag. Full of change. The curtain is down so no one can see inside the window. This is purposeful and the norm here. They have to open the curtain for her to explain.
Window: Whoa! We can’t take that much change.
Lady: I’m really sorry. It’s all quarters.
Window: How much do you think is there?
Lady: I don’t know.
Window: You didn’t count it!?
Lady: No. I didn’t have time.
Window: Hey. There’s a store on the corner. The owner is Sam, he’s a friend. Take it to him and bring back cash.
Security opens the door and hands me my order. He always looks me in the eyes while he hands it to me. As if to look in my soul to see if I’m the one. It’s going to be someone. Is it me or the weirdo at the window. In this business, in this world, there is always a betrayal in motion. Who is it going to be?
Seven days later the first of three raids were conducted by the FBI. ATF, and DEA. I’ve seen many videos from the scene that day. Luckily, I had just missed it, that time. Public transit here in Louisville Kentucky is the TARC bus system.
They used two, full-sized TARC buses filled with agents in all black and assault rifles to conduct this raid. They drove the buses a block apart and simultaneously pulled them across the road on each end of the block. Blocking both lanes so no one could come or go in either direction. I wish I had a picture of this. Over a hundred black ants poured into the block and flash-banged every house. The Trap was their, first target. They knew where the most action was happening at.
They shot their dog, a very nice boxer who loved everyone but me for some strange reason, flash-banged the house through the window, kicked the door and shot out the bottom of the toilet as the drugs were flushing. It wasn’t fast enough. Three arrests, a bunch of citations and a lot more evidence was gathered.
At the time that I was in line with that lady, I thought she was just very odd. The events that followed however, led me to believe, and I still believe, that everything she did was very calculated. That lady, without a doubt, was sent in by whatever one of the 3-letter-agencies she works for to see how things were being operated for a final time before they went in. It’s crazy to think how many more like her that they sent in. There’s no chance that she was the only one, maybe the most obvious, but she just seemed very odd at the time. She manipulated herself in, through the line, and got them to open the window. In the Discovery evidence one of the defendants on this case described to me a picture that was taken through the window with the curtains up. He didn’t understand how they had gotten that picture, but it made perfect sense to me. My mind jolted back to this moment.
Four hours after the raid they were reopened on a different block, and I was there getting my fix for the day.
(To Be Continued)
Jordan Lee, Editor-in-Chief, Declaration of warLIBERTY