Last Friday morning at about 7:00AM I received a phone call that one of the members of the Saint Paul (MN.) Police Department had been murdered in the Line of Duty. This is His story.
2:30AM Friday May 6th. 2005
Sergeant Gerry Vick
ST. PAUL (AP) - It's a world where the good guys sometimes pose as bad guys, and police need to rely on their powers of persuasion and street smarts instead of their badges.
St. Paul police Sgt. Gerald Vick was working undercover when he was slain Friday. How dangerous the job is depends on whom you ask, but law enforcement officers agree it takes the best of the best to do it.
"You have to be like a chameleon," St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said. "It takes a certain amount of acting ability."
By all accounts, Vick had what it took.
"He was able to connect with all kinds of people," said Cmdr. Todd Axtell, who heads the department's vice and narcotics unit and supervised Vick. "He also had the unique ability to look the part, whatever he needed to be. He could come up with stories at the spur of the moment to make himself fit into the crowd."
Vick used wigs, hats, clothing and facial hair to constantly alter his looks. He could change his appearance and pick up the same prostitute three or four times.
The 15-year police veteran was working a prostitution detail early Friday at a bar with his partner, Sgt. Joe Strong. When they left, two men who appeared to be begging for money, but might have been sizing up potential robbery victims, accosted them on the sidewalk.
It's not known if Vick and Strong identified themselves as police officers - "knowing Jerry as well as I do, I believe he would have tried to maintain his (undercover) identity," Axtell said - but they told the two men to move on.
The officers then headed for their unmarked cars. In an alley, Vick encountered the men a second time. At least one opened fire and Vick was struck multiple times. Two suspects were arrested - Harry Jerome Evans, 32, and Antonio Alexander Kelly, 27, both of St. Paul - and charges could be filed Monday.
In prostitution stings, male officers sometimes pretend to be johns, or female officers act as decoys. In drug cases, an undercover officer might purchase drugs. They're also used to gather intelligence on gangs and theft rings.
The job "sounds sexy on TV, but it's not like that at all," said Charlie Fuller, executive director of the International Association of Undercover Officers.
"It's a lot of planning, so you generally know what's going to happen and whom you're going to meet," Fulller said. "It's exciting in the sense that it's very difficult work."
Minneapolis police Capt. Rich Stanek, who supervises undercover officers, describes the job as "sheer boredom, punctuated by moments of terror." In the early 1990s, Stanek said he worked undercover for about 18 months, "standing on street corners and getting mugged."
When Senior Cmdr. Bill Martinez joined the St. Paul department in 1987 from the Minnetonka police, he immediately went undercover - under unusual circumstances.
"Only five people in the department knew who I was and what I was doing," said Martinez, who bought drugs and guns and gathered intelligence. "They wanted me to blend into the culture and they wanted to make sure if other cops saw me they wouldn't inadvertently say or do something to tip them off to who it was."
He used a systematic approach during the 18-month investigation.
"If you know someone's a major drug player, you don't go the first day and try to buy dope from him," Martinez said. "You get to people close to him, you hang out and start to establish credibility."
The work is "very adrenaline driven," Fuller said, so he teaches officers how to "get a grip on it." But sometimes undercover officers become so used to the work, Fuller said they "start to build a tolerance for fear."
By necessity, some of the rules for undercover officers are different. Sometimes blending in means drinking alcohol, which the Minneapolis, St. Paul and many other police departments allow undercover officers to do. But only if the detail calls for it and not in excess, Stanek said.
"To not drink at all makes you look incredibly odd at a bar," Harrington said. "To sit with a ginger ale in front of you is to be marked as a narc."
Having one's cover blown isn't the only danger they face - they work in a risky environment.
"It's not a churchgoing crowd and because of the subculture, if they know you're a player and you have money, they might try to set you up to rip you off," Martinez said.
Undercover officers also can face danger from fellow officers, who might not immediately realize or believe the undercover officer is really another cop.
In 2003, undercover Minneapolis officer Duy Ngo was shot by an unknown assailant and then, mistakenly, by another officer responding to the incident who believed the injured Ngo was the assailant. Ngo survived.
In a dangerous situation, the question of whether an undercover officer should reveal his identity has to be made at his or her discretion, Fuller said.
"That's not something I can teach you to do or not do," he said. "If you think that's what it's going to take to stop from getting hurt, that's what you do, you identify yourself. But coming out of a role is very dangerous. They're probably not going to believe you when you start yelling, 'Police.' "
My personal association with Gerry was limited. I met him and his family at a Law Officer of the Year function at my American Legion Post. He was Mr. Charm on the surface but when you looked into his eyes I say a no nonsense guy. My kind of Copper!
Semper Paratus
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