Thread: Cops on Juice: Anything For the Cause!

Cops on Juice: Anything For the Cause!
by John Romano

The story that Dave posted about the 15 Broward county Sheriffs caught on juice and confined to desk jobs pending investigation really hit home. I just happen to live in Broward County and I can vouch for the fact that while a city such as Fort Lauderdale has a clean "beachy" post card image; it also has areas that are as nasty and violent as any big city in the U.S. I've always believed that cops - and soldiers for that matter - should be allowed to take "gear". In fact, it should be a requirement. If the bad guys on the street can do whatever they want, why can't the guys sworn to protect us also do whatever it takes?

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to meet some really hardcore, extremely cool cops. These guys were assigned to an anti-gang task force that their police departments disavowed. They didn't exist. And because they didn't, they could go about their non-existent jobs any way they wanted. In the case of the guys I met, it meant juicing to the gills. Believe me, these were some bad-ass crime fighters. Any city would love to have an abundance of these guys.

The story about the Broward Sheriffs made me really sick. Those guys are all heroes in their own right, and certainly should not be the subject of ridicule or reprimand. Their plight pissed me off enough to dig up the following article. I'm pretty positive that it'll give you a look at one very appealing option that should be open to all law enforcement agents that hunt down bad guys.

This is perhaps the most daring piece I've written - yet. In doing so, I've had to take a very vague tact in some areas, because any inkling as to whom or to which police force I could be referring, would spell a kind of risk I'm not willing to accept - not only for me, but for the guys I interviewed. As it is, I'm stepping out on a limb that has been sawn through most of the way. We, as a society, tend to look at police officers - especially after 9/11 - as people who serve the public interest before their own, and in so doing provide a blanket of protection that allows the rest of us to sleep well at night. For this, they are revered and held in the highest of public esteem, and with good cause. However, there are some officers who have a slightly different idea of what being a cop entails. This is largely due to the environment in which they find themselves, and the ones who thrive in such an environment are some very interesting characters - at least the ones I was fortunate enough to meet on a recent trip somewhere in the U.S. between New York and LA, Texas and Montana. Sorry, that's as specific as I can get. Why? Because some of these guys are doing things for which you and I get locked up. They could too, so under the threat of death, I've got to play it safe.

Before this trip, my exposure to the cops was adversarial - they wanted to lock me up and I tried to avoid it. Hence, my rides in the back of a police car were of the one way variety, and the destination truly sucked. This time, I was riding in the back of a police car and, not only wasn't I handcuffed, but neither was my buddy, and the two cops up front were cool and the ride ended up back at my friend's house. Now that's a first! I had spent two nights and one entire day in the company of some of the most bad-ass dudes I ever thought walked the face of the earth and came away with a completely different attitude about the guys we're always trying to avoid.

Don't get me wrong, there are still cops that are bad guys; the federal variety are usually the worst; they have no sense of humor, however even those guys are trying to do a job. Our beef is really with the politicians who create the stupid laws that we have to grapple with in some case. Unfortunately some cops take that job a little too seriously, especially when there are real criminals and terrorists running around. Any cop who nabs a rapist or a car bomber, saves a kid from being attacked, or pulls someone from a car wreck has got hero written all over them. I'd give that guy my last scoop of protein powder any day of the week. It's the guys who zealously dedicate their careers to hunting down victimless crimes - especially those destined to halt men from putting more male hormones into their bodies - that are the cops who, in my humble opinion, are needed around here like third tit. How a grown man can actually feel accomplished by locking up some poor guy who orders his testosterone over the internet is beyond me. It's not a job someone has to do. And, the fact that some people actually think that it is a job someone has to do is not only an indictment on our society as a whole, but sad, sad commentary on the 21 century. In this day and age there's a very clear and present danger made by some very, very bad people. To think that even one cop is chasing a bottle of Dianabol around cyberspace is as loathsome a waste of time and tax payer money as it is an incremental loss of the power we have to make our world safe.

To dwell on this long enough will give me an ulcer, so it was truly a remarkable thing that my friend Sam called me up and said that a bunch of friends of his - who are cops - wanted to meet me. They are avid MD readers - muscle heads to be sure - and a few of them, juice heads too!! That's right, I said it - cops on juice. Right about now, middle America is cringing in their Home Depot remodeled, Ikea furnished, $150,000 tract home at the very thought of a cop taking steroids. Mom and Pop "Q" Public could not fare well with the notion that some of their finest would break the law. However, reality tells us that it happens all the time. In this case, I'm not out to vilify anyone. In fact, once you find out a little more about these guys you'd be proud to have one date your sister.

I can't imagine not taking a day off in ten years. Can you? Mel can because for the first ten years he was on the force he didn't miss a single night. He was afraid he might miss something good. Mel is assigned to an anti-gang task force in a major hardcore city, where something good meant busting a crack house, executing warrants on homicidal gang bangers and getting the chance to bust some punk's head. Shootouts were not out of the question either. Mel has three confirmed kills in his jacket. "All three of the slime-bags committed multiple homicides," he said. "My job is to stop these motherfuckers before they stop you, or before they stop me. It looked like they were going for it, so I capped them. No big deal, except for the paperwork and the investigation." Mel runs about 6'4" at 297 pounds, none of it the fault of a doughnut shop. He's a uniformed cop with 17 years on the force who packs a Glock nine around his ankle in addition to the standard issue on his belt, and a black jack in his back pocket that shows extreme signs of use. Mel is a little quieter than his partner, but wouldn't think twice about laying a punk out flat if he mouthed off to him - which I watched him do to a gang banger in broad daylight inside the projects. Right now he's on a gram and a half of test a week, 300 mg of tren, and two A-bombs a day. I watched him bench 405 for 15 reps, strip a plate off each side and get 315 for 10, then strip another plate off and hit 225 for 13 clean reps with a pause on the last four. After racking the bar, he sat up with wide wild eyes and said, "Fuck!, that felt good."

Mel's partner, Fred, is a little rougher around the edges. He's a cop of the mythical variety, who takes as much as he can while giving up next to nothing; at least that's what he'd like you to think. When I got to the gym to meet these two for the first time (with our mutual friend Sam), Mel and Fred were arguing over 80 grand that Fred took off a drug dealer and didn't turn in. Mel was in a tizzy over it thinking that it was a plant. Fred, on the other hand, had the odds figured. "Mel, for Christ sake, relax!, IAD isn't going to put 80 Gs out there. Fuck, they wouldn't put 35 hundred out there; they don't have it." Fred has been on the force for 19 years, packs all the time - even when he goes to the beach - and has a long record of using excessive force, with two kills in his jacket. He's been friends with Mel since high school. They have been partnered up for the last six years since volunteering for the anti-gang task force. "Jeez, Mel. I'm giving ya half."

"I don't fucking want it! Mel shot back. "With my fucking luck this will be the one that puts us away. You always got your hand in it."

"Cha-ching! Fuckin-ay right! And I'm never getting caught because I know the game. I'm not stopping till my safe is full."

"You should see his safe," said Mel to my friend Sam, who also knew the both of them in high school. "It's like a fucking walk-in closet; full of fucking money."

"Don't exaggerate! And what about you? Hu? What's with all those fucking guns you got?" Fred turned to Sam, "every time this one takes a piece off a bad guy he takes it home; he don't turn it in. You should see his place; it looks like a fucking armory - he's even got a box of grenades!"

Mel defended himself, "Ey, my job is to get that shit off the streets, which I do. So what if it ends up in my house? You know how much paperwork I save myself?"

Fred sat on the bench with 495 on the bar and got ready to slide under it. "Fuck the guns, asshole, take the 40 Gs."

"I'll keep the guns and you keep the money. Squash it."

Fred shrugged and slid up under the bar. "Fine, have it your way." Mel gave him a lift off and Fred banged out six reps before Mel helped him with three more. Not bad for a dude who runs Five foot - eight, 240. It probably doesn't hurt that he's pushing eight Sustanons into his hide each week for the last 20 weeks, along with a variety of orals and six IUs of GH every other day.

Sam gestured toward me and said, "Ey, this is the guy I was telling yous about."

Mel perked up, "John Romano? Holly shit! Hey, man, pleased to meet you. Mel shook my hand with a grip like a vise and a smile like a kid." It's really cool to meet you. MD is a fucking hard ass magazine, and those bitches are fucking radical! We have them all hanging up down at the station."

"Yeah?" I said. "Who's the fave?"

"Oh that's easy. Brandy. Fuckin' Brandy Dahl. There's not a copper who wouldn't take a bullet for her. You know her?"

"I met her once," I said. "She's really sweet. And the pictures do her no justice. That girl is more fierce in person."

"Fuck the bitch with the big tits," interrupted Fred. "You know that guy from Red Star you did the article on?, what's his name, big Phil?"

"I actually met him once a long time ago, but I didn't know who he was. No one knows who he is," I said.

"Fuck, man, I want to get on his list. I know like ten coppers who want to get their hands on some Tren."

"I'll see what I can do, but don't tell him you're a cop."

"Fuck, no!" Shouted Fred. "I just need to get some Tren."

"Yeah, that's what you need," Mel said, "higher fucking blood pressure."

"Fuck you Mel! Look, Romano, don't go getting the wrong fuckin' idea here. There are only a hand full of us who take juice out of the thousands of coppers on this force, but the ones that do fucking love Tren. It's the best attitude adjustment when you've got to chase the scumbags we gotta chase."

"I don't have any idea, brother. That's why I'm here." I said.

Sam interrupted. "Hey look, Romano just landed and we need to find him a hotel and then we need to eat and you punks gotta finish training. Whad-a-ya say we meet at Tino's in about an hour?"

"That's cool with me," Mel said. "You coming, Fred?"

"Fuckin-ay. Tino's in an hour."


When Sam and I got to Tino's - a bar/all you can eat buffet - Fred, Mel and a humongous black man were already seated at a table with plates overflowing with meat in front of them. As we approached, the humongous black man stood up and shouted, "Sam-eee!!" and picked my friend up in a bear hug that nearly killed him. "Damn, it's been too long, where you been hiding?"

"Not hiding, just trying to make a living," answered Sam. "I guess the diet isn't working?"

The big black man busted up, "what-chu talkin-bout? I'm down to 325!" Everyone busted up laughing. "Hey John, this is Pete, he works with Fred and Mel on federal cases.

I shook hands with Pete and was relieved to find all my fingers still intact when he let go, "You doin a story on us, right?"

"That's why I'm here," I said.

"You got a strong magazine, brother. I hope we can get you what you need, "Pete said.

"I already got a good start with these two," I said motioning toward Fred and Mel who were both head down in their plates.

"Aww, he ain't seen nothin' yet," Said Mel. "Wait till we get on the street and you see ole Fred here do the whip on some stupid punk."

Pete cracked up, "yeah! Freddy's known for the whip! Lay a motherfucker out in one second flat."

"Yeah, that's because if he had to go more than one second he'd be gasping to death," Mel said.

"Fuck you!"

"What's the whip?" I asked.

"Oh, man, you ain't never seen nothing like it," Pete said. "These punk motherfuckers ain't nothing. None of em go over a buck-forty dripping wet. Ole Fred here will hide in some nook while Mel goes around the other way. When the banger comes by, Fred jumps out and grabs his jacket behind the neck by the collar, snaps him like a bull whip, and throws his ass on the ground. Motherfucker is out before he hits."

"Is that legal? I asked.

Everybody cracked up. "Who the fuck cares?" said Fred. "These are the lowest pieces of shit on the face of the Earth in the lowest piece of shit place on Earth. They shoot at us, jump us, throw rocks and bottles at us, Fuck em. There ain't no law. The only law is that we win. They shoot at us, we shoot back; they do anything else, we beat the fuck out of them, then bring them in. Sometimes, bringing them in is too much of a pain in the ass. They get right back out. So we just beat the fuck out them. No one likes a gang banger/crack dealer - no one. Not the courts, the judges, the Public Defenders, their own families don't want them around. Gang banging may be a way of life for these punks, but it's our job to make their life hell."

"What about the bleeding heart liberals who blame society for giving them no other option?" I asked. "Don't they frown on this behavior? Aren't you afraid some day it will get on tape and you'll have another Rodney King situation on your hands?"

Mel answered, "Those fucking assholes would change their mind if they spent 50 seconds in our shoes. Fucking liberals! Yeah right, they want us to do this community policing crap. Fuck that! What we do is called ‘Active Aggressive Patrol.' Community policing isn't going to get us our budget next year - we have to show we're making a dent. So, we send the Gs to prison for life and fuck up the bangers so bad they run for their lives every time they see a patrol car. We get right in their face, every fucking chance we get and we don't get it on tape. No one in the projects has a video camera anyway, if they did, they'd sell it for crack. None of them have shit."

"Aren't you afraid of getting shot, or ambushed or something?" I asked.

"Fuck, yeah," said Pete. "It happens all the time. Very few guys can handle this task force. You go into one of these projects and start climbing a blind set of stairs in the dark looking for a G to serve a homicide warrant on, and dudes crack. It's like fucking Vietnam. Guys get scared and they can't do their job. Those guys are the ones who get hurt. We all went to a funeral two weeks ago."

"Yeah, man, this gig isn't for everyone. Guys get scared shitless." Mel said. "These fucking Gs are powerful - in the joint or out. We sent this one dude up for life without and he was still running things out here. This asshole had so much juice that one day he was playing basketball in the yard and some guy fouled him. He just looked up where his peeps were sitting and forty bangers came down and beat the fuck out of the guy who fouled him. He can start a riot out here from his cell."

"Do you think you're winning?" I asked.

"As soon as we stopped fighting a drug war and just fought the war, we started winning," Pete said. "We keep the pressure on day and night and never let up - not for a second. If a wall gets tagged, we have a crew come in and erase it that fucking day and then we spray this shit on it that keeps any other paint from sticking - like the shit they paint on the subway cars in NYC. If we hear a G's name come up too many times we find him, fuck him up, bust his ass, plant shit on him, whatever it takes to nail his ass and put him away for life. All of them are fucking career criminals. We never busted a guy who didn't have a rap sheet a mile long, usually with manslaughter, attempted murder, and aggravated assault charges left and right. These are bad, bad people who will never become contributing members of society. Even if they can run shit from in the joint, it gets harder and harder if we keep locking them up. Soon no one will be left on the outside."

"Chicago is the fucking model, bro." Mel said, "Cabrini Green was the last bastion of big city liberalism. There was never something more fucked up nor gave a city more of a black eye."

"Fuckin-ay," said Fred. "What a fucking disaster! That was the biggest project in the country, most of the people who lived there were on welfare. Tons of fucking people living for next to nothing and getting paid not to work. Then the gangs move in. What happens next? Shit, those coppers that worked the Green were fucking soldiers. They never got the notoriety they deserved. But they were bad-ass, man. I know some of them. Big tough motherfuckin super cops. That was aggressive policing at its best. They locked up all the fucking Gs and killed the ones they couldn't. The city finally got the message and started emptying the project out. Now you go to Cabrini Green and you know what you got? Fucking yuppies moving in. They're building nice shit there, with shopping centers and malls and cool town homes. Now a guy who works downtown can live near work. The whole city is getting a lift because the coppers went in and got aggressive. Community policing may work in Peoria, but in a fucking war zone, you gotta bust heads."

"But. Come on bro, the community groups-- rights advocates-- gotta be giving you a hard time," I said.

"Fucking right they do. Not only do we gotta fight the bangers, but we gotta fight the Al Sharptons too," Pete said. "It's a fucking nightmare. But as long as the department supports us and we keep busting the really bad guys and the media stays out of it, we can do our job. We've been pretty lucky here. The politicians and the media get along and the department has been spared a lot of negative exposure, but we gotta work for it."

"How so?" I asked.

"Oh, man, we do a lot of shit." Mel said. "We have three big community centers that we have to spend a lot of time in - all of us. We teach martial arts and put on competitions - some of them get national exposure. Another copper who works with us, Tony, owns the gym we all train at. Every week we have kids come in and we help them train for the president's physical fitness test. Remember that shit when you were a kid? You had to do push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups and you got a certificate from the president? Well, we borrowed the name and did our own program and we got kids in there doing powerlifting, and bench press contests and all kinds of endurance shit. We even got one center with a rock climbing wall. They get awards like crazy. It makes them feel proud of themselves."

"Who pays for all this shit?" I asked.

"We do," Mel said. "Hard ass Freddy over here may pinch 80 dimes off a crack dealer and not turn it in, but he don't put all of it in his safe. Fred bought tons of weights and gym equipment for the centers. A lot of coppers make anonymous contributions. It's like ghetto Robin Hood shit, you know?"

"Don't be telling him that shit!" Fred shouted, "What the fuck? You're going to blow my image."

His image was resurrected on the street the following afternoon. Sam and I were in the back of an unmarked car (both of us wearing body armor), Mel was driving and Fred was riding shotgun - literally, an Ithaca short barrel pump stood up between his legs. We entered one of the projects and we might as well have left the planet. The six story buildings looked nearly abandoned. Chain link fence covered the bottom floor windows and bars covered those of the upper floors, some of them were boarded over with rotting plywood. Where there was supposed to be grass was hard packed bare dirt in which weeds wouldn't even grow, and nothing there had seen a paint brush in decades. Everywhere we looked, there were groups of people shooting the shit, sucking on a 40 in a paper bag, sitting outside in old battered living room furniture and busted up something or other - it was hard to tell. One thing for sure, it was the middle of the day and no one was working.

We turned a corner and stopped alongside a brick wall on which was painted a rather large and intricate mural. "VJK," Mel said. "That's no good."

"Wasn't here last week," observed Fred. "These fuckers are moving up in the world. Time they get to know us, huh?"

Mel got on the radio and called for the tagger truck - the guys who come out and erase gang graffiti. 'You going to paint over that?" I asked. "It looks like a lot of work went into it."

"Wasted talent," Mel said while he waited for a reply. "Okay, the truck is on the way. Let's go hide. Mel backed the car between two other cars directly across from the mural and we waited.

"So what's the big deal with the mural?" I asked.

"It establishes this project as VJK turf," Said Fred. "It wasn't there last week, so that means something happened we didn't know about and VJK is getting bigger. If VJK is getting bigger, that means we need to pay more attention to them. Nothing gets their attention like erasing their mural." Soon, a big truck pulled up with a tank on the back and hoses hanging off it. "Sand blaster," Fred motioned to the truck, "That fucking mural will be dust in five minutes." Two guys got out and immediately started blasting the mural with pressurized sand. It literally fell off the building. Just as the last of it was being erased, several gang bangers materialized out of nowhere and approached the men working. These were typical bangers - do-rags on their heads, chains around their necks and pants slouched down around their knees. One of them engaged the workers and started getting a bit physical - pushing them around. I couldn't hear over the compressor, but I imagine it had to do with what they were doing to the sign? Just then Fred and Mel came up behind them. With a big exaggerated pendulous move, Mel pile drove his fist into the top of the lead banger's head and he collapsed like a house of cards right where he stood. Mel reached down, picked him up by the back of his collar and threw him into the side of the truck, burying a couple of small bolts into his face in the process, and cuffed and searched him.

While this was going on, a couple of the others started to approach. Fred pulled the shot gun out of the front seat and shoved it in their faces, pumped a shell in the chamber and smiled like Hannibal Lechter; they froze in their tracks. Mel let go of the cuffed banger and let him fall to the ground. His face had two weeping holes in it and his nose looked a little crooked. Mel unholstered his piece and joined Fred in the confrontation. Within seconds, they had all the bangers down on their knees with their hands laced behind their heads, each getting searched. Mel had radioed for back up and within a minute, there were three other cars, both marked and unmarked skidding to a stop not feet from where Mel and Fred stood. The whole thing was over in less than five minutes and the punks were hauled off without incident.

"Fuck, I never get to shoot this thing," Fred complained while getting back into the car and racking the shotgun in its spot between his legs. "Nice drop there, Mel, that piece of shit is going to wake up two inches shorter."

"Not short enough," Mel said. "You get anything?"

"Nah, nothing good. You?"

"Nada." They both lied. Mel turned to us, the shift is almost over; you guys want to train?"

They dropped us off back at the station, and we all met back at Tony's gym. When we got there, Pete was already there, half-way through squats. He had six plates on each side, knee wraps scattered on the floor and he was covered in chalk. "How'd it go today?"

"Pretty interesting," I said. "Your boys are pretty tough."

"They're pretty hard alright; they got scabs where their feelings used to be." Pete sat on a bench and began rolling up his knee wraps. "You guys want to go out tonight? We gotta serve a warrant on a real bad guy."

"What did he do?" I asked.

"Multiple homicide."

"Cool, let's go; when?"

"I'll pick you guys up around 3AM. You gotta stay in the car till we get secure, but then you can check the scene out."

"I'm in, you need a spot?"

"Not yet." Pete wrapped his knees and got under the bar and drove home ten clean reps up off parallel. He racked the bar and Mel and Fred showed up. We told them about the action Pete had booked and both of them wanted in. It looked like we were going to have a party.

We climbed into the back of Pete's car at 3 AM on the nose. He turned around and handed me several boxes of gear as he drove out of the driveway. "Is this shit legit?"

I looked the stuff over. "The Winny V is definitely fake, so is the D-bol, but then again so is all D-bol, I never heard of these though, so I don't know if they're good. The Sustanon is for real, and so is the Tren." The Tren was from Ttokkyo. "Hey, man, you know Ttokkyo got busted, right?"

A look of despair spread over Pete's huge face. "What do you mean, busted?"

"Special K. The biggest bust in history. Don't you read the papers?" I said.

Pete frowned. "Oh man, that was them? Shit."

"Hey, don't look at me; it was you guys!"

"Fuck you." Everyone busted up laughing.

We entered another project and hooked up with several other city cops and some DEA agents and FBI. There was an awful lot of commotion for that hour of the morning - lights flashing, police tape up all over the place, and the Feds looked like they were getting ready to leave. Pete pulled up to another car and asked the officer what was up. "They found your guy back there." The cop indicated behind him with his thumb. "He don't look too good."

"Oh, shit," Pete said. "Is the scene secure?"

"As secure as can be in this fucking place." And the cop drove off.

"Come on," Pete said, "You'll want to see this."

I wasn't so sure I would, but Sam and I got out anyway and followed Pete up the path to where another group of officers were milling about. One was taking pictures.

"You sure this was my guy?" Pete asked one of the other cops.

"Hard to tell with half his face missing, but we IDed him with prints. He's your guy alight."

I looked down and actually wasn't at all surprised by what I saw. A dead gang banger. Looked like he took a shotgun blast to the face. Half of it was gone and what was left was sitting in a huge pool of blood and gore. Next to the body was a big dead rat with the top of its head blown off. It was staged with a cell phone by its ear and what looked like a bout four $100 bills folded under his front paws. "What's with the dead rat?" I asked.

Pete looked down and surveyed the damage. "It's a message to us. His boys knew we were coming to get him and they figured he'd talk, so they capped him. A dead rat can't talk."

"Pretty sick shit," I said. "What happens now?"

"It all goes into the hopper," answered Pete. "Fuck! This guy was supposed to be a real bad-ass too. I was really looking forward to him resisting arrest."

Poor Pete, all jacked up and no one to bust. Mel and Fred soon found us and we all stood around and shot the shit for a while, then I had to go. My flight back to Mexico was at 7 AM and we were an hour from the airport. So, we said good-bye, Fred made me promise again to hook him up with a Tren connection, and Pete drove us back to Sam's car. Mission accomplished.


I was sitting on the airplane, heading back to a world so unlike the one I had just visited, thinking of how surreal the last two days had seemed and what a fucked up situation these guys have to deal with day in and day out. Unlike the Feds chasing trenbolone through cyber space, these cops do have a job someone has to do, and believe me, they do it. The really sick thing is that they like it.

Cops on Juice: Anything For the Cause!

He writes like a little kid, neat article though. Reminds me of gears of war.