Some of the stories I tell here involve illegal conduct by the police in which I was a participating party. Some readers are critical of me, but I tell you the bad things I did as well as the good. Please remember that. I know it was not all legal or ethical. I hope my younger readers can learn from the ethical lapses I committed early in my career to avoid making the same mistakes if caught off guard in similar situations.
The CID Lieutenant, call him “Bob,” called all us detectives together to run a search warrant with him. A reliable informant had given him information that there were illegal drugs being sold out of a certain house. With Lt. Bob and three detectives, we split into pairs. Two of us would hit the back door simultaneously with the other two hitting the front door. I was assigned to the back door.
It was a two-story house with a finished attic. The two who went in the front gathered everybody into the living room. The two of us who went in the back moved to the attic as soon as the house was secured. We worked our way down looking anywhere illegal drugs could be hidden.
By the time we got to the ground floor, there was nothing to show for our efforts. As I went into the living room for the first time at the end of the search, I saw a large flowerpot with peyotes planted in it on the coffee table. Incredulous that Lt. Bob and the detective who had gone in the front door had not noticed the peyotes, I pointed it out and started to take the pot.
“Those aren’t illegal,” Lt. Bob said. “They are in their natural state.”
“The hell they are!” I exclaimed. “Their natural state is growing wild in the desert in South Texas between Corpus Christi and Laredo, not transplanted into a pot in Kerrville, Texas.”
We exchanged some heated words, and Lt. Bob finally allowed me to take the pot, but he refused to arrest anybody in the house.
By the time we got back to the office, I was fuming. I had logged the peyote into evidence and returned to my office when Lt. Bob came in and closed the door behind him. He had a very contrite look on his face and his voice had gone soft and conciliatory.
“Look, Pat,” he began, “that search warrant was never about drugs. A neighbor of mine said her daughter had run away and she thought she might be staying in that house. I told her I’d see if I could find her daughter. I lied about a confidential informant so I could get a search warrant to search the house, but it was never drugs we were after. It was her daughter I was looking for.”
If I had been angry before, now he had really set me off. “Don’t you EVER ask me to run another search warrant with you,” I said. “What the hell were you thinking, lying like that?”
We never prosecuted the case of possession of peyote.