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HER
JURIS IMPRUDENCE By Steve Dunleavy
July 25, 2002 — TO WATCH undercover cops work, albeit from a long distance, is like being in Bosnia, watching some little guy, a sergeant, defuse a mine with a 12-inch stick. You watch, and although you are breathing, you don't see your chest move; you are thinking, but you don't know what you are thinking. The best I can remember is: Please, God, don't let it happen. That dull explosion and the mine defuser has no face, or with undercover cops, that tiny crack - which, incidentally, doesn't sound like a firecracker — and there is a hero cop and kids with no father. "Officer X," an undercover guy, is furious at this fool of a judge, Dorothy Cropper, who if she got her way would have the bodies of undercover cops lying on the ground like confetti after a wedding. "I have been undercover for 91/2 years. You are right, I equate it with bomb- or mine-disposal guys," he was saying. "Lots of times I have worn a wire. Sometimes they have searched me and missed the wire. But right now in spy shops — quite legal — they have devices that can tell if you have a wire on you. It's like going behind enemy lines." Now, Judge Cropper is a cousin of Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of the best guys in government. Somehow there has got to be confused blood lines. What would Powell say if a spy was caught in the FBI, which happened in the case of Robert Hanssen, whose infamy led to the death of U.S. agents overseas? Hanssen is lucky he didn't get the death sentence. Yet Cropper "wants to give the good guys up," said Officer X. "You've got to have cops who put their life on the line; prosecutors, who do it straight, and a judge who takes no sides but is not in the business of destroying the arm that takes drugs and guns off the street. "Of course I have been scared. But you have to know, even with a gun pointing at you, to keep emotions in check. A mistake and particularly, if a guy has done hard time and doesn't want to go back, he will cap you, nothing to lose. "Judge Cropper has made a terrible error. Is she doing it because she wants the court system to be absolute, or is she doing it for a strange agenda? I don't know." How would she like it if I gave out her address and telephone number to the public? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
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