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public safety 'men in black' Unit goes bygut THE UNIFORM

August 21, 2007 12:35 am

by Hugh Muir

It was shortly before a midnight in July when two sheriff's deputies stood at a stakeout near the exit to a residential community in northern Stafford. A car with two people came down the road to the exit, ran the stop sign, turned left and drove away.

Sgt. Alex Smith immediately radioed a third member of the team, Deputy Chris Armitage, who was a short distance away in an unmarked vehicle. He drove after the suspicious car as Smith and his partner, Deputy Vernon Galyen, ran in pursuit. The officers knew nothing about the car. They were acting on a hunch.

The deputies are members of the Stafford Special Problems Unit, a four-man team formed a year ago to focus on specific types of cases in a county facing increasing high-profile crime in a growing population. The deputies on that July stakeout were there because the community had been seen as a "high-crime-incident" area.

The encounter unfolded as Smith and Galyen ran up to the car that ran the stop sign, already pulled over by Armitage. The driver of the car, a woman, was being questioned outside the vehicle. As Smith arrived he heard the driver say she had seen her passenger throw something under his seat and she heard a clink of metal. Smith immediately ordered the man to get out of the car. He did so, but as he was being patted down he jerked away and ran.

Smith and Armitage caught up with the man and tackled him. In the ensuing scuffle, Smith heard Armitage shout, "Get off my gun!" The man had grabbed the butt of the officer's holstered pistol. But before the gun came lose, Smith pulled out his pepper spray and gave the suspect a blast in the face. Subdued, the man fell. Smith then walked over to the car, reached under the front passenger seat and removed a loaded .38-caliber revolver.

The case is now in the court system, each suspect facing a battery of charges. Neither of the car's occupants was a resident of the community under surveillance. Further investigation is being conducted as a result of the case. And all because of a run stop sign, and a hunch.

"This is a proactive unit, not reactive," said its commander, Lt. Patrick Kelley. "They deal with specific problems in a community. They work the neighborhoods where a crime trend appears and they get to know the people and the area. [When patrolling a community, they often use bicycles.] They are the closest thing to a 'city cop on the beat' that a county officer can be."

The SPU is a tightly knit team: one sergeant and three deputies. They are among the 154 sworn deputies, plus six animal control officers, on the force. The SPU team is hand-picked. "They are very effective," Kelley said. "Drawing on their five to 10 years of experience and on the information they pick up on the street, they are an intelligence-driven bunch."

The team also is cost effective. "Most of the Sheriff's Department work involves calls for services--responding to incidents like accidents, domestic violence, lost children, robbery, assault," the lieutenant said. "We don't want to pull our field operation deputies away from these vital responsibilities," Kelley added.

The Special Problems Unit, meanwhile, focuses on such cases as drug dealing, big-store shoplifting, auto theft, construction site larceny, tracking fugitives, serious vandalism, or any crimes that appear linked or form a trend.

Smith, 34, was born in Quantico; his father a Marine, his mother from Falmouth. He is a 1991 graduate of James Monroe High School. He became a volunteer fireman in Spotsylvania and still is. In 1994 he became a radio dispatcher in Fredericksburg and again later in Stafford. In 1999, he was sworn into the Sheriff's Office. He was tapped for the SPU earlier this year. "It's right up my alley," he said. "I wanted to interact with the public."

One morning last month, many residents of a development in southern Stafford woke up to find tires on their cars had been slashed during the night. "A quality of life crime," officials called it, one of a series of such incidents over the summer in Stafford. Reports of the slashings poured into 911 during the day.

The Special Problems team arrived in mid-afternoon in an unmarked car. On a hunch, Smith and Deputy George Hernandez struck up a conversation with some kids passing by on bikes. The officers asked if anybody had been causing trouble recently. They got the first name of a youth. They began to walk the neighborhood, asking other kids about local problems. They got the full name of a boy who had been bullied by a known trouble-maker.

They went to the bully victim's home and his mother answered. She confirmed the first name the officers already had and gave them the last name. At 6 p.m. they knocked on the door of the alleged bully and his father opened it. After some talk, the officers made their first arrest. Others followed. The case is now in the courts.

Smith recalled another example from last spring. "We got a call from a construction site supervisor in North Stafford who said he had just found two large stacks of copper tubing stashed in a in a cul-de-sac on his site. He said it didn't belong there." The SPU went down for a look. "We decided to sit on it," Smith said. "I set up a post in a private home about 200 yards away, with a clear view of the stuff. Hernandez supervised in setting up a perimeter in the woods around the site."

Within a few hours, a white pickup truck came down the road to where the copper was piled. "We drove down behind him, three men and a [K-9] dog," Smith said. The suspect jumped out of the truck and dropped to the ground. His arrest led to a few more arrests. "All the bad guys were from Stafford," Smith said. "The copper tubing, more than $50,000 worth, was from a construction job in Fairfax County." The builders got their copper back and a Fairfax court got the case.

"This copper-theft case was solved," Kelley said, "on the basis of a hunch. I thought the stuff would be left there for a while. The sergeant, correctly, thought otherwise."

Gun-play is kept at minimum. Earlier this month, Smith was on a community visit with his team. The men in black met with families at their Recreation Center. The officers wanted to know if there were any questions. One small boy, perhaps 7 years old, asked, "Did you ever shoot anybody?"

Smith replied, "Fortunately, I've never fired my weapon against anyone."