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Undercover State Trooper 'Narcs' Work City's Housing Projects
The HUD Squad is not a common household name to police TV show devotees, but it is nine men doing one heckuva job cleaning up drug sales in the East St. Louis housing projects. The men work undercover as part of the undercover unit headed by Capt. Phil Kocis, commander of Zone 11 of the Division of Criminal Investigation, Illinois State Police, headquartered at Collinsville. The cost is picked up by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to attack drugs in public housing. The statistics are impressive. In the five months between May 1 and Sept. I the nine-man crew has handled 221 cases, made 222 arrests, 1,509 for dealing or possession of controlled substances found 47 persons wanted on fugitive warrants,' made one armed robbery arrest, arrested 23 for weapon offenses, possession of syringes and obstructing justice, seized 43 weapons - every kind imaginable, and has seized 1-1/2 pounds of cocaine. They also have collected $27,319 in drug money. Since all the coke was seized in street sales, that's a sizeable amount. Most of it is in crack. The nine men tend to travel together. Their job is to arrest street sellers and to break up street selling, not to track the sources or infiltrate the drug trade. In essence, they make drug buys, then arrest the sellers. Working under cover, they may become the target of crime. The first day the men were at work in East St. Louis, one of them found a gun at his temple and was robbed. There also are five marked state police cars in East St. Louis at all times, and East St. Louis police also help; the backup of the HUD drug unit is excellent. They work with the Housing Authority. It uses the arrests to evict families involved in drugs. "Our job is to get the drug dealers out of the projects; what they do is administrative," Kocis said. The statistics for buys and arrests are falling off, Kocis said. "I don't know whether we are solving the problems are they are getting familiar with our operation." Housing authority spokespersons say the unit has made a marked difference. Kocis agreed that stopping street corner dealing means less crime. People who come to East St. Louis to buy drugs are at risk. While dope dealers don't want their customers to get hurt, to be frightened away, there always is someone around eager to take the dope buyer's money away from him. They get robbed, they get murdered. One man brought his girl friend with him on a trip to buy drugs. He was robbed, locked in his trunk and his girl friend raped. As far as gangs are concerned, Kocis said "There is no similarity to the organized activity that occurs on the West Coast or Chicago or even St. Louis. There are no real gangs in East St. Louis, just guys who decide to wear their hats backwards and call themselves gangs. "Oh they have some affiliation I guess, but they are just individual thugs, they're not into perpetuating the organization or anything like that." "I would think that all drugs are the result of syndicate distribution. It has to start as an imported product in quantity then it breaks down further and further. Also the people we see are more likely dealing for another individual, perhaps who is capable of dealing in multi-ounce quantity. But I don't know that we've had too many folks that can handle kilos or that type of thing, because that's pretty big money." The HUD squad works with other drug units, including the Federal Drug Administration, but the HUD men are in the city more than any other drug investigators. Capt. Kocis said the officers' job is to make arrests for drug dealing, not to give administrators evidence to throw families out of the projects. Of the practice of expelling families who are involved in drug activity, he said "I think it’s a great idea, but our purpose is not to document things for HUD and throw people out. We are there to make criminal cases." Throwing people out on the street does just move the problem around, he said, and "I don't know what the long range effect is. However, they're not going to be dealing in the projects, anyway." Kocis said the project will end sometime. He doesn't know how long it will continue. Newspaper reports quote RonGrimming, deputy director of Illinois State Police, as expecting the contract, signed April 25, to last a year. However, Housing Authority spokespersons say they have applied HUD funding for two more policemen, these to be city policemen to serve in uniform for a visible presence.
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