Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 8, 1992 TAG: 9201080258
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRYAN MCKENZIE The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE (AP) LENGTH: Medium
UNDERCOVER OFFICER FITS IN AT THE FRATS
Harrisonburg-born Mike Deeds found no Ferrari, no Rolex, and no expensive clothes when he went undercover as a drug agent.All he got was a beard, a bandanna and rollerblade lessons.
For six months, Deeds, 24, a former James Madison University student turned Charlottesville police officer, hung out in University of Virginia fraternities buying drugs and chronicling their use.
For six months, he looked, talked and acted like a college student. He attended parties. He loitered on campus.
His efforts led to the arrest of a dozen people, including 11 University of Virginia students, and the seizure of three fraternity buildings in a March 1990 raid dubbed Operation Equinox.
But Deeds said he wasn't after fraternity members. He was just doing his job.
"It wasn't a personal vendetta at all. I don't have anything against people that age. I've got friends that age. Hell, I'm that age," said Deeds, who was 23 at the time he worked undercover.
After more than one year since he started buying drugs and nine months since the raid capped his undercover job, Deeds is back in uniform.
But when he graduated from the Central Shenandoah Criminal Justice Training Academy in 1990 he expected to don a uniform and patrol streets, not go back to college.
Members of the federal drug task force had other plans. They were looking for someone to buy drugs, someone of college age. Deeds still had his college identification. Not having worked the street as a patrolman, he also had anonymity.
"They had the informants, the operation, everything was ready to go and they just needed someone to get in there," Deeds said. "They were considering a couple of people they thought would fit and they just decided on me."
For six months he led a secret life. He timed arrivals and departures from home to avoid being seen with his roommate, friend and fellow city policeman Jeff Vohwinkle.
Deeds was tutored in the language of the college drug culture and the process each drug buy should follow by members of the city-county Joint Narcotics Unit.
Different fraternities had different prejudices and rules, Deeds said. Some would not let him in because he was unknown to members. Others didn't like his clean-cut looks or athletic build.
"The Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity wouldn't deal with me at all at first. Then I grew a beard, let my hair get longer and wore a bandanna and I was in," Deeds said.
"I'm a country boy, I'm not a $50-word person," Deeds said. "I wasn't sure how I'd fit in the fraternity system. In a situation like this you're on your own. You have to get along with people, use your charisma or charm, or whatever you want to call it, to get people to like you and accept you."
Deeds made his first drug buy for the operation within a week and a half.
"It wasn't that difficult. They thought they were at the university and it was off limits to law enforcement and no one was going to mess with one of the nation's most prestigious universities," Deeds said.
Wearing wiretaps or carrying a tape recorder, Deeds followed informants into fraternities around the UVa campus. He made contact. If the time seemed right, he'd ask to buy.
Afterward he turned the tape and the drugs over to Joint Narcotics Unit officers, who backed him up.
It wasn't long before he felt at home. "It started feeling like I was back at JMU. You're meeting new people, asking what they're taking for classes, what they like to do," Deeds said.
"I had a good time and I liked a lot of the people. I had never thought of rollerblades as something that fun to do, and we went rollerblading a couple of times. I got into that," he said.
In some fraternities he saw nothing. Some would not let him in the door because he was unknown.
But others readily accepted him. In those he saw marijuana bongs - water-filled pipes - passed between students. The drugs included LSD, a hallucinogenic; psilocybin, known as psychedelic mushrooms; and marijuana.
Police did not seize large quantities of drugs in the March raid, and Deeds said most of the buys he made were for relatively small amounts.
But he said pounds of marijuana, hundreds of hits of LSD and large quantities of other drugs were available. Investigators, he said, had neither the time nor the money to make large buys.
Overall, Deeds had little difficulty cracking the college campus.
"It wasn't a major problem fitting in at all," he said. "It wasn't a very violent situation. It could have gotten violent if someone had found out who I was and decided to try and beat me senseless or something. But I'm pretty big myself, so I wasn't real worried.
"It was fun. It's not the kind of thing you get the chance to participate in every day. I'm lucky," he said. "I enjoyed it. I'd do it again."