Hanau Drug Team

Hanau Drug Team  

Way back I was on and later in charge of one of the Hanau CID Drug teams, most likely in the early 1980's. The Hanau Drug team was as large as the regular Hanau CID office. The Hanau CID office was comprised of about 15 Army CID agents at the time I was there.

Familiar names (all retired now) such as CW4 Gary Felgenhower, CW4 Charley Whitehead, CW4 Max Kingsley, CW4 Ismar Rubio, SGM Bernie Schmidt, CW4 Terry Sells, and many others whose names have long since faded or they would not want their names mentioned. I was just one of the gang assigned to have fun in the trenches while learning how to make all the in charge folks happy...smiles and frowns.

Drugs were being sold and purchased in such alarming rates by U.S. soldiers that large U.S. Army CID drug teams were popping up all over the place in an attempt to at least slow down the purchase and sale of drugs. Hanau selected Ismar Rubio as the Lead team chief, Bernie Schmidt as the Hanau area team, chief, and me as the outside the city of Hanau team chief...in other words I had the little team...smiles.

Bernie and I worked for Ismar who was always into working with the German police and net working with the folks down town, he worked all the time, so guess what, so did we. Bernie and I had about ten drug team members each made up of military police and we worked all the time all over the place. Life was never dull in Hanau and the area surrounding Hanau.

I managed to get selected for the drug team because I did not tell the Special Agent in Charge I had any drug team experience, they asked and I said nope, not me. So I managed to get on the General Crimes Team with some decent working hours. I guess I was at Hanau Resident Agency about three months before my medal showed up telling everyone what a great job I had done on the previous drug team at Ft. Ord, CA. It was down hill from there. I was on the Frankfurt Snow White Drug Operation for about six months, then on the local Hanau drug team.

Those were the days when your only safety alarm was throwing a chair out the window to let your back up agent know you needed help. I am not kidding, you would go in to purchase drugs with no help at all with the exception of your back up agent in the parking lot who was not much help until he or she knew you needed help and that was when shots were fired or windows broken or folks were seen running from your location.

We were making about five drug buys a week on each team in Hanau while Ismar was doing the big deals and getting the Intel we needed to resolve the big problems. We also did all the surveillance work for the regular CID office because we were the only ones who knew how to do it and how to work the surveillance equipment.

Our teams were also the only ones with a lot of sources (informants) who knew what was going on in the Hanau area, largely because Bernie and Ismar were connected with the German police and had lots of friends with the local folks.

One night Ismar called me and asked me to meet him in down town Hanau, when I arrived he was talking to a guy in front of one of the clubs, as I got to them, the guy got in a car parked at the curb, Ismar walked over to the driver side door and was leaning in talking to the guy. I came up on the passenger side of the car and the guy who was soldier knew me, I had arrested him several times previously, so he turned on the car and was getting ready to leave. Ismar pulled his gun and stuck it in the guys ear and said your busted, the guy laughed and drove off with Ismar half in and half out of the car.

I ran and caught up to the car, lunged in the passenger side of the car, Ismar and I were both reasoning with the guy to stop the car, but when that did not work I managed to get turn the key off and Ismar pulled the guy out the drivers side window and had him on the street in cuffs by the time I got to them.

Ismar and I took the guy and the car and left the area and had a long talk about his working for the CID...my memory fades at this point so I am not sure what happened after that...we had some fun and not so fun times dealing with drug dealers in Hanau, Germany in the 1980s.

The 1980’s in Hanau, Germany were tough but I made a lot of good friends in the days of Reach for the Sky we are CID.