4-5-24
CBS NEWS CHANNEL 32 YEARS AGO – Turning back the clock to 1992. Back in the day at the Newark Narcotics Squads we were nationally covered with ride along press, prime time shows and, in this video, even pre-dawn raids. On one occasion we spent a hot summer day in an undercover van with Al Roker before he was of national fame, while he was doing a story on drugs sold in NJ school zones.
The squads consisted of the BON, which was the Sheriff’s Bureau of Narcotics, Newark Police Narcotics Unit, and the Prosecutors Major Case task force. Often detectives were assigned outside of their departments to these units. In this news segment I was assigned to the Prosecutors major case squad and was tasked with targeting the public housing projects, this raid covered by CBS was my case.
This was before cell phone video, so the quality is poor as it was a VCR tape recording from 1992 and even the uploads to Facebook 15 years ago were getting pixelated. The Newark narcotics squads were the most coveted positions in the state at that time. It was the high crime epicenter of New Jersey and those who wanted to serve wanted action. Many of the hero’s in this clip have departed and went home to heaven. One, John Sczyrek, was killed in the line of duty, several were injured in the line of duty , many of us developed PTS-D from the daily raids we executed for many years.
Normally in an investigation we would use an informant or UC officer to make a drug buy before we hit places to make sure they were stocked and the suspects were on site. In this case superior officers decided because it was multiple apartments, and they wanted to bring the media , to basically bring an army of men and hit them all pre-dawn simultaneously. If you have never been in a housing project the doors were solid metal and often would take several minutes to gain entry with a battering ram or hydraulic tools. By the time you got in the drugs were being flushed and in a large scale raid like this the spotters (look outs) would be sounding the alarm when the convoy of police were pulling into the complex , almost impossible to have a success in drug seizures but it looked good on the evening news.
The political era at the time. At the time the cities in NJ were run by Democrats so if one were to work in the city the Sheriff or Mayor would expect those men to be registered Democrats. It was expected to also attended political functions unless you wanted to work midnight’s and such. Many detectives, and officers, were Republicans and voted that way but guys did what they had to do to get the job. That does not fly nowadays but 32 years ago its just the way it was. The world has changed much in 30+ years but even back then the Democrat run cities were shitholes. The job of Narcotics detectives was literally a daily battle that kept an adrenaline rush on for years , politics was never discussed and skin color didn’t matter we were all brothers and had each other’s back. To date I still keep in touch with dozens of these great men and women.