Other Columns by Kay R. Daly
Kay R. Daly Bio

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Over a decade ago, I went on a series of "ride alongs" with undercover drug task force officers in the Miami Police Department. Known as "jump outs", these officers would set up "buy-bust" operations where an undercover officer or a snitch desperate for cash would make a buy from a dealer then the "jump outs" would speed to the location in their unmarked vehicles and make arrests. More often than not, the drug busts would yield large stashes of drugs, cash and weapons.

The real drug problem at that time was starting to blossom in the rural areas. Gang leadership figured out there was a larger profit margin for drugs sold in the rural areas given the limited number of suppliers. Fewer police personnel and smaller police department budgets in rural areas contributed to an explosion of rural narcotics trafficking. Quite frankly, the risk of getting caught for narcotics crimes in rural areas was significantly lower.

Whether urban or rural, one thing was an absolute constant -- narcotics operations were always one step ahead of law enforcement.

An officer in Miami once told me of a program to try to reduce the number of deaths of undercover narcotics officers using state of the art military technology. Basically, an undercover officer would wear an infrared beacon that could be only detected by a particular scope.

The program was short-lived, however, when a rather large bale of marijuana, dropped out of a smuggler's Cessna into the waters off of Miami, was tagged with one of the newly deployed infrared beacons. The undercover narcotics officers were literally flashing a neon sign to the bad guys.

The most haunting memories of these outings with law enforcement were the children who had been recruited into the drug trade. At all hours of the day or night, whether rural or urban neighborhoods, little kids from the age of 6,7 or 8 would be riding around on their bicycles, training wheels barely off, but a crisp $100 bill in their pockets to look out for "Five-O" -- the police.

These entry level jobs in the drug trade would lead to bigger jobs with greater responsibility. In fact, these juvenile offenders were a critical part of the drug organizations because these children served as shields for the main criminal activity. Juvenile offenders would serve significantly less time than adult offenders and if caught, their temporary absence from the narcotics operation would be less of an interruption to the bottom line.

While gangs are not the sole source of youth violence, they certainly are a contributing factor. According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, between 1985 and 1994, juveniles under the age of 18 were responsible for 26% of violent crime.

In fact, according to the FBI, between 1985 and 1995, there was a 249% increase in gun-related murders committed by kids under the age of 18. If this trend continues, the National Center for Juvenile Justice reports that the number of crimes committed by youth between the age of 10 and 17 could more than double by the year 2010.

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