A Diner of Bullets and Bombs

On the beach in Del Mar is an expensive restaurant filled with the upper crust of society. Movie stars, politicians, Captains of industry and drug cartel members eat there. The houses surrounding the eatery are worth between 12 and 50 million. The sun is setting while kids play in the sand and surfers tear it up on a wave. Four people playing two man volleyball. One of them just dove for a ball, rolling in the warm sand which is now sticking to his sweaty skin. While high society is sipping their Dirty Martini’s and swigging a Mojito, at the table next to them three men talked about committing a kidnapping. They are Mexican drug cartel.

As part of a case we needed plan a take down. One of our guys posing as a drug cartel member met with cartel members who make a living off of drug rips and kidnappings. These crooks stole millions of dollars, hundreds of pounds of cocaine, kidnapped people at the direction of the cartels and sold all kinds of weapons. Rarely if ever do these crimes get reported to the police. How exactly does one explain to the police your boyfriend got kidnapped because he cheated the cartel out of $ 500K? How do you call the cops and say these guys broke into my house in the middle of the day with assault rifles and took 30 pounds of methamphetamine. By the way they broke up a brick and spread it around the house. If the police respond the victim is going to jail.

In the restaurant the three sat talking while several patrons knew exactly what was going on. At a table close by was a couple casually eating diner. Under the table was a cache of weapons. They were UC security. At the bar were two additional people, also armed. They were counter surveillance for the crooks. Behind them was another under cover cop watching their every move. They would have had no chance of survival if they pulled out guns. In the lifeguard tower was a detective with a video camera. With him was a react team of detectives with assault rifles. In the sand watching the sunset was the sergeant and another detective calling the movements of the operation. Two other teams were positioned around powerhouse park. “Waiter can I have another Martini? Thank you!” A clueless banker sunk deeper into the events unfolding around him, clueless as to what to do in the event of a shootout. Diving over the cement wall into the sand never crossed his mind. How to launder $100,000 for a shady friend was.

The statements have been altered:
Crook: I’ll do anything you want. I want to do business with you.
UC: I know where a shipment of dope is coming and I want you to rip it.
Crook: It could get messy. If they don’t do what we want, we will kill them.
UC: I expect them to be armed. No one sits on that kind of dope unarmed.
Crook: That’s okay, this is our job. We do this all the time.
UC: I may want these guys taken to Mexico. (This is a one way trip.)
Crook: We bring zip ties and duck tape.
UC: Good, we’ll hook up next week for the details. But we will have to move fast.
Crook to a waiter walking by: Can I get some fudge cake for desert? Certainly.

As I listened to the conversation it dawned on me why this worked. It also made me realize why I could not do something like that. The UC spoke with knowledge and authority. He was believable. The UC was comfortable in his skin and the skin he was portraying. He knew what to say and how to say it. He spoke as though he had the backing of the SDPD. He did. He spoke as though he had the cartel behind him. The crook was mesmerized.

Jesus talked to the crowds at the sermon on the mount. They were mesmerized. He told them things they had never heard before. He pushed them to new levels of spirituality. He called them on their sin. They listened. He talked about legalism. They were convicted. He talked about a new way of thinking that went beyond just the Jewish people…they accepted it. Matthew 7:28 sums it up well. “…the crowds were amazed at his teachings because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law.” Jesus spoke with power because he knew the mind of God the father.

You and I can tell when someone is trying to sell us snake oil. They don’t believe it themselves. They push it too softly or come on too strong and over sell like a bad Billy Mays infomercial. I don’t want to be a Billy Mays commercial for Christ. I want my life to be organic, fresh and powerful because I understand and obey God. That is the basis of our power, Christ! Matthew 5-7 is a great place to start searching for the mind of Christ and the basis of our power.

D (CIU), R (CIU), S (Gangs), M (ATF) and J (ATF) are my heroes. They know why. I can’t go into a lot of detail yet (soon) but they have pulled off one of the biggest cases in the history of the SDPD. Not in terms of numbers of arrests, but in terms of importance to the safety and welfare of San Diego and California. The restaurant was a small piece of the case.

Over the next few weeks you will get more of this case.


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