Staff Writer
The Augusta Chronicle interviewed seven Richmond County investigators involved in Augusta Ink. Some questions and answers from the interviews:
Q: Whose idea was it to pursue an undercover operation, and how did you decide on a location?
Lt. Scott Peebles: The actual idea of going commercial with it was Maj. (Ken) Autry's.
Q: How did you decide on the Tobacco Road location?
Lt. Peebles: What I've told people is we focused on where the bulk of the gang activity was, and at that time a lot of it was focused in south Augusta with O-Dub, Meadowbrook and GDB.
Q: Who found it?
Lt. Peebles: Actually, Chris (an undercover officer who has not revealed his full name) was the one that found this place, and I think from the minute that we all saw it, we thought this was it.
Q: Did you play certain roles while you were undercover?
Chris: I controlled the money situation. "Yardie" made the deals and I had to get the money from the guy at the office. I spent a lot of time in the office, initially as a businessman 'cause that's what my role was in the shop. The tattoo artist referred his contacts to me initially.
Investigator Kendall "Yardie" Brown: My main role was to watch his (Chris') back, to watch the tattoo guy's back. Mainly, most of the guys that walked in had that level of fear that they wouldn't come in here acting or even try to take the place. It got to the point that these guys were bringing in guns and we had so much instilled fear in them and they wouldn't even bring a loaded gun to us.
Q: How did you do that?
Investigator Brown: I'm from the streets. You've got to be able to talk to them and ... to know exactly what they're doing if you once walked that path.
Q: Was there ever a time you thought your cover was blown?
Lt. Peebles: All the time. ... When we walked into that room for the press conference in front of all those guns, it wasn't until then that we even realized. I still even now sit back and think, "God, how did we get through that?"
Q: What impact did the operation have on your families?
Sgt. Blaise Dresser: It would suck because you'd have the night off and you'd be at a party somewhere and you'd get a phone call. You'd have to look at your wife and say, "I'll be right back."
Lt. Peebles: But you wouldn't be right back. That's why Blaise got in so much trouble because he'd always say, "I'll be right back," but she knew, and everyone else knew, that he wasn't coming right back. I think all our families knew we were doing something big and it was different than anything we had ever done.
Investigator Brown: I think my wife thought I had another family originally. I would just tell her I had to go out and do something. It was 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I couldn't drive my own personal car because I couldn't be seen in it. Something simple as food shopping with your wife - you couldn't go to the fair, movies, anything. You know that these guys out there wanted to rob you, they don't know who you really are and then on the same aspect, the safety of my wife and my daughter. They didn't ask to work this operation, but I did. I volunteered for it.
Lt. Peebles: There's got to be a lot of trust when your husband's not walking in until 4 o'clock in the morning.
Investigator Dan Carrier: I basically told my wife, "I'm working on something big. I can't tell you what it is. If I told you what it is, I could get fired and go to federal prison and all that stuff. Just know that it's something that's going to be worth it in the long run for us." On the days that I got home on time and nothing was going on, everything was great ... but on the days when I had to say "I got to go." ... You know, after this was all said and done, she understood what we did and why it had to be that way.
Q: Was it only gang members who were tattooed at the shop?
Sgt. Dresser: We had soldiers come get tattoos. I just found out last week that someone who was a relative of law enforcement came in there. Didn't have a clue what was going on. After it went down, they went to their father and said "I got a tattoo there." The father said, "You know, they did a good job on the tattoo."
Q: Why did you decide to end the operation when you did?
Lt. Peebles: Mid-November had always been our target date and we knew that we would be flexible with that, but it just it kind of ran that way. But it's just, there's only so long you can go - so much you can get out of it - then sooner or later you have to start locking these people up if you want to have an effect on the community. We could keep it running forever but we'd never be able to lock anybody up. So that's not the whole purpose of it.
