Any Customs officers here?

[Sleuth]

I retired after 26 years, 6 mo., and 3 days as a Special Agent (Criminal Investigator) with US Customs. Are there any officers from other Customs services on this board?

[Sgt Lobster]

Sleuth,

Sorry, I'm in the police but we do work with Customs & Excise. We have a small airport on our division and Customs occasionally do big operations there, especially in relation to the illegal importation of duty free cigarettes and alcohol. Customs are also involved in a variety of other law enforcement functions, and if they make arrests they will normally use the local police custody office.


Lobster.

[rio kid]

Hey Sleuth,
I'm an Inspector on the SW border. I've been in long enough to change weapons and uniforms 3 times. Now we're changing again! So how's retirement?:D

[Sleuth]

Ther IS life after Law Enforcement. But move away from the border if you can. I'm up in Northeast AZ, above 6,000 feet, where we get some snow each winter.
The finest bureau of the Government I have delt with are the folks at OPM retirement! The few problems I have had have been quickly resolved.
This gives me more time for shooting & riding horses! Try it, you'll like it!

[PeteBroccolo]

I am an ex-officio Customs officer, meaning I CAN deal with it, but USUALLY just grab the "client" and escort them back to the Port-of-entry. Which usually means all the fun of overtime and almost none of the paperwork!

[Dutyman]

Hi Sleuth, I'm a serving customs officer in the UK, attached to the National Investigation Service doing mainly Class A drug ops at the moment. How much longer we'll be around though I don't know as after nearly 800 years Tony blair has decided that we will probably be merging with some parts of the police and the immigration service and making one big FBI/DEA type organisation - history counts for nothing i guess.

[Sleuth]

Dutyman, sounds like what has happened here. Customs & Immigration investigations are now ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It feels very odd to have worked so long for an agency that no longer exists. And I never came across smugglers of people who were also smuggling anything else. Must be some sort of criminal specialization - I wonder if they are unionized?

I have worked airports & seaports, but most of my time was on the Mexican Land border and teaching Officer Safety & Survival at the Academy. My last year was the most fun, on an Indian Reservation south of Tucson, AZ. Not many innocent bystanders, a clearly defined border, and fairly easy to identify bad guys. If things continue as they are, you may get a land border-- with Scotland!

I see the comments here about the French - what has been your experience with them, Dutyman? Do you have arrest powers, or do you have to use the police? Are any UK Customs officers armed? What kinds of crime are you finding at the Chunnel, anything unusual? What do you consider a large drug bust (I'm sure your scale of referance is different from ours)?

Sleuth

[rio kid]

Hey Sleuth,
Re: retirement--I hope I make it! I've got another 10+ to go. Now, more than ever, every day is a challenge! (read headache) But I'm a border rat who may never leave it, even though I retire. Sounds like you're doing great--congratulations.

[Dutyman]

Hi Sleuth,

ah the french, don't get me started. I've been an investigator for 13 years now and I've probably done maybe 10 or so joints operations with the french. The actual officers on the ground are usually okay to an extent, but their bosses, which in france is a low ranking judge who accompanys their every move and okays their work, are real pains! Every time we start a job we'll agree who does what and what action we'll take and then they'll turn around and ignore it at the first opportunity.

At the channel tunnel (seal it up!) we had a problem in that the french, who are based on the u.k. side, were going into our offices, reading the suspect movement reports and arresting our targets before they could get to the uk. They don't get into our offices now.

Crime at the tunnel is pretty varied, it's an expensive way to cross over to france and back so the bulk of traffic is freight, we get large scale duty evasions, 10 million cigarettes or so, bulk class a movements, anything over 100 kilos class A is a "Big" job, but i did work on a one tonne cocaine op a few years back.
Immigration problems there too with albanians / iraqis / iranians and any other nationality who fancies living in the uk hiding under trains or in the railway cars.

like most of the police here in the u.k. we aren't armed, we defend ourselves with a bullet proof vest and a shiny badge. i know that the department is looking at the issue of sprays and batons for some sections but everything is up in the air at the moment with the governement looking at a possible merger. We have just got our laws written to allow us blue lights and sirens though, but still no exemption from the speed limit so we can still only pursue at 70mph.
Governments, do't ya just love 'em!

I don't want to think about the fact that I've got 27 years to go!

[Sleuth]

Well, 100 Kilos of Cannabis (dope) would be an OK bust over here. I have 2 pictures from my last year, one has me sitting on 600 pounds of dope in my Government Pickup truck. The other, taken the same day, shows me in our warehouse, leaning against a skid with, perhaps 1,000 pounds of dope, with skids behind me as far as you can see, all with the same amount of dope (not all from one seizure). Perhaps 20, 30 tons in all.

We were all armed, with issued 9mm handguns (we could carry .38, 357, .40 S&W, or .45), and 12 guage shotguns or 5.56 Styer AUG rifles in 3 shot burst. We carried radios, as well as the vehicle radios, and wore body armor for planned or expected events (it was just too darn hot). We also got nice, shiney badges - mine had a 3 digit number, the new guys & gals were in the 10,000 range. I'm not that old, they changed the number range.

27 years to go! WOW, I retired under a plan that said 20 years and age 50. I retired at 50 with 26+ years. Of course, while we did not have the UK weather (rain, as I recall), tracking smugglers across the desert at 110 degrees (F) had it's own....ah, ....features.

In general, how do the French react when they get caught? I don't recall ever arresting anyone French. Of course, they left what passes for their legal system in Mexico, so the Mexicans sometimes tried to bribe us.

We had the authority to decide if minor matters were handled civilly (fines and seizures), or criminally. Do you decide, or is the court system involved?

Thanks for the info.

[Dutyman]

Hi Sleuth,

funnily enough i'm having a hard time thinking of when I may have ever arrested a french national, maybe they don't make it to the border, the french customs can set up mobile vehicle checkpoints anywhere in the country so maybe they pick them up early?

Certainly the majority of my arrests are of british nationals, closely followed by dutch, belgians and pakistanis.

That sounds like quite an arsenal you could choose from for protection, it'd never be tolerated here, we've had officers criticised for looking too paramilitary if they tuck their trousers into their boots and wear an equipment belt with more than a torch and a leatherman tool on it.

Retiring at 50, you lucky guy. When customs moved from being tied to the military to being under the civil service in the 1970's we became subject to the civil service terms and conditions, 40 years service to get full pension, and no retiring before 60. Bloody annoying when we're doing similar work to certain parts of the police and they only have to do 30 years for a better pension.

I've only ever been offered a bribe by pakistanis, but it's normal procedure in their country so i guess they think it's the done thing when they get arrested on their first trip here.

[Sleuth]

Our uniformed Inspectors would carry at least: Handgun, 2 spare magazines, pepper spray, handcuffs flashlight, multi-purpose tool, screwdriver.
My load when tracking: Handgun, 2 spare mags, radio, 2 quarts water, GPS, rifle, spare magazine, 2 pair steel handcuffs, several flex cuffs, hard candy, gloves, cylume sticks, folding pocket knife, multi-tool, flashlight, and "odds & sods". Most guys had load bearing vests, I wore ex-military load bearing equipment. It made for a fairly heavy load over a 12 or 14 hour track.
My day-to-day load was radio, handgun, 2 spare magazines, one pair steel handcuffs, pager. I did not bother with the OC spray, although I was an OC instructor. Why? They had to spray me 3 times before it worked on me!

When you were under the military, what branch did you come under? Were smugglers treated under military or civil law? We have always been civilians, since the "disagreement" with King George in 1776.

[Dutyman]

Hi Sleuth,

we didn't actually come under the control of a specific part of the military, but our rank structure and pay bargaining followed whatever happened within the armed forces, used to make for better pay rises definitely!

The closest to us now is the Royal Navy, our dress uniforms, with all the gold braid on the sleeves, are very similar, and we carry commissions signed by HM Queen similar to a Navy officer. My current rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the services. The downside to this is that when we stay on military premises during operations, usually RAF or Naval stations, we have to live in the commissioned officers area, rather than the NCO's mess which is usually better stocked and has more interesting people!

The attached photo, if it works, is what our dress uniform looks like today, again though, it's under review, I'm not in the photo by the way it's the launching of one of our new cutters earlier this year.

[Sleuth]

As an Investigator, I never had a uniform. You guys do look like RN. Our Coast Guard started as the Revenue Cutter Service under the Treasury Dept., then got moved to Dept of Transportation, except in time of war, when they fall under the Navy.

The most unusual setup I know of is the Indian Health Service (they provide health care on Indian Reservations), part of the Public Health Service. They wear the US Navy officer's uniform, with different collar devices - and they can have beards. So here I am, on an Indian Reservation 1,000 miles from the beach, with a bunch of men & women in Navy uniforms, and the men all had large beards! It took some time to figure out.

In my time, I arrested Italians (One could not talk when his hands were cuffed!), Greeks, Mexicans, Americans, Canadiens, but I don't recall any frenchmen.

You said the chunnel is British - do you mean from end to end? Or is there a line under the channel - this side UK, that side france?

How are you fairing with the hot weather? In Arizona, "it's a dry heat", with as little as 3% humidity. Must be bad over there with the high humidity.

[PeteBroccolo]

Originally posted by Sleuth
In my time, I arrested Italians (One could not talk when his hands were cuffed!)..., Canadiens, but I don't recall any frenchmen.
LMFAOROTF - sounds like you took down my cousins, who, of course, would have been fine up-standing business back in the old boot, but they come to America, and it's all "DP, go home!":D

Hey! What's this with seizing members of the Montreal NHL team? And yeah, you're right - not many of them are French-Quebecois any more!

[Sleuth]

This was actually my first arrest. He came in on a ship with 30 pounds of dope, in 1970. My partner asked him some questions, and he said "I canna talk, you gotta my hands cuffed!" We took off one cuff, and he told us his life story. Finally, to shut him up, we put the cuffs back on!

[Dutyman]

You said the chunnel is British - do you mean from end to end? Or is there a line under the channel - this side UK, that side france?


The Chunnel is a bit of a legal quirk Sleuth. Technically the point where it emerges in France is actually a little bit of the U.K. We have our normal arrest powers etc, and on the U.K. side it's a little bit of France, where the French can do their thing.

These strips of land are probably no more than a few hundred yards wide and really just cover the area where each respective customs service have their control points located.

Supposedly this is to speed up the process of getting traffic through the tunnel, if they get their entry controls done before they get on the train. This only applies to the trains where people arrive or depart driving their cars / trucks. The passenger trains which travel all the way into London or Paris / Brussells are dealt with by having train stations at the end which look more like airport arrivals and each country also has the authority to put customs and immigration staff on the trains during the journey.

You can be thankful that you in the US never had such a terrible thing as the chunnel, it's a real sieve for getting into the country without checks - as it's an inter-European Union movement we really are a bit stuck for stopping and checking more than a tiny percentage of the travellers, mind you it's getting like that at the airports and ports now too. Still can't help but think that God made us an island for a reason and we shouldn't have messed with that status.


Regarding the weather here, it is too damn hot, I've been standing under our air-con vents when I'm in the office but as soon as I move away from them it's terrible. Not as humid as the last time I was in the U.S. in florida, that was really something else.

[Sleuth]

I never worked a bridge crossing like Detroit, but if ever want to see a false hope, visit the Mexican Border. When I worked in San Diego (San Ysidro is the world's largest land border crossing), I had my picture taken at the border fence, holding open the 8 foot high, 8 foot long "gate" cut by the smugglers - right outside my office!

At night in the winter, just at dusk, we could look at the hill just East of the Port of Entry on the US side, and see hundreds of fires the Mexicans had lit to keep warm! If you ever find the old Cheech Marin movie "Born in East LA", it was filmed on site. At the end, when 2 Border Patrolmen are overwhelmed by several hundred aliens rushing past - that is based on real events! Who knows what some of them were carrying?

[BorderRat]

[JohnKelly]

Dutyman - good Post with Photo on HM Customs. I never realised that HM Customs were related to the RN.

I do hope that you maintain your military traditions and not go the way of Australian Customs who are now more like government clerks and as such they have no idea on how to wear and maintain a dress uniform.

I noted your comment re Officers' Mess v Sergeants' Mess. I agree, the Sergeants' Mess always had the best Bar Stocks, best entertainment, more happy hours, better Dining-in-Nights, best characters, best food and always had the ability to get things done, better and cheaper than the Officers' Mess.

;)

Cheers,

JohnKelly
Australia

[Dutyman]

Hi John,

it's getting the same way here in the UK I'm afraid. The reason we were moved into the civil service in the 70's was when the government introduced VAT (Sales tax) - the department now has 22000 officers but only 1500 of them are investigators, another couple of thousand on airport / port prevention and the rest are a mixture of hq, desk bound tax collecting types. There's a real difference in the mindset of those who see themselves as customs officers and those who think of themselves as civil servants. I'm actually pretty hopeful that the review by the government will lead to the law enforcement side of work being split away from the tax side, maybe then we'll start to see some money being spent where it's needed on things like border security etc.

The tie in to the RN goes way way back. It's still legally possible for an Officer to request any member of HM armed forces to render assistance, in fact it says so in very flowery language on my commission


Sleuth - this is a report from a UK newspaper last year re the channel tunnel, sounds pretty similar to your mexican border.

Services through the tunnel were stopped shortly after 8pm on Christmas Day when the first group of 150 asylum seekers from various eastern European and Asian countries stormed the terminal, using blankets to smash down an electrified fence and overwhelming the 20 security staff and police on duty. A few were detained but 129 reached the tunnel and got seven miles inside it before French police rounded them up. They were questioned for three hours and then returned to the Sangatte centre without charge. By this time, another 400 illegal immigrants had attempted to storm the terminal. French riot police drove back the mob at the main entrance, detaining 50 but allowing the others to return to the refugee centre.

[BorderRat]

w

[Sleuth]

I still think the US Border Patrol is the only agency where a single officer will approach 100+ persons (aliens), tell them they are all under arrest, and they will (usually) meekly go along. At least they used to. Of course, some times they break up like a covy of quail running in all directions - somtimes INTO the BP vans to hide.

We all carried extra water for the aliens we found. I was involved in a major incident resulting in a death. While the helo was evacuating the injured, with all kinds of BP, Customs, and Tribal Police (this was on an Indian Reservation) milled around, an alien came up and asked me for water. Turned out he was part of a group of about 8 that were lost in the desert. We gave them water, then the BP took them away.

In my time with Customs I did all kinds of cases. I had several cases of posionous snakes being smuggled into the country (I HATE snakes), lots of parrots (worth more per ounce than heroin), endangered species including cactus parts, it was a really varied life, along with the dope, dope, dope cases.
I also did a lot of fraud cases, people trying to cheat the US out of it's lawful duties. It was nice to recover a Million dollars in one case - it holds taxes down.

My favorite indictment? I convicted a guy of smuggling "an unknown quantity of an unknown substance". I have a copy of the indictment, and he did go to prision!

Border Rat, I have a case that was upheld in the "Law Course for Customs Officers" book. I got around a bit.

[SWAT1]

Dutyman
Ah! The memories. If I am thinking right, and there can't be that many 1 tonnes of pure cocaine coming in up the River Thames. I planned the Police side of 'Operation Emerge', yes, I was the guy that lead the team with the armoured mechanical digger through the doors of the fortified 'slaughter', while the second team along with the SBS stormed the ship 'Foxtrot Five'. Whilst with SO19 I did like a good C&E job, and believe me, there were many!
Take Care All.
Steve:D

[BorderRat]

s

[Dutyman]

Sorry SWAT1, not op. emerge this time, there have been a few tonne ops now, but mine was the first one, Op Singer/Fullbloom, one ton coke inside lead ingots. I have a model of the ingots on my desk here, made from the lead we melted out the night we removed the coke after breaking into the slaughter house, and then reconstructed the ingots to look untouched - brilliant operation only let down by the legal profession who spent 4 months at court finding fault with spelling, officers eyesight, memory and other things not actually related to their clients being in possession of 907 kilos of class A.

The weekend emerge went down, was around the time windsor castle burned down wasn't it?, i only remember because we were taking 17 tons of cannabis off a ship "Brittania Gazelle" and nothing else got news after the bloody castle went on fire!

Have to say though, I've worked a couple of times with the SBS on boat jobs, cruising the Bay of Biscay and found them excellent people, bit disturbing when they know every line to the limited video collection onboard ship "Terminator, Predator etc".

Were you in SO19 during 96/97 - i worked a job with them called Jaeger, nicking some lads in Hayes for a four ton cannabis boat job?
I think the OIC was called something like Espanoza, or similar?

[SWAT1]

Dutyman
Wow, time flies. Yes I was Black Team Leader SO19. 1990 - 1997 I remember operation Jaeger by name but don't remember if I was on it! We did quite a lot for your guys in those days they were great jobs, I got some nice letters from C&E thanking the team and giving the result of the court case, nice touch. The job you were on around the time of Emerge, was it off the coast of Scotland? we were floated one around that time that required abseiling onto the deck of a tanker, I think it was eventually passed to SBS?
Do you still do any jobs with SO19? I retired injured in 1997 and now live in the US.
Take Care!
Steve

[Sleuth]

Interesting stuff, I had no idea the UK was getting such large loads! We had smaller quantiies, but it was every day, 24/7. I am unfamiliar with some of your units, I know what the SBS is, what is the SO-19 unit? Is it Police or part of the Military? If you prefer, PM me and I can provide my background if this is not public information.

Here, the Military could get us to a place, but we would have to make the entry. That's why there are so many SWAT teams. The Posse Comitatus act, past after the Civil War (ours, not yours), does not allow the use of the military in civil police operations.
This made it interesting along the border. We had military units training in small unit tactics, patrolling, and OP/LP ops. If they spotted anything, we had to respond. They were armed, but only for personal protection. They got some excellent real world training out of it.

BTW, how did you get the coke out of the lead without burning it? (More interesting, how did they get it in to the molten metal?) Did you attempt a controlled delivery?

Dutyman, does HMC&E (or is it Royal C&E ?)get involved in the investigation of the export of "munitions and articles of war" from the UK? This was one of my major areas of investigation.

[kingsman]

Hey. You got a new old customs inspector here. New because I have been on the job less than a year. Old because I joined in september of last year.

Hope I make it to 30 years and retirement, or that they change it to 20 years and I can retire. Either way, I am still on probation and hoping not to get canned for something stupid.

I work at the northern border, in the city of detroit.

[Dutyman]

Sorry for delays in answering, been away for a few days doing my motorbike refresher course with Thames Valley police, excellent fun!

Right, questions in order i got them:
For SWAT1:

Brittania Gazelle was an oil rig support vessel, which if i remember right was on it's way to holland, coming around the north of scotland we landed some c&e officers and some sbs from a chopper flown off a navy ship on fisheries patrol duties, the gazelle was then brought down to hull for unloading. Took us three days solid to shift it all!

I haven't worked on an op with so-19 for a couple of years now, but I'm based oop north as they say now so I'm reliant on ARV's for anything tasty, but they enjoy the work, beats giving a ticket for no raod tax. I know the london office still use them regularly, especially now the turks and albanians are shooting each other in the streets outside police stations over control of the smack trade.

For SLEUTH:

It's H.M.C&.E - as in "Her Majesty's".

SO19 is the specialist firearms team attached to Scotland Yard, equivalent to a SWAT I suppose, SWAT1 would be the man to ask. There is a book written by a former member called "Good Guys Wear Black" or something like that, about their operations.

Getting coke out of lead ingots: Not easy, the gear was contained within a steel box which was placed into the ingot during casting. I don't know if you've ever seen one, but scrap lead is moved by basically melting it down into a crude flat bottomed conical shape, placing a couple of u shaped iron bars into it as handles for crane-work. when the lead was molten, these guys placed the boxes into the mould they were using. Steel has a higher melting point so it didn't affect the boxes. Getting the stuff out was actually pretty easy. About a week before, the dutch had arrested a colombian guy who was shipping coke by the same method into europe, he had a template on him, which when youput it on the bottom of the ingot showed you where to cut a flap in the base of the lead to get to the box. After we got that, it was just a question of getting into the warehouse they were using to store the ingots.

When we work with the military, usually the navy, it's mainly boat jobs out to sea. We go with them in assault boats, or helicopters to the suspect vessel and either board over the side or fast rope down onto the ship. They contain the prisoners and secure the area and we carry out the legal process of the arrest. No mention is made of military participation in our statements, but it does tend to get publicised anyway, usually by the navy for p.r. purposes.

We do deal with weapons and "munitions and articles of war", both import and export. As you'll probably know, it's illegal to have a handgun, or anything automatic in the UK, and getting old weapons reactivated is a favourite pastime of some criminals, so we often seize gun parts needed to do that. Also, if you remember it, HMC&E were the ones who seized the iraqi "supergun" barrels before they left the UK, turned into a real intelligence agency snafu that one.
We've also seized nuclear detonators in a joint op with fbi and u.s. customs.

We also investigate money laundering in the u.k. as well, and some other bizarre taxes and things that the government keep tacking on to us.

[Huey14]

Originally posted by Dutyman

SO19 is the specialist firearms team attached to Scotland Yard, equivalent to a SWAT I suppose, SWAT1 would be the man to ask. There is a book written by a former member called "Good Guys Wear Black" or something like that, about their operations.


Bloody good book, that. Had a copy until my mother threw it away in a fit of anger. Cant find a copy since. I think there was a second one, too. Cant remember the title right now.

[SWAT1]

OK Guys (Throws his hands up in surrender):eek:
SO19 (Special Operations Department -19)is the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) London, Tactical Firearms/Hostage Rescue unit. 6 full time teams and more work than you care to mention. In my time as team leader I did more than 1,000 high risk operation in 5 years. I'm afraid I must come out of the closet, I guess too much time has passed, I did write the 'Good Guys Wear Black' and the sequal; "The Glory Boys' under the name Steve Collins (There, it's done!). Both are now only available on Amazon UK.com and no, I don't get any royalties it's been too long!
Take Care All!
Steve:D :D :p

[Dutyman]

I should have guessed you'd need more than a police pension to relocate to the sunshine state!:)

Royalties would help!

[Sleuth]

Dutyman, thanks for all the info. I know the US Customs Special Agent who worked on the neuclear triggers case, as well as a guy involved in the supergun investigation. In addition to the usual 5/6 guns in the car trunk going to Mexico, I got involved in a attempted ground to air rocket case and some F-14 parts that tried to leave the country. It's so much fun dealing with these guys who want you to supply the materials so they can kill you.

SWAT1, I'll have to get a copy of your books. I never considered SWAT from the UK side. Were you on call country wide, or were there other teams in other areas?

[Brit]

SWAT1

I have also read your book , it's very good. I found the part about the Russain diplomat very interesting. Hope you have a good retirement ;)