One of former undercover cop Charlie Spillers’ most memorable arrests came when officers dragged a suspect out of an occupied vehicle and violently threw him against the car.
It was Spillers who was manhandled by police, and his faux arrest not only allowed him to maintain his cover for future stings, but it also removed him from the potential crossfire of being in a vehicle occupied by a nervous and armed heroin dealer as other officers trained their service weapons on the men.
“Thankfully about the time I was about ready to faint from fear, an investigator ran around to my side of the car, jerked the door open, grabbed me, pulled me out and slammed me up against the back of the car. It never felt so good to be manhandled by the police,” he said. “Then they put the cuffs on me. I think they put them on too tight, but I didn’t mind.”
Spillers shared that story and others from his book, “Confessions of an Undercover Agent: Adventures, Close Calls and the Toll of a Double Life,” with Starkville Rotarians Monday.
As a former Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics officer, Spillers’ career implanted him in the Gulf Coast’s blossoming drug trade. He went on to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney for 23 years, highlighted by three tours in Iraq for the Department of Justice as a justice attache and attorney-adviser to the Iraqi High Tribunal.
Spillers’ book includes anecdotes about his own close calls and the heroism of others, including his former MBN partner Sara Evans. Evans wounded an alleged drug dealer and helped take an undercover officer to the hospital after he was wounded in a shootout outside of Columbus.
“To me, that story is about dedication and courage. That’s our law enforcement. That’s the kind of people we have, and we’re proud of them,” he said. “There are some stories that still make me shiver a little bit thinking about them. Writing this book, I realized that, back then, I thought the work was exciting. Now, I think it was more dangerous than I thought at the time.”
‘Confessions’ was published this spring by University Press of Mississippi.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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