I’ve watched Barry Cooper’s Never Get Busted Again, Volume 2: Never Get Raided twice now, and maybe it’s just because the novelty has worn off, but this video wasn’t quite as much fun as the first one. It’s probably still worth buying, however, if you really need to know this kind of information…if you know what I mean.
(A lot of people will stumble across this review who don’t know me. You should keep in mind that I’m an anti-drug-war activist, but I don’t sell or even use these drugs myself, so I may not be the best judge of the soundness of Barry’s advice.)
The first section is about growing marijuana outdoors, and it’s a good example of what Barry Cooper brings to the table in the war against the War on Drugs. Barry and his team go out in a helicopter, find a marijuana field from the air, then go in on the ground and find debris, tools, and marijuana plants as Barry explains how the DEA finds growing fields—looking for worn paths near streams, spotting trees that have been cut down to remove shade, and finding litter characteristic of a grow operation. It’s a fascinating insight into how drug cops do their jobs.
The next few sections are about growing pot indoors, and the style is a little stilted as Barry starts working from a script. The DVD is always more entertaining when Barry is allowed to be Barry.
This part has a lot of information about the technology of operating a secret grow room, which might be useful, but a fair amount of it is spent discussing operational security: Being careful about heat escaping from the house, watching your electric bill, telling no one about your grow operation, procuring supplies safely. I suspect there are better sources for this information on the internet, but it’s still useful to hear what a former narcotics officer thinks is effective.
Barry gives one piece of advice in this section that really worries me. When advising how to safely order growing supplies over the internet, Barry says to use a public computer and pay for it with one of those gift credit cards you can buy with cash. Then he discusses how to ship it safely:
Simply pick a shipping address of a friend or a relative and explain to them you have a gift for your wife or significant other being shipped to them—you didn’t want it shipped to your house or your wife or significant other would figure out the surprise.
This guarantees that grow equipment will go somewhere that can’t be traced.
That’s not cool. Neither is Barry’s advice that if you buy supplies directly from a store with cash, you borrow somebody else’s car to make the pickup.
Barry argues that you’re not getting your friends in trouble because they aren’t operating a grow room, but I don’t buy it for two reasons: First, getting raided by the police is going to suck for your friends, even if the cops don’t find anything. Second, you don’t know what your friend is doing in the privacy of his home that the police might frown on. If somebody did this to me and brought the drug police to my door, I’d be seriously pissed off. We wouldn’t be friends any more.
On the other hand, the operational security is fascinating, as Barry explains how to approach and leave a growing supply shop, and how to handle being tailed by the police. Barry also explains the importance of disposing of trash in a thought-provoking way:
Controlling trash should enter your mind as controlling evidence.
The video takes a dark turn in the section on how to handle a “Knock and Talk” or “Tap and Rap” as police call it when they come to your door to ask you a bunch of questions. This is another section where Barry’s advice differs from other people.
All the people I arrested, and all the people emailing me for help, made one critical error: They all opened the door for the police. A lot of well-meaning drug reformers and attorneys have instructed citizens to open the door, step out on the porch, and shut the door behind them, when confronted with a knock and talk.
When I was a narcotics officer, If I could get the person to open the door, I knew I could search their house. I would explain I smelled marijuana, that if they forced me to go get a search warrant I was going to arrest everybody in the house, and seize their home and put them in prison, or they could simply cooperate, sign a consent-to-search form, and allow me to search. It worked every time.
Had they not opened the door for me, I never would have been able to manipulate them into signing a consent to search their home.
Interspersed with Barry’s advice is an interview with Ryan Rodriguez, President of the Dallas Chapter of NORML, in which he tells the story of a raid on his house. His voice is filled with regret as he describes how the cops threatened to arrest his wife and take his child, but said they’d let him go if he cooperated. So he cooperated. And then the cops arrested him anyway.
Barry says to “Never, ever, ever open your door for the police.” His demonstration of what to do instead may not be the best idea, but it’s my favorite clip of Barry being Barry:
[Update: This video stopped working and displayed a message that it’s no longer available. I think I fixed it, but I do not pretend to understand the mysteries of Youtube yet.]
After a section in which Barry digs into his background as a police dog handler to explain how to canine-proof your home, we come to a pair of segments that give me pause: Spotting undercover cops, and spotting informants.
If Barry’s advice is good, it sounds like it has the potential to endanger police officers. Barry anticipates this reaction, and has this to say about it:
If you’re a police officer, and the information I’m about to share bothers you or makes you feel unsafe, then stop being an undercover officer, and channel your law enforcement energy to chasing violent offenders.
I oppose the War On Drugs, and I think Barry Cooper’s argument here is probably correct, but I’m not so sure of myself that I’m going to repeat any of his advice on spotting undercover cops and informants. You can get the video if you need know.
The final substantive section is Barry’s explanation of how to sell marijuana safely—without getting busted. I have no clue if any of it is good advice, but I’ll say this: If I was thinking of selling drugs, Barry’s video might make me think again. It looks like a lot of hard work.
In the last few sections, Barry address some drug war issues. In the first one, he mentions the Lima raid, in which police killed an unarmed woman holding a baby, shooting off one of the baby’s fingers in the process. He blames raids like that on police being adrenaline junkies, and he asks them to find another way.
The last section is Barry and his wife telling parents to teach their children the truth about drugs, and about the War on Drugs. Then the DVD ends with clips of Barry’s media appearances.
I don’t think this video will make as big of a splash as the first one, but it has some advice that’s probably worth following.
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