Police1.com Report / Critical Alert
Criminals have come up with a new trick to quickly elude police within their crack dens and hang-outs: false floors with “booby-traps” or trap doors, and quick-escape hatches.
These floors are constructed to give an appearance of a normal flooring so any approaching law enforcement officers will not hesitate to walk on it. Once an officer’s weight is on the false flooring, it collapses out from under him and he falls along with it.
With many booby trapped floors, there is an additional danger waiting below. These dangers range from spikes, to nail boards or even a tub of acid, to attack dogs. I consider myself lucky that the booby trapped floor I encountered was not equipped with another dangerous trap waiting below.
Every law enforcement officer working the streets, prisons and jails, or a probation and parole beat must carefully consider the potential presence of booby traps during their daily duties.
It was 9:30 p.m., in the Flatbush neighborhood, in the middle of Brooklyn. Our undercover officer just purchased five black-topped vials of crack cocaine for $50 from a peep-hole spot. The crack epidemic was in full swing.
The crack den was an old video arcade taken over by the Spangler Posse, a violent Jamaican gang heavily involved in the crack trade.
After the “UC” was safely away from the set, we began our raid.
Sergeant Larry Festa, Detective Paul Rossi, and I walked quickly to the front door while the other field team members covered the rear.
Detective Rossi, swung a heavy-duty sledgehammer and struck the door on the lock over and over, until the thick metal door swung open. Once inside, we ran abruptly into a darkened narrow lobby and were met by another metal door five feet away. Detective Rossi quickly shouted “Stand Back!” and he fiercely struck the door as he did the exterior door.
The door swung open. We started looking for anyone who might be the dealer and for anyone, for that matter, moving in the shadows of the poorly-lit rooms. The drug dealer, according to the UC, was only a voice and a set of eyes on the other side of the exterior door peep hole.
Floor “Booby Trap” with tiles intact appears normal and safe:
After entering the inner sanctum of the crack den, we heard sounds in the rear of the old arcade next to a Pac-Man machine. Shining our flashlights and pointing our revolvers, which we were only authorized to carry at the time, I saw a person climb downward into an apparent trap door. He was a medium-built male with long dreadlocks. I quickly shouted, “Police Don’t Move!”
I ran toward the trap door as it closed. Within a few feet of the trap door, I felt my feet suddenly become strangely lighter. This feeling lasted only for a fleeting moment, like I was walking on air, until I realized I was falling through the floor to the basement below. Luckily, depending on how you want to look at it, I dropped straight down to a beam supporting a series of false floor tiles and abruptly and fiercely landed on top of the beam which was between my legs. The pain in my groin, overshadowed the pain in my lower back, but both were overshadowed by the anger I felt, now, at the dreadlocked crack pusher.
I pulled my twisted pain-filled body from the beam and looked downward to see how far the floor below was from the ceiling which I now dangled. Still very angry and determined to catch the Dread, I contemplated jumping 10 feet to the ground but I was soon interrupted when the beam supporting me, and the floor around me, collapsed. I crashed to the cold concrete basement floor with debris falling around and on top of me. I heard the Sergeant’s voice, shouting “Don’t Move! We’ll get you help!”
False “Booby Trap” Floor under construction
Even angrier, after my fall, I disregarded the sergeant’s orders and stood up. With pieces of wood and a layer of dust in my hair, I picked up my revolver and flashlight from the floor.
I stood up and started to walk toward the next room where I heard noises and assumed the pusher was located trying to escape. I peeked around the doorway leading to the next room. I shined my extra-bright flashlight toward the noise and captured the Dread like a deer in a car’s headlights.
I pointed my gun in his direction and shouted, out of anger and pain, “I am going to blow your #$%&?@ head off!”, in a high-pitched voice, probably from the pain in my groin, that momentarily even frightened me.
The dreadlocked pusher stopped dead in his tracks apparently opening another trap door on a wall, we learned later, leading to an adjacent building. “Don’t shoot, Mon!” he screamed in a heavy Jamaican accent.
By this time, Sergeant Festa and Detective Rossi arrived to my side in the basement and knocked the pusher, who was obviously still thinking about escaping, to the ground and placed him into handcuffs behind his back. Just then, I collapsed to my knees from the pain and the weakness in my legs.
I spent that night in the hospital and several weeks of x-rays, MRIs and physical therapy. As a result, I sustained two severely herniated discs in my lower back, a bruised knee and strained groin (you figure it out).
To this day, 16 years later, as a result of drug dealer’s booby trapped floor, I suffer daily from low back pain and sciatica, (pain emanating from the lumbar region of the lower back, into the legs).
Booby trapped floors, like the one I experienced, are becoming more common.
I consider myself lucky that the booby trapped floor I encountered was not equipped with another dangerous trap waiting below.
Several times over the past 17 years of my 23 year law enforcement career, I have experienced booby traps, elaborate fortification systems, and escape devices. It is an important aspect of law enforcement that is often overlooked and more often extremely dangerous.
Criminals are becoming more savvy and more ruthless while the courts seem to be more lenient. These criminals have nothing to lose! Booby traps and other devices to aid escape will become more prevalent and more potentially lethal.
Be careful out there!
