♪
[ Siren wails ]
-Few have what it takes to work undercover,
living in secrecy and constant danger,
unrecognized beyond their tightest circles.
Undercovers put some of the worst criminals behind bars,
but they never get to tell their stories...
until now on...
♪
-Undercover detectives need to be vigilant at all times...
...ultimately alone,
facing the most dangerous criminals on the street.
[ Door latches ]
-[ Speaking indistinctly ]
-For a female undercover, those risks multiply,
putting both body and soul in harm's way.
♪
[ Radio chatter ]
[ Horn blares ]
-Looking back on it, um...
I-I-I feel -- I feel...
Ohh.
[ Sighs ]
Hm.
Looking back on it,
I could have lost my life that day.
♪
-Plagued by a recent wave of violent crime,
the community of Bedford-Stuyvesant
asked for police action to put a stop to it.
♪
-It's a regular city neighborhood.
It's an urban neighborhood where people are working,
and you have crime in the community
and you got people selling guns and drugs.
They're all over the place.
And people were getting frustrated.
You know, the community was getting upset.
You have good people that were just in fear.
The streets were being run by these guys now,
and it was getting out of control,
and this now had to be addressed.
-Tyshawn Burgess was the main guy
that ran that area.
♪
-These guys were already getting recognition
for just shooting random people --
just shooting people, and critically wounding,
paralyzing them.
One of the reasons that we focused on Tyshawn
is because he was one of the leaders of the crew
and he was responsible.
-He would purchase guns, sell them,
then he would purchase the drugs with it.
And with the drugs, he can distribute it
through his crew to sell in that neighborhood.
-They were causing chaos, and the gun-suppression team
was brought in to address that condition,
and they also brought in probably
one of the best undercovers to get it done.
-My name is Shaulene Wright.
I've been an undercover detective for 17 years.
I worked in the Gun Violence Suppression Division.
I have two boys.
When my kids were younger,
I didn't want them to know what I did.
They felt that I was just a regular patrol officer
making arrests, answering radio runs,
domestic violence, assaults.
But they didn't know what I did at all.
I used to work midnights in narcotics
because it was a better deal for me with my kids.
So when they would go off to school,
I would be sleeping,
then I'd get up, I'll cook,
and then they'll come home...
I'll put them to bed...
and then I'll go back to work,
walking the streets, you know, trying to buy drugs.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Sniffles ]
♪
My disguise -- that's my sons' clothes.
Like, when they grew out of it,
I said, "Hey, let me get your clothes,"
and they was like, "What are you getting it for?"
I was like, "Uh, donation."
[ Laughs ]
You know, so, yeah, I don't bring my work clothes home.
I don't even wash it in my own washing machine at home.
[ Laughs ] I leave that in my locker.
It is scary going into apartment buildings,
going into apartments.
You don't know what to expect.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
I'm scared of being raped. I'm scared of being killed.
As a female undercover, you don't want to portray yourself
as sexy at all,
because the drug dealers,
they want for you to perform
any form of sexual act on them,
instead of you giving them the money.
You know, they scan you and see what you're about.
That's why the clothing is important,
the lingo is important...
...you know, and how you interact with them.
You're portraying to be a drug dealer or user.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Laughter ]
So, a user -- usually you don't have straight white teeth.
They have rotted teeth.
So you go to the makeup store
and you get Halloween costume stuff
to put on your teeth to make it discolored.
You know, you just -- You do different things.
-Yo...
-When I had to go up on the 11th floor in a project...
and my field team, all they can do is hear me --
they can't see me --
it's just letting them know exactly where I'm at.
-Every time a female gets out of the car, you worry.
You worry about, and you know, what somebody may do.
Shaulene is not a big woman.
If you're out of sight, you're too far.
-I always have my weapon on me.
Always have my weapon on me.
♪
-[ Speaking indistinctly ]
♪
[ Car door closes ]
-My name is Manny Matos.
I was the former undercover coordinator
for the Organized Crime Control Bureau for the NYPD.
I did 34 years with the police department.
-I trust Manny Matos with my life.
Wholeheartedly. Yes.
He is our advocate.
He does everything for us.
He's a great boss.
You call him anytime, and he would answer,
and he would show up to where you're at
and he would handle it.
-Shaulene was brought in because she's one of the best.
She has that ability to convince people who she is.
-My undercover role was Tracy, a drug user.
-She was saying that she was a drug user,
but not just an everyday nickel-and-dime crackhead.
She was somebody that was also buying weight
and distributing the stuff.
-I was pretending that I would gather the money
in the neighborhood I lived in
and then I'll come and buy for everyone else.
-The main reason to bringing in Shaulene
is because we want to be able to buy enough weight
to get a Title III search warrant,
because that's gonna be necessary to go forward
in disassembling this organization.
-To secure a warrant for a Title III wire tap,
Shaulene needs to purchase
a significant amount of drugs from Tyshawn
and gather a trail of audio and video recordings
of the deals.
This warrant would be applied to Tyshawn's phone,
as well as those of over a dozen of his associates.
-She started out with a confidential informant...
...that led her to Tyshawn.
Once the C.I. already does the introduction
and the subject is comfortable enough
just to deal with the undercover alone,
we call that a wash and we wash out the C.I.
and just deal with the undercover directly
alone with the subject.
That way, you can protect the C.I.
and get them out of the way, and now it's just us.
She made him feel so comfortable
that not only did she buy one eight-ball,
but within a few days, she bought two like nothing.
And when you're new,
you kind of get raised up to the undercover.
He wasn't raised up to her.
So she was great, right from the jump.
And now it's just her developing the case,
getting as much information as we can to the group
so that we can start for prosecution.
It was a regular day.
We tacked up and we went to the set
to purchase from Tyshawn.
♪
When I'm in the field, there's a leader car,
which usually have a supervisor in it...
two chase cars, and a tactical car.
And the "ghost" is in separate vehicles.
♪
-Shaulene's field team needs to keep her in view
but also be far enough away from her
so as not to raise the suspicion of Tyshawn.
-The ghost is there for my safety,
to make sure I don't get killed,
I don't get jumped, I don't get raped,
sexually assaulted in any kind of way.
That's what he's there for.
-Shaulene heads out onto the street to meet with Tyshawn.
-Shaulene zips up her coat,
blocking her camera from recording visuals.
The only communication she has with her team now is her audio.
What you are about to see is a visual re-creation...
with the actual audio from this incident.
The voices of active officers have been disguised.
-The ghost alerts Shaulene
to the presence of someone circling around on a bike
near where she plans to do the buy.
-I'm leery. it just was out of the norm.
-When you start seeing other people, there's a concern.
Why is this different today?
It's an indication as to we got to be careful
because, for whatever reason, there's something going on.
-Made me feel like, "What are you up to?
You know, are you gonna rob me or assault me?"
♪
-In Brooklyn, New York,
undercover detective Shaulene Wright
takes on a dangerous thug...
and now fears she herself could be his next target.
-Usually when -- when you go to a set,
it's not only focusing on Tyshawn.
It's focusing on what's going on.
And since he's part of a crew, I have to see, you know,
if he's got them set up in certain places,
because sometimes a drug dealer could sell to you
and want their product back.
So I'm making sure that he's not setting up his crew
to rob me when I leave.
♪
-The more you're exposed to any group,
of course there's a danger factor.
You know, there's a good possibility
you may become a victim to the same violence
that these guys are constantly doing to each other.
♪
-Although Shaulene suspects something may be wrong,
she goes ahead with trying to make her buy from Tyshawn.
-I'm meeting Tyshawn across the street,
on Ralph Avenue, from his stash house.
I'm looking in between cars
because I don't know if he had did a tact plan
ahead of time, like we do, you know, to set me up.
Tyshawn came out of the stash house
that he usually come out of.
And he hit me off.
Alright.
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
We had done the deal,
then I started walking down the block.
♪
After I do the drug buy with Tyshawn,
I give my "positive" sign, which is verbal.
I said, "All good."
And they know I got done and I'm okay.
I walk back to where the ghost car is set up.
-But on her way back to the car,
Shaulene's ghost becomes concerned.
-My ghost told me Tyshawn was following me.
My heart sunk. It dropped.
I'm thinking Tyshawn, since he's part of a crew,
he's setting up his crew to rob me.
-With Tyshawn following her,
Shaulene cannot get into her ghost's car,
because it could blow her cover.
-I asked what side Tyshawn is on.
I knew that as long as he wasn't behind me,
he couldn't have a clear shot of shooting me.
So, he was on the opposite side.
If he had crossed over to my side,
I could use the cars as cover so I wouldn't be shot.
So, since he's following me, I said, "Let me test it."
So I walked slow. He walked slow.
I walked fast. He picked up his pace.
[ Heavy breathing ]
♪
While I'm picking up my pace, my focus was,
"Who's gonna jump out from behind the cars
that's in his crew?"
My ghost -- he's giving play-by-play what's happening.
I found out the field team was relaying to the ghost
that his other guys --
they're walking in the same direction
towards where Tyshawn is going, trying to box me in.
♪
-Shaulene's ghost's concerns escalate
as Tyshawn's crew begins to surround her.
-Your undercover is out there, and these guys are all over.
♪
These guys are now looking to corner her,
and they want to see how she's gonna react.
Because if she's a cop, she's gonna run to her field team.
-I knew I couldn't go into a store,
'cause they could come into the store.
I couldn't keep walking because Broadway --
it's a clear shot.
There's no hiding.
I was scared.
♪
Knowing how violent Tyshawn is,
I'm afraid he's gonna shoot me.
♪
-Working undercover in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn,
Detective Shaulene Wright finds herself suddenly on the run.
-Alright. Alright.
[ Sighs ]
-When you're in get-up as a user, you look unkempt.
Hailing a taxi in New York --
a lot of taxi drivers, they're not going to stop.
-And you know, if you move in, you can burn her
and make this worse.
So you got to leave it up to her.
-Shaulene's ghost had moved out of sight
to protect her cover,
but now she had no idea where he was.
-I was on the phone with him,
and he was trying to guide me to where he was parked at.
And the train came, and I couldn't hear anything.
[ Wheels clacking ]
It's good hearing him
in my ear, telling me
what's going on and play-by-play,
because I knew he had eyes on me.
♪
My ghost was ahead of me,
so I was just trying to find him.
♪
-With Tyshawn and his crew a block behind her,
Shaulene is able to cut down a side street
to meet up with her ghost.
She could not be sure
if Tyshawn had seen her get into the vehicle.
-When I got in the car, I ducked down.
Whew!
I said, "Go, go, go! He'll see me getting in the car.
So -- If I see you across there,
he's gonna see me getting in the car."
Because I didn't know how far back he was behind me.
I didn't look to see how far he was.
Whew! [ Breathing heavily ]
[ Sighing ]
♪
Whew.
After things die down, that's when, you know,
you start shaking and things are playing in your head.
And you know, it's like, "I'm glad it went this way,
but it's always the what-if."
-After that intense moment, that concern was enough
to take the time out and let things cool down.
And she insisted on going back to getting it done.
And she did. And she went back to work.
♪
[ Telephone ringing ]
-My supervisors, they were worried about me
going back into the field.
And it was up to me to say yes or no,
and I wanted to continue with the case.
So I went back out to complete the case.
It's the chance I took
to go back and continue the case.
It's alright.
Maybe he was having a bad day, he got suspicious.
You're trying to think for him but not in depth,
you know, since Tyshawn is a violent guy.
♪
Hm.
Every day that I step out there to do a case,
it's always -- it feels great to go back home to my family.
-After the incident, Shaulene continued
undercover operations for two additional months.
Her work secured a Title III wire tap on Tyshawn
and over a dozen of his associates.
After nine months of deep undercover,
the 81st District Gun Violence Suppression Division
was able to bring charges that led to the conviction
of all of Tyshawn's crew.
-If it wasn't for her work and the conversations
and the buys with Tyshawn, it wouldn't have happened.
They were able to get all the members
of this crew indicted.
When you dismantle a crew
responsible for the violence that these guys did,
it's a win for the community,
it's a win for the city of New York,
because you know these guys are going away for a long time.
In this particular case, you know, thank God,
she's retired and she's out of the game,
but she did a tremendous job and I'm extremely proud of her.
♪
-I met my spouse, and she was like,
"You have to stop doing this,
because I want you to be alive, I want you home."
And after that -- [Chuckles] I was like, "Oh, okay!"
I retired June 30, 2020.
My son, who is now in Narcotics,
he found out what I did recently.
And he's 31. [ Laughs ]
He joined the NYPD, and he got my shield number --
my police-officer shield number.
And I got to pin it on him, which was a great moment.
♪
-In this next case, we travel to Seffner, Florida,
where undercover special agents Scott Perala and Nellie Waterman
work together to bring down
drug and arms dealer Emir Peron --
a case that seems routine at first...
but takes a series of dangerous turns.
♪
-I never really had him figured out.
There was always a sense of danger with him.
I would describe him as a very peculiar individual.
He wasn't your average
gun-and-drugs-dealing kind of fella.
-He was a likable guy. He really was.
Peron came off to me as kind of a nice guy.
He's got a good heart.
At times, he would look out for us.
He had our backs.
But he was also a criminal
and he was putting dangerous drugs
into the hands of his customers.
Just goes to show that even criminals have their kids
and they love their families, but they are out there
committing crimes and endangering their children
and everybody else by committing these acts.
♪
-Emir Peron --
he came to the attention through
an ATF confidential informant
who was assisting our agency
and who had met Mr. Peron through a Facebook contact.
♪
Part of the Facebook contact included Mr. Peron
publishing photographs of him selling a pistol
that appeared to have a silencer.
♪
When he showed that picture to the informant via Facebook,
the informant made arrangements to have someone related to her
attempt to purchase that firearm,
which turned out to be myself as an ATF undercover agent.
♪
My name is Scott Perala, and I was a special agent
with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
for almost 30 years.
I was working undercover for approximately
20 of the 30 years I worked for ATF.
I kind of wore my hair about shoulder-length,
had access to undercover motorcycles,
so I kind of portrayed myself as being involved
in kind of outlaw motorcycle world.
♪
-Special agent Scott Perala assumed that Emir Peron
was a low-level seller of guns and methamphetamine
and hoped to meet and make a routine buy.
-We had the informant make telephone contact
with Mr. Peron
and arrange a meeting at a truck stop.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
And then, uh, we agreed to step outside
and talk at Mr. Peron's vehicle,
which was parked at the gas pumps.
The goal was to purchase a quarter-ounce of methamphetamine
and that pistol with the silencer from Mr. Peron.
When you walk into a gun deal, there's inherent danger.
They know you have the money,
and they have potentially a loaded firearm.
And they could just demand your money.
You just don't always know their intentions.
He's got a towel that's over a long gun,
which turns out to be an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.
And then he also displays to me this pistol
with what appears to be a silencer,
but what is actually a flash suppressor.
♪
Mr. Peron advises he just sold 3 ounces of methamphetamine.
That's a considerable amount of methamphetamine.
Clearly, he has access
to larger quantities of methamphetamine.
He has to essentially re-up,
get some more methamphetamine for us.
I was very interested in Mr. Peron.
Well?
We immediately schedule a second meet
so that I could purchase a quantity of methamphetamine
and the rifle that he'd already displayed.
We agree to meet,
and we agree to meet at the same location.
Based on what he told us, there was more to his operation,
so we knew we had somebody
who was in the drug game at a decent level.
So, on the second meeting,
I arrive at the same parking lot.
There are other ATF surveillance vehicles
in the parking lot, watching.
Mr. Peron finally arrives in the same pickup truck
that he had been in during the first meeting.
I notice in his vehicle immediately
that there's a young child in his car.
That, right off the bat,
heightens the level of danger in the situation.
I'm a father. I have children.
You know, it's never okay for somebody to bring a child
to a drug deal or a gun deal.
You want this thing to come off
just like any other business transaction,
and nobody wants any kind of deal to go south
or there to be any kind of assault
that's gonna involve a child in the middle of it.
♪
-In Seffner, Florida, undercover agent Scott Perala
encounters a dangerous complication
in his drug-and-gun deal with Emir Peron.
-I just want to make it clear to the cover team members
that there's a child there,
in case they can't see it or something,
So I make a comment immediately over my wire.
-To bring a child to a drug deal in a truck stop,
it's unfathomable.
Anytime a child is brought into one of these situations,
it really gets me.
He's standing there in a truck stop
with an active drug/gun deal going on,
and he turns to this little kid,
and you can see him hand him, like, a carrot or a Cheeto
or something, and this little boy is feeding him
while he turns back to Special Agent Perala
and conducts this deal.
And he has no idea what's going on, of course.
He's just taking a ride with his dad.
If something goes down,
that's one of our first priorities,
is getting that innocent child out of that situation.
But Special Agent Perala has a natural ability
to put people at ease when he's dealing with them.
He's very calm. He's smooth. He just talks to people.
It doesn't matter who it is,
he talks to them like they're his friend.
-I buy a semiautomatic assault rifle from Peron,
the same one he had shown me on the very first deal.
And I bought a quantity of about a half an ounce
of crystal methamphetamine.
-Perala successfully concludes the sale
without any friction or violence.
-And we made arrangements for future purchases
of more methamphetamine and more firearms.
♪
Once you get past that second deal,
there's definitely a sense of relief.
After this deal, I'm feeling more confident with Mr. Peron
but still a little wary
about whether he has bought into who I am.
We decided to continue the investigation so that
we can try to purchase larger quantities of methamphetamine
and to meet who his other co-conspirators might be.
♪
-Peron insists that their next buy
be conducted on his compound,
which creates a vulnerable situation for Agent Perala.
-There's a lot of unknowns
when you're going into that type of scenario.
As we pulled onto his dirt driveway,
there's, like, a cattle gate at the beginning
and then you drive down this long driveway.
He lived in the double-wide.
-Perala brings Agent Nellie Waterman
as part of his cover team.
She waits in the car on the property,
while the rest of the team remains further away.
-We begin to walk up into his house.
-I'm sitting in the car, and I'm just looking around 360 --
looking in the mirrors, I'm keeping my eyes peeled,
seeing if anybody's coming through the woods.
Time slows down.
-He's describing his property to me.
He's very proud of the work that he's finished on his house.
Because I never really had him figured out,
there was always a sense of danger with him.
We begin discussing large quantities of methamphetamine.
Although Mr. Peron is kind of quirky,
he also seems pretty sophisticated,
and so it is the kind of suspect that you're concerned
about them asking deeper questions to try to figure out
whether you're associated with law enforcement or not.
We go into the other half of the trailer.
He gets two firearms for me.
During that exchange, he kind of has this distrust.
In that moment, I became very concerned
because we're on his property, he's got a gun on him.
The cover team is a good distance away.
So it's important that I step up my undercover role
and get past this with him.
I tell him, "Hey, we don't have to do the drug-deal part.
'Cause we don't have to do it.
If that's how you feel about it."
We go out to the shed outside, where he removed
some bricks and blocks where he's got some
methamphetamine hidden in there,
along with some prescription pills.
He goes ahead and sells me those pills.
And then he says, "I can get you some more
from my direct source in Plant City, Florida.
If you wanna go there now, I'll take you."
-Perala gets the break he needs when Peron offers
to take him directly to his methamphetamine source.
-I was introduced as his girlfriend
into a role as an undercover.
-She was a very good undercover. Very good undercover.
Very smooth, very calm under pressure.
Very smart thinking on her feet.
We leave his residence, and we began to drive
to this unknown location in Plant City.
He brings a pistol with him.
-[ Laughs ]
-A few minutes into the drive,
Peron sees something that disturbs him.
-Mr. Peron tells us that he sees what he believes to be
law enforcement in a van following us.
In fact, it is law enforcement in the van.
It's our cover team.
♪
As soon as he identifies the van,
I'm thinking this may be it.
Is he gonna accuse myself and Nellie directly
of being law enforcement?
We could be calling in a help signal right now.
♪
-Agent Perala's case, and life, may be on the line
when armed drug dealer Emir Peron spots
the undercover surveillance van following them.
-As soon as he identifies the van,
Nellie immediately starts texting the cover team,
letting them know.
Nerves are definitely in play.
Thoughts are racing through your mind.
You're doing your best to put information out
to make it not appear that that van
is directly associated with you.
The surveillance team has to disengage to some degree.
They need to stay around, but they gotta disengage.
But ultimately through a series of right-hand turns
in a neighborhood, we happen upon the van a second time.
He leaves the gun on the back seat.
He pulls it off the backseat, sticks it in his waistband.
-Mr. Peron was asking for the drugs back.
He's worried that we're gonna get caught up in something.
The fact that he was willing to take all that stuff with him
so that we didn't get in trouble
was kind of something that we didn't usually see.
I immediately stepped up
and said, "No, no. I'll take care of that."
-And that was like a pro right there.
-After that day, Peron was spooked...
and things began to change.
-So, after this deal, Mr. Peron
wasn't always getting right back to me,
so there was some concern
whether or not he was becoming wary.
I'm directed to get in contact and see
if I can get him away from the property
so that he can be arrested somewhere else
and not in his house where he has access to firearms.
I make contact with Mr. Peron.
I said, "Hey, let's go to breakfast
at a nearby restaurant and discuss some business."
And we drive to his residence.
-[ Speaking indistinctly ]
-Mr. Peron says, "Let me get my firearm."
And then we begin to make a drive
to a very well-planned arrest of Mr. Peron.
And as we're driving, we're being followed
by at least six ATF cover vehicles
all the way from his residence to the restaurant,
where there's an additional arrest team
standing by in a van,
preparing to make the final arrest of Peron.
As we're driving there,
I know I have to get Nellie out of the car.
-We don't have bulletproof vests on when we're doing undercover.
The goal was to get me out of the vehicle
so that I'm one last person the ATF takedown team
has to rescue or worry about.
-I drive up around the building,
and as I come around the parking spot,
he starts to question our relationship
and how he knows me.
He's starting to define it, run it through a sieve,
and go, "Hey, you know what?
I know you through a person who uses heroin.
Like, in Daytona Beach. Through somebody else."
I know he's armed with a gun,
and last thing I want is a confrontation
when I pull in the parking spot now by myself.
My job at this point
is to safely get him out of that vehicle,
get him to the back of my vehicle,
and distract him from looking behind him at the cover team.
That means he needs to look into the back compartment
of my vehicle at something, right?
I needed something to draw his attention.
I told him I had $10,000 to look at.
He wasn't interested.
I knew he was interested in firearms,
so I said, "Hey, have you ever seen an H&K pistol?"
And he said, "No."
And I said, "Well, come here and look."
You know, one of the important things about distracting him
is he's armed with a gun,
so if he sees this cover team coming,
he could decide to pull that gun.
Eventually he comes around
and sticks his head in the back of my car,
and I'm pretending to dig for a handgun that's not there.
I was whisked away in the opposite direction.
I didn't see him again.
♪
I don't think you have to be necessarily a bad guy
to meet with bad guys, and I think
you can be empathetic of every person out there,
even some of the worst of the worst.
It's just a unique experience to deal with them as themselves,
versus arresting them
and then interviewing them at the police station.
Hold on. Let me shut the car off.
Uh, what do you got for the time?
-12:31. -12:31. 12:31.