Big surprise—marijuana growers don’t see police officers as their friends!
But one former cop who loved busting marijuana users has changed sides, and he’s now helping our community fight back against the war on marijuana.
The former drug cop’s name is Barry Cooper, and he’s been labeled a traitor by other police officers because he made a tell-all video series called “Never Get Busted Again.”
Every marijuana grower and user can get life-saving tips from these videos, because let’s face it…even with legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington, and legalized medical marijuana in other states, until the federal government repeals marijuana prohibition, none of us are completely safe from police.
Cooper knows just how unsafe we are.
He spent eight years busting drug users, sellers, and smugglers as a drug cop in Texas. Cooper teamed with DEA, the U.S. military, the Border Patrol, the FBI, and other federal state and local agencies.
But he didn’t really need a team—Cooper was known as a crazy drug-hating cowboy who’d do almost anything to detect and bust drug people.
He recalls how he loved the macho adrenaline rush of being a cop, so he worked hard to create exciting arrest situations, especially chases.
“They taught us at the police academy, once we found drugs on someone, we should handcuff them immediately,” he says. “Instead, I would look at a suspect and say: ‘That’s crack cocaine I found in your pocket. That’s a felony. You’re going to prison for life.’ And then I would just turn around and walk to my patrol car to fill out my paperwork, giving the suspect time to run, and they often did. And then the foot chase would be on, and a fight would ensue. And that would give me my adrenaline fix.”
But Cooper says his dirty cop tactics went beyond creating chases. He says he learned many dirty tricks from another police officer, another “Barry.”
This one was named Barry Washington, a cop who figures prominently in a now-settled, class-action lawsuit against the Tenaha, Texas municipal government.
Washington and other Tenaha cops were accused of stopping dozens of black and Latino motorists, stealing cash and jewelry, and intimidating citizens so that many of the police crimes went unreported.
The shakedowns happened on the side of the road—Tenaha cops told innocent motorists that they could sign a form forfeiting cash, car and other possessions…or they’d be busted for felony drug charges.
If a parent with children in their car refused to hand over their cash and possessions to the dirty cops, the children would be stolen from them and turned over to the state.
Cooper says Washington instructed him on creating false “probable cause” necessary to procure a search warrant. This included teaching drug dogs to act like drugs had been sniffed out, when there actually weren’t any drugs.
“I was the biggest asshole you would ever want to meet in a drug deal,” says Cooper. “I was doing illegal searches, such as making my dog false alert. Or I would say I had an informant to raid a house, when I never did. It’s called using a ‘ghost informant.’ It also includes stealing money. I never planted drugs, but I often threatened to, in order to scare citizens into becoming an informant.”
Cooper was so successful at busting drug people that police academies and police departments would bring him in to give drug bust seminars.
Cooper was so confident in his skills that he’d agree to forfeit his entire pay and expenses package for the seminars if he was unable to complete at least one drug bust during the time he was in town to teach the seminar.
He never had to give his seminar pay back, and his batting record as a drug cop included more than 300 felony arrests, 500 misdemeanor arrests, the seizure of 60 vehicles, and the confiscation of millions of dollars in cash or alleged crime-related assets.
Eventually, Cooper became too effective for his own good. Other police officers—especially DEA agents and local narcotics squads—had jealous rivalries with Cooper.
And when Cooper busted a politician’s son for meth, and another politician for marijuana, his allies turned against him, and he decided to get out of the nark business and do something honest for a living. Cooper left the police force and became a successful businessman, but he felt guilty about bad things he’d done as a drug cop.
“My parents, public schools and churches taught me people who use drugs are evil and deserved to be harshly punished,” he explained. “At times, I could feel I was doing something wrong, but my need for fame, adrenaline, and peer acceptance overrode my good conscience.”
Cooper’s life-changing drug war change of heart came when he fell in love with his current wife (Candi), and soon thereafter tried marijuana.
“I spent the next year in her bedroom, her and I growing closer together, talking and smoking pot,” he says. “We would order pizza and smoke marijuana, and the first thing I’d do was laugh and laugh and laugh. I couldn’t believe the joy I was feeling. Then that would turn into crying. Candi knew I had a lot of guilt. I would start talking to her about how bad I felt about the stuff I did to people for having marijuana, which I was enjoying and it was healing me. She would say, ‘Yeah. It’s rotten what you did, Barry. But you were doing what you thought was right. The important thing now is people can change, and people will forgive you.’ ”
Cooper has the same fanatical cowboy zeal and recklessness in his anti-drug war work as he did when he was a narco cop.
For example, Cooper tricked a Texas police department by misleading officers into thinking there was a marijuana grow op at a specific house.
When police arrived to raid the faux marijuana grow house in 2008, they found no marijuana at all. Cooper had wired the fake grow house for sound and video.
This hilarious scam was part of Cooper’s KopBusters reality television show and it wasn’t the only time he set up police officers in sting operations designed to show that police often break the law themselves.
Cooper and his wife were busted for the sting operation—charged with making a false police report—but charges were later dropped.
Nowadays, Cooper concentrates on helping marijuana defendants avoid getting busted. He’s an expert witness who helps marijuana defendants fight back in court against police. And his compelling, multiple-DVD Never Get Busted Again series contains the most comprehensive security advice marijuana growers could ever find.
It features heartbreaking reports from people who got busted because they opened their front door for police, or made other avoidable errors that gave police the opportunity to discover marijuana plants or dried marijuana.
Some of Cooper’s advice doesn’t apply in all states or all circumstances (due in part to the many different marijuana laws and law interpretations that are happening as marijuana legalization moves forward) but if you watch his videos closely, you’ll find out how drug cops think, how they lie to and bully you, and how to avoid getting busted…in your home, your car, because of hydroponics shopping, and on the street.
I’ve embedded several clips from the Never Get Busted Again series so you see the high quality and rich, detailed information Cooper puts into his video series.
And I’ve bought nearly a dozen of these DVD sets for marijuana grower friends, and even a public library, to help support Cooper, and to help marijuana growers never get busted at all!
