You can ride but HIDE you can’t
How do police crack into the secret vehicle compartments used by drug dealers?
WOONSOCKET – George Lahousse is not a cop, but don’t try hiding drugs from him in one of those customized motor vehicle “hides” traffickers are known for.
The longtime mechanic for the Woonsocket Police Department not only keeps its 76-vehicle fleet running, he’s right-hand man to its undercover vice unit, which regularly runs across these sophisticated vehicular stashes during the course of its narcotics investigations.
Lahousse has become so essential to the vice squad’s efforts in locating these hiding places that Chief Thomas F. Oates III has decided to send him to school with his cop colleagues next week to learn more about this peculiar niche of the drug trade.
“I’ve seen the way he works with the officer in the narcotics unit,” said Oates. “It just makes sense.”
About 70 police officers, many of them from city and town departments who are assigned to various state and federal drug task forces, are expected to attend the Contraband Concealment Training at Providence College. But Lahousse will be the only attendee who isn’t a police officer, says Oates.
Lahousse joined the police department 14 years ago after working for an armored car company. He works full time servicing the hard-driven fleet of cruisers used by the uniformed division, as well as unmarked detective and undercover vehicles, two military surplus Humvees and
one tank-like, amphibious personnel carrier.
Lahousse will join at least nine other police officers from his own department at the training seminar and seems quite pleased about being part of the team.
“It just helps me to assist law enforcement in locating these hides,” says Lahousse. “They don’t have the mechanical abilities I do.”
One feature of the seminar that Oates is particularly proud of is that Woonsocket isn’t just sending police officers to the event. Along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Woonsocket Police Department is a co-sponsor.
Citing restrictive spending regulations that limit how federal agencies can disburse money for such training sessions, Oates said a municipal partner was needed to comply with all the administrative requirements.
Oates said he was more than happy to sign on, especially since the WPD’s sponsorship means its participation in the event ends up costing the city nothing.
“Concealed trap detection,” “common indicators of modified vehicles” and “introduction to vehicular concealed compartments” are among the offerings at next Thursday’s daylong seminar.
Lahousse says he’s been involved in locating numerous concealed drug compartments in vehicles seized by narcotics officers, not just for Woonsocket, but for several other law enforcement agencies.
Once he finds them, he’s also pretty good at figuring out how they work.
Designed to be invisible with the naked eye, these compartments require high technical skill and a fairly advanced knowledge of electronic wiring to backfill into an ordinary motor vehi- cle. Often, they’re outfitted with hydraulics and are almost always controlled by manipulating an existing set of dials and buttons that are a normal part of the vehicle’s equipment.
Opening and closing one, for example, might involve activating the controls for the air conditioning, an electronic window and the radio in a non-random sequence.
Sometimes, the process begins with a K-9 that’s trained to sniff out narcotics. Woonsocket Police have a K-9 named Aspen that’s often pressed into service on precisely such occasions.
If the dog is indicating that there are narcotics in a vehicle, but the police can’t find them in the usual places, like a glove compartment or a console, its a fair assumption that the car is outfitted with a hide, and the search begins.
“I’ve seen hides where the whole dashboard opens up like a clamshell,” says Lahousse.
He showed a visitor a hide in one vehicle impounded at headquarters that involved the construction of a makeshift steel compartment that was attached to the undercarriage.
The vehicle had been modified so that the compartment was accessible beneath the gearshift cover between the two front seats.
The car wasn’t always used by drug dealers, says Lahousse.
Pointing to a couple of telltale yellow fixtures inside the backup lights of the black Ford, Lahousse came to an ironic conclusion about the origin of the illicit wheels.
“This used to be a police car,” he says. “They must have got it from a police department before they decided to use it for drug trafficking.”