For Kid

Thanks for reminding me.

Dick Snider was a cop with a good heart. Well, that was back then. Today cops get more negative press than ever, and YouTube videos don’t always help much.

In Arkansas, fleeing from the State Police in a car can easily end up in your death. Usually it just ends with a wrecked stolen car and a Walmart shoplifter crawling out from under something that doesn’t even resemble a car, but used to, the driver bruised, cut or worse, but the severity of the crime and the condition of the driver make no difference; they could have a severed arm and they would still be cuffed.

If it appears by YouTube videos that no cop in the ASP has a heart, then it must be true.

Of course it isn’t, but it’s unfair how judgements can be made with so few facts. And perhaps I have seen unjustified shootings, and maybe a PIT maneuver was done wrong, resulting in the fleeing driver’s death plus collateral damage, even involving critical wounds to innocent civilians. That doesn’t make police officers evil. It makes them human. Only once did I learn of an officer being criminally charged in a pursuit, and I don’t know what happened to him.

Cops go through things no video can truly convey to a viewer the lifelong trauma that results. You see it, but you weren’t there. You felt only what any other observer did. That’s a happy circumstance for you and me, but the officer or trooper will, should they survive, recover from wounds, get cleared to return to duty, or leave the force, carry nightmares, both waking and not, until the day they die.

In 1975, there were things going on that some cops knew about, but were either indifferent to or helpless to stop.

Officially, there is no source for crime statistics, but what you hear or read about today is a very old human crisis.

Back then, people in Mexico heard stories of plenty in the land of “El Norte,” and poverty stimulates dreams into motivation. The United States had work. Places to live for those who worked hard. It had food, lots of it, and more. Some tried to legally immigrate and some, most perhaps, were turned away.

Thus we have illegal crossings, and what most Americans got to know about it was that the crossers were just criminals.

Aside from the attempt to cross the border illegally, there were very few criminals. But before they could get to the United States, they faced dangers far worse than deportation or prosecution.

The U.S. and Mexico border is about 2,000 miles of land and sea, and every mile of that border has a different danger to challenge even the most determined soul.

There are vast amounts of desert, some mountains, even sea and rivers to be reckoned with. From Sonora, it may seem like there are plenty of places to cross, but many chose the route across Baja into San Diego.

There were reasons for this. One was that the lands south of San Diego were too treacherous for the federales, bringing up the second reason, which was the aid of polleros, or coyotes, men who would “guide” border crossers to their destination, which invariably meant “Los,” or Los Angeles, via San Diego.

That’s where a San Diego Police Department lieutenant named Dick Snider comes in. He witnessed multiple crimes against women and children and was helpless to do anything to stop them. Sometimes lying on a hill, looking out over the canyons south of the city, he used binoculars and saw the guides beat, rob, and abandon those who paid them, usually with their last pennies.

For the record, a Mexican under a guide was called a pollo, which translates as a “chicken,” because various trucks were often used in border crossings. But the polleros weren’t always in trucks and some never really planned on doing what they were paid for.

Snider was morally offended by what he saw. He was outraged to the point where he couldn’t keep silent and asked for permission from his supervisors to take action. When he finally got it in 1976, a task force was created and he did the initial recruiting: all officers had to be of Latino descent. The members would be trained in military combat tactics and clothed in camouflage uniforms.

That was a good idea followed by a bad one.

The idea of the task force was sound. The choice of clothing failed.

As the members were training, Dick Snider was frustrated, but hopeful that the men chosen would make a difference.

The result was the “Border Area Robbery Force,” which came to be known only by its acronym, “BARF”, and from October 1976 to 1978, the squad learned some good and some awful things.

First, the canyon was dark. Getting one’s night vision was a process, and at first the bad guys were at an advantage. Working at night, they were able to see targets but on their approach, their camouflage chased the banditos away before BARF could engage them.

Lesson learned, they became exactly what they were up against. Their hair grew. They had unshaven faces. They bought clothes from secondhand shops like those worn by the pollos. They went out, sometimes without bathing, and successfully infiltrated the hapless pollos and made history.

But there had to be rules, and the sergeant, Manny Lopez, decided that among the innocent people and the bandits, there in the darkness, the frantic scramble to tell which was a bandit and which was a pollo was a  dangerous time. A time that offered nothing but danger. He needed a way to communicate to his men who the targets were and when to act.

Lopez, who could terrify his own men when one of his eyebrows climbed his forehead and became a question mark, would say, ¿Sabes que? That was a signal to get ready, because something was about to go down. The eyebrow was a sign that his temper had maxed.

Nerves screwed tight, adrenaline flowing, they waited. The codeword to take action was ironic: “¡BARF!”

The bandits did not, at first, stand a chance. Unprepared for pollos who carried guns and actually fired them was terrifying. It was like seeing men turn into werewolves, it was that fantastic.

Arrests were made. Shootings, then full-blown firefights occurred. Three of the squad sustained gunshot wounds.

Eventually, as they squatted in the darkness, submissive, as pollos did, they were approached directly by the polleros who would try to rob them. There were initial negotiations concerning taking them to Los, but they knew it was a setup. Manny would say, “¿Sabes que?” And then “BARF!” and all hell would break loose.

It was inevitable then, that the robbers would change tactics. One night one of them was asked for a “pisto” or money,  and the barfer replied by answering with a gesture, a name for a drink, which was incorrect; pisto is from south of Mexico. The bandit was asking for money, and now he was suspicious. The bandit wasn’t stupid.

Sometimes it depends on location as to the meaning of a Spanish word. For example, pollo can mean a cute person or a child, which in the latter case would change from pollo to polla depending on gender, the one ending in a being feminine. This is the same as La or El, as in la leche being feminine because it is milk, or El Gordo, The fat man.

The man who caught the mistake of the pisto was not stupid, and certainly not a genius. He just happened to know the difference.

One night, a terrible night, two Tijuana cops stood at the border fence, then came through. They were known to drag canyon crawlers back to their side of the fence, but on this night, they held Lopez in an armed standoff. One of the Mexican officers fired.

What happened next was an outrageous firefight between hundreds of Tijuana officers and any backup the BARF team called in.

It caused an international incident, but that went semi-resolved and BARF kept doing what it did.

But one cannot endure the darkness, rattlesnakes, loose rocks and gunfire without a dear price. Off duty, they drank. Hard. They didn’t go home. Lopez warned them that they had to go home.

Some had affairs. And later, when Joe Wambaugh, a bestselling author who had written books like The Blue Night, The Onion Field and The Choirboys began to interview the now-disbanded BARF members, he violated a rule that was inviolable amongst brother officers. He wrote about the affairs and drinking. When his book Lines and Shadows was published, it chronicled everything he knew. And it was a bestseller. It’s a genuinely great read and I recommend it, but the BARFers hated it and him. Carlos Chacon swore he never read the entire book, and said clearly in an interview that Wambaugh wasn’t out there, and if he had been, he would have been beaten to a pulp. Marriages broke up because of him.

Initially, the BARF members hated the book.

Wambaugh stated that when he interviewed the men, it was obvious that they were suffering from PTSD. They had faced shadows moving in the canyons, but had not faced the shadows that chased their souls in nightmares.

In time, most of the Border Area Robbery Force took pride in the book. It proved that they had made a difference when no one else could or would. In places east of that canyon, there were no agents or officers concerned about the plight of the pollos.

Today, they’re legends who Wambaugh called “the last of the gunslingers.”

One night…and I warn you, this is disturbing and was all too common, the squad stopped the rape of a minor who was with her family. Women were often sexually assaulted along with their children. Men who lived all their lives by the code of machismo were helpless before men with guns. They were shot or they saw their family hurt. Everyone got hurt. On this particular night, the male pollos did not help Rosetta, or her daughter, Esther. One ran. The others squatted in terror. That’s until a vicious fight broke out between Manny Lopez, a Border Patrol agent, and a la migra, or immigration officer. The mother and daughter were saved. Rosetta cried and kissed Manny’s hand, and thanked God for a miracle. She never stopped believing that a miracle had happened because just as she finished demanding that God has to save her daughter, Lopez appeared.

One of the would-be rapists was arrested; the rest made it back to Tijuana.

Their adventures would get worse, much worse. They maintained that whatever they went through, it was worth it. In 1978, police chief Kolender decided that it was dangerous and that the banditos had become hip to the BARF squad’s tactics. There was a definite decline in crime, but what’s more is, the robbers were out there in the dark now, waiting for them. It was over for BARF.

Of course, the pollos kept coming, and as soon as everyone guessed that they were gone, crime went sharply up.

But for a moment, just a small amount of time, they had heroes who saved them. All because one man, a lieutenant who was a gringo, wore his heart on his sleeve and sold the conviction that the pollos were human beings who deserved protection. Dignity. Human rights. People who Destiny had no right to kill.

The men were brave, there’s no doubt about it. They also cared about the people being robbed and violated just as much as Dick Snider cared.

And so they made a difference. Crime statistics shrank. Bandits stopped crossing the border and simply committed their crimes in Tijuana. Manny Lopez was so infuriated that at least once, he ordered his squad to go through the fence.

In the canyon, the firefights grew more intense. By 1978, the chief knew that it was too dangerous to send men back out there, and shut BARF down.

Aftermath

Crime in the canyons soon returned with a vengeance. No one that I can find ever tried such an action again, and right now, pollos face murder, sexual assault, human trafficking and forced labor when cartels intercept them, and inhumane conditions in camps once they do cross but are caught by ICE.

Here, hatred is and always has been heaped on them, an unbearable weight, an unfair price to pay for simply wanting a better life.

The Border Area Robbery Force made 300 arrests, were involved in 10 shootings and six major firefights and three officers were wounded by gunfire. Yet we will never know how many lives were saved. If the number stood at only one, they would still have done it. The sacrifice was great but the cause was greater. That’s what cops stand for: the greater good.

The pollos had a plan. They wore two sets of clothing: one for the journey and one underneath for job interviews.

Would you be courageous enough to do that?

The BARF team were bitter, mostly about Manny Lopez getting all the press and interviews while nobody else knew their names. They all parted in less than amicable ways, haunted, yet still proud of everything they had accomplished and endured.

“¿Sabes que?”

“BARF!”

Remember: hate should have no place here. If you remember, act like you know you should with mercy, love, friendship and all of the kindness and respect others deserve.

Current status, immigrants and border:

ICE continues with illegal seizures and deportations. Crime in the canyons still happens.