In Case Fit for 'The Wire,' Burglar Leads Police to Drug Dealer

The veteran burglar and a half-dozen other thieves had been casing an alleged drug dealer's house in Northwest Washington for weeks, hoping to swipe a massive stash of marijuana and cash.

But they couldn't find a way in. The house was ringed with fences, and its garage had armored plating. A vicious dog prowled the grounds. The dealers were probably armed. Even a burglary "consultant," experienced in circumventing security measures, couldn't help the team.

The task was simply too daunting and dangerous for the burglar. Instead, the thief called a D.C. police officer, setting in motion a series of raids that started Aug. 5 at the residence.

Federal prosecutors disclosed last month that police seized about 85 pounds of marijuana and $40,000 in cash in several searches and arrested the home's owner, Winston Williams, 49, on drug charges. But they didn't explain the tangled tale of how police were first directed to the house, in the 5500 block of 14th Street NW.

That was left to a search warrant affidavit written by D.C. police officer Joseph Abdalla and filed in D.C. Superior Court. The affidavit lays out a story that sounds like a plot line from HBO's "The Wire" and other crime dramas. The officer wrote that a confidential informant, a veteran burglar he has known for 10 years, called him about the house in July.

The informant has made a career out of stealing from narcotics traffickers, the officer wrote, and his team had been watching the Northwest house for weeks.

But their plans quickly ran into "logistical problems" tied to the house's security and a "very, very large, most vicious dog" that patrolled the place, Abdalla wrote. At one point, the thieves had tried to carjack a van after it was used in an apparent drug delivery. But its driver managed to evade them, the informant told Abdalla.

"Joe, if this were going to be easy . . . I might not have called the police to tell you about it," the officer paraphrased the burglar as saying.

The burglar was also anxious because the dealers "are likely to be violent, armed, and largely indifferent to the consequences of shooting up robbers," the officer wrote, adding that the thief "is quite close to the other ring members . . . and fears they will get hurt or killed."

The officer added that the burglar had a legitimate job and "fears being dragged back into the active criminal life" and "feels it would be 'wimpy' to admit that."

To avoid embarrassment and possibly death, Abdalla wrote, the burglar hoped to see the team's plans "frustrated by police through a raid."

The informant could be trusted, the officer wrote, if for no other reason than his information was so detailed that it couldn't be fiction.

The burglar, Abdalla wrote, "simply does not have that kind of imagination."