Editor’s Note: To protect the innocent, and to preserve the integrity of pending police investigations, all names included in the following article have been altered.
Manchester, NH – Meet Matt White. Despite the state-issued ID which sits in his wallet, bearing his visage and the same name and billing information as the assortment of debit and credit cards that accompany it, Matt White is not his real name.
Why? Because Matt White doesn’t exist. Well, at least not six months out of the year, when he removes his various facial piercings, shaves off his braided goatee, and returns to his day job as Detective Rod Estes of the New Hampshire Undercover Drug Taskforce. That’s right, Matt White is the alter ego of one the Granite State’s finest deep cover narcotics operatives, a man who spends half of his life immersed in the seedy underbelly of drug culture.
As Estes explains, “The willingness to abandon one’s identity represents an ultimate sacrifice. It means discarding one’s sense of self, and the comfort of knowing one’s place in the world, in the interest of benefiting the greater good. It means learning to answer to a name that you weren’t born with. It means altering your appearance to the point where you can no longer recognize yourself in the mirror. It means putting your new Challenger into storage for six months because the department has commissioned a 2019 GMC Terrain to help you maintain your cover. Then, it means arguing with your superiors because driving around in a Terrain is probably going to get you shot, since it looks like complete NARC-mobile.”
While it’s clear that Detective Estes takes an immense amount of pride in his celebrated career, his reputation has come under fire in recent months after calling into question the department’s decision to standardize the GMC Terrain as the issued vehicle for all undercover operatives. In a public hearing held last month, Estes addressed the City Council regarding the vehicles.
“It’s bad enough that we’re all going to be showing up in the same vehicle. Nothing screams, “Don’t be nervous about selling me that meth, just because a bunch of us keep showing up in the same friggin’ vehicle!” I mean, there might as well be a NH Police logo emblazoned across each door!”
To see if Detective Estes’ concerns about the dangers placed upon undercover narcotics operatives are valid, The Lemon hit the streets, seeking out as many drug dealers as we could find. Drug Dealers like Jeff Valente, aka “Papa Bear”.
Holding up a photo of Detective Estes, in his Matt White guise, standing next to the police-issued Terrain, we asked Papa Bear if “he would have any concerns about selling drugs to this man, who happens to be an undercover police offer” and if so, why. His response was immediate…and that response was rage.
“That son of a bitch,” he exclaimed, reaching for what we can only assume is an illegally obtained sidearm. “I trusted him, and now he’s gonna (expletive deleted) die in a ditch!”
While we were unable to get Valente to elaborate any further, we hope that we helped to prove Detective Estes’ concerns regarding the GMC Terrain and why it wasn’t suitable as an undercover police vehicle. What do you think?
