Under Operation Bold Eagle, inaugurated in May, as many as 20 Wilmington police officers roam the city's toughest neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles, searching for packs of curbside drug dealers. When they find a guilty-looking crew, they quickly empty into the street in a show of force and confront every potential suspect in sight. Police call them "corner deployment units." Local residents refer to them as "
jump-out squads." ...
Rago says that the deployment of the jump-out squads, along with other new techniques, has helped to reduce crime in the city by 16 percent in the last two years.
Wilmington officials say that the jump-out squad detentions are legal because the suspects are temporarily detained based on reasonable suspicion, which the law allows. But civil libertarians worry that the cops are profiling young, mostly black men as potential criminals based on nothing more than the street corner on which they are hanging out.
—Ryan Lizza, "Ghetto Profiling," The New York Times, December 15, 2002
Occassionally, police attempted to quietly block off Condon Terrace, then quickly send in an unmarked car filled with five or six undercover detectives who jump out and chase the youths into the arms of waiting policemen.
Most youths, however, simply disappeared into the apartment houses of friends, who were sometimes paid to keep a door unlocked. Some would pull out guns and fire at policemen from inside the buildings or shoot while escaping along a preplanned route.
"That was no fun," said Detective Dave Hayes, whose wrist is still sore from a fall he took dodging bullets on a chase through Condon Terrace. Hayes' unit became laughingly known among the youths as "The Jump Out Squad."
—Courtland Millory, "The Meanest Street in Washington," The Washington Post, January 28, 1980
