“If they start shooting, stay right here, behind the engine block.”
That was the first thing my FBI liaison told me once we were in position. Not the door, not the wheel. The engine block, because it is the one part of a car a bullet will not punch through. Anywhere else, he said, a round can skip off the pavement and find you. Neither of us was wearing a vest. This group, he told me, is known to be violent, and there was a real chance shots would be fired.
I met him at 5:30 in the morning. By 6 we had joined the joint task force convoy and caravanned to a quiet gated neighborhood, the kind with a park in the middle and bikes in the driveways. We set up across the street, and we waited.
When it started, it came fast. SWAT moved in, threw a flash-bang, and called for the men inside to come out with their hands up. One of them peered through the window and saw what was waiting: a wall of law enforcement, rifles raised. A second flash-bang.
Then one by one they stepped out with their hands up, were told to walk backward toward the agents, and were handcuffed on the lawn.
It was not only the men. One of the suspects had a wife who stood holding their two small children wrapped in a blanket, watching as her husband was arrested. Later, the children watched too. Those are the frames that stay with you.
Five men were arrested and processed. They are accused of belonging to a large international crime ring tied to assassinations, contract killings, drug and gun trafficking, and extortion. The raid was one piece of a coordinated operation that struck at the same hour across California, Indiana, India, and Canada.
I shot the whole thing on assignment for the California Post, from across the street with a 300mm 2.8 and a 70-200, close enough to read faces, far enough to stay out of the way. One of the more surreal mornings I have had behind a camera, and not one I will forget.
A note on the images: to protect their identity, I blurred the faces of some of the officers in these photographs.
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