SFPD undercover squad takes aim at Tenderloin

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Danny Manning was once robbed by a pregnant woman. A few weeks ago, a teenager pointed a sawed-off 12-gauge at his face. Recently, he was jumped, beaten and robbed by three women in front of the Golden Gate Theater - at 3 in the afternoon.

This isn't a run of bad luck. It's his job.

Manning and his buddy Kevin "Scrappy" Healy are members of the San Francisco Police Department's RAT (Robbery Abatement Team) squad. Wearing wigs, fake teeth, and, in Manning's case, a cheetah-print dress, they prowl neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, buying drugs, attracting thugs and getting ripped off.

"I don't use the term 'bait,' " said Healy, who estimates he's been robbed 500 times in a 14-year career. "I prefer to say I act as if I am vulnerable."

It sounds like a win-win. Not only are they flushing out the low-level thugs, but those perpetrators are often convicted. It is hard to beat a case where the mugger robs or sells drugs directly to a cop.

Some complain that the drug arrests generated when an undercover cop makes a buy, called a buy-bust are mostly low-level dealers. But if new police Chief George Gascón is trying to clean up the Tenderloin, small dealers should be busted.

Entrapment questions

You can bet that buy-bust and RAT operations will be featured in the new chief's plans, even if critics claim that when Healy sits slumped on a Tenderloin sidewalk with a $20 bill hanging out of his shirt pocket, it is entrapment.

"The question we need to ask," said Public Defender Jeff Adachi, "is do we want the police spending tens of thousands of dollars enticing homeless people to commit crimes? It looks to me as if they are targeting homeless shelters, soup kitchens and medical clinics."

But police say the buy-bust operations focus on crime hot spots. Healy and Manning disagree with Adachi's contention that they arrest mostly poor and homeless people and say they consciously try to go after the bigger fish.

Healy says he charted the 70 to 80 arrests he made in 2008 and of those, 40 to 50 percent were either on probation or parole, and "90 percent had been arrested before for similar crimes."

The argument about entrapment is likely to continue, but it's indisputable that undercover officers like Healy and Manning are making a difference. Healy says one of the reasons he got into undercover work is that his mother used to work on the edge of the Tenderloin, and she used to tell him that she and her co-workers feared getting mugged walking to their cars after work.

"It's not like we are arresting people who are not committing crimes," he said.

Healy says one of the ironies of the job is how often the sting is "spoiled" when someone walks up and pushes the money back down his pocket and says, "Hey, this is the Tenderloin. You've got to be more careful."

Drug stings

For all the danger, Manning says, the key is not to take yourself too seriously. He jokes that with the new emphasis on drug stings, he may have to bring back his cheetah-print dress. Laugh if you want, but he says he made five drug buys in that dress.

For some reason, perhaps because he only weighs 135 pounds, Healy seems to be the champ at attracting strong-arm robbery. He's had his nose broken, eyes blacked and has been thrown to the sidewalk more times than he can count.

"About two or three months ago, I had a guy, like 6-5, 300 pounds, grab me by the shirt and start shaking me," he said. "They asked me in court if I was scared. I said, 'Damn right I was scared.' "

So was Manning when a teenage kid offering fake drugs tried to steal his cash. The buy went sideways when the kid pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. Manning ended up on his hands and knees crawling out of danger as backup arrived.

"People keep saying I'm getting too old for this job," said Manning. "But I don't see anybody else stepping up to do it."