Retired Narcotics Officer Tells Public How to Hoodwink Drugs Police

What is the best way to hide your stash of marijuana when the police come knocking? How do you avoid positive tests for drugs? And what can you do to hoodwink narcotics-trained sniffer dogs?

All these questions and many more will be answered by a DVD called Never Get Busted Again, about to go on sale on the internet. US law enforcement officers are furious about the DVD. What has made them even more furious is the fact that, until recently, the man who made it was one of the most experienced narcotics officers in the Texas police force.

If anyone knows the dos and don'ts of getting busted, it is Barry Cooper. Mr Cooper, who made more than 800 drug arrests in his time with the Permian Basin drug task force, plans to begin selling the DVD on Tuesday. It is, he says, directed solely at marijuana dealers, not at dealers of harder drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine.

He told his local newspaper, the Tyler Morning Telegraph, he was following his conscience because he believed the war on drugs, specifically marijuana, was counter-productive. "I know I won't be accepted by my peers here in East Texas, but in other areas of the country I will be celebrated," he told the paper.

"When I was raiding houses and destroying families, my conscience was telling me it was wrong, but my need for power, fame and peer acceptance overshadowed my good conscience."

So far Mr Cooper is being coy about the details of the tips he gives out, revealing only in a three-minute promotional video that he goes into such crucial issues as whether coffee grounds really work as decoys, how to avoid narcotics profiling and how to "fool canines every time". Tim Scott, the local police chief, said he was stunned by what a former top drugs officer was doing. "He's going to tell all the ones we have been fighting how to get away with it and that makes me mad."

A senior narcotics officer in the region, Mark Waters, was similarly incensed. "This is a slap in the face to all that we do to uphold the laws and keep the public safe," he said.

Mr Cooper's former bosses said that they would wait to see the new DVD before deciding what, if anything, to do about it.