undercover operations for the NYPD<\/a> in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island under an alias. Deep undercover, he lived in a wiretapped apartment in Brooklyn and had fake ID and credit cards.<\/p>\nHe assumed new identities like \u201cVinnie\u201d \u2013 a red Eldorado Cadillac-driving aspiring actor who summered in the Hamptons, but hung out in squalor-filled crack houses to score heroin, cocaine and prescription pain med Percocet.<\/p>\n
Yost, seen during his undercover days, often wore a long jacket with a concealed gun. Courtesy of Glenn Yost<\/p>\n
\u201cThose shooting galleries, if there\u2019s anything you can imagine close to hell, that would be it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was scary because you didn\u2019t know, you didn\u2019t know who was who. You didn\u2019t know if you were going to get robbed. It smelled horrible. People would go to the bathroom wherever they wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consistency helped him gain the dealers\u2019 trust \u2014 so he became a repeat customer. A confidential informant helped cement the relationships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think ideally what the undercover needs to be is very clever and cunning,\u201d Yost said.<\/p>\n
Yost also worked in schools as an outreach officer. Yostforjudge\/Instagram<\/p>\n
Sometimes, he was forced at gunpoint to sample the drugs to prove he wasn\u2019t a cop. But Yost mastered the art of pretending to sample the goods by dipping his forefinger in the powder \u2014 but bringing his middle finger to his mouth. Dealers, he said, \u201cnever noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n
If he was asked to shoot up heroin on the spot, \u201cI just pushed them away and started yelling and screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n
And just in case, he kept a .25 automatic Colt pistol hidden under his clothes for protection.<\/p>\n
Yost played the part so well that one of the criminals he took down, \u201cJD [John Doe] Handsome,\u201d developed a deep friendship with his alter-ego.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of liked him,\u201d Yost admitted. \u201cHe was a good person \u2013 other than being a drug dealer \u2026 He was thinking of making me the godfather of his kid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yost is the Republican civil judge candidate on Staten Island. Yostforjudge\/Instagram<\/p>\n
He first crossed paths with JD Handsome during a botched cocaine buy, when another dealer snatched his $20 and bolted. Handsome saw an opportunity, sidling over to ask how he could help.<\/p>\n
Over the operation\u2019s six months, the two were practically inseparable, hanging out to all hours of the night. <\/p>\n
When he finally arrested his \u2018pal\u2019 and his pregnant, coke-dealing wife, the couple were stunned. <\/p>\n
Yost had to foster relationships with dealers to gain their trust. Courtesy of Glenn Yost<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can imagine the shock on this guy. I mean, I\u2019m his friend,\u201d Yost said. \u201cHe was just in complete shock [when they were arrested]. He could not get over the fact that I was a police officer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The key to selling his junkie bit was never taking no for an answer, Yost said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA heroin addict wants the heroin. If they tell you know \u2018no,\u2019 you still hang around and beg until you get what you want,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yost was with the NYPD for 20 years. Courtesy of Glenn Yost<\/p>\n
Yost went on to work as a youth outreach officer, co-founding the \u201cNo Staten Island Racism\u201d school program before attending New York Law School and retiring from the NYPD at 40.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While studying for the bar, he taught criminal justice and history at St. John\u2019s University and St. Joseph by the Sea high school on Staten Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He believes his unique background helped him empathize with all walks of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bring life experience, compassion, patience, and respect to the bench,\u201d said the married father of five. \u201cCompassion comes from observing and being part of people\u2019s suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now he wants to take a crack at the bench. A Staten Island civil judge candidate has a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[4234,57,42585,9,24,63,103,2134,134,136,135,58],"class_list":["post-389940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-judges","tag-metro","tag-narcos","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nypd","tag-republicans","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}