"Look at this guy," Brett laughed. "He's trying to be a cop or something. What a fucking retard."
Finally, Brett gave up and went inside. He was at his desk, typing up a paper for school, when he saw a strange number flash across the screen of the police radio. Turning up the volume, he heard the dispatcher he'd talked with earlier ordering patrol cars to a residential address -- his address.
Jay Bevenour
Brett Allen Andrews was arrested by the Denver Police
Department.
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"Perpetrator is a male in his mid-teens, wearing a yellow T-shirt and blue jeans."
Brett looked down at what he was wearing; it was all there. He was the perp. He changed into a different outfit and put his radio in its secret place in the closet. By the time he opened his bedroom door, the cops were already in the front yard. The FCC agent was there, too. Sweating, he'd spent the day circling southwest Denver with the same equipment the commission uses to zero in on pirate-radio stations. The agent stomped into the living room, bellowing, "We have you now, you little bastard!"
But they didn't have him. A search of Brett's bedroom turned up only the walkie-talkies on his shelf. They confiscated the legal radios and issued Brett's confused mother a receipt for the items, then warned the boy that he was still under investigation. After they left, Brett spent the night listening to his mother cry and his stepdad scream about how the cops had bugged the house.
The next day, May 1, Brett got a call from Mark -- later identified in news reports as "a police informant" -- telling Brett that he'd lost the software for his police radio and that the channels were all locked up. He offered the teen $2,000 to come reprogram it for him.
"Hell, yeah, I'll do it," Brett said. But since he was supposed to eat lunch with his dad, he had to make some odd plans. He felt like he was trapped in the paranoid scene in GoodFellas, where Ray Liotta has to move guns and bags of cocaine across town while being observed by the FBI. The only difference was that the contraband Brett was smuggling was the all-hearing ear of police surveillance.
Sensing correctly that he was being watched, Brett transferred the software from his laptop to the computer at his grandmother's, then went to his dad's and got his truck. He took his dad with him when he went to pick up Mark's radio, then returned to his grandmother's and unlocked the channels on the device. His grandmother offered Brett cherry pie, but he declined. Then Brett returned the radio to Mark, who complained that it was not transmitting properly. With his father still in the car, Brett returned to his grandmother's and re-reprogrammed the radio. She again offered him cherry pie; this time he accepted. "Thanks, Grandma."
Heading back to Mark's, Brett -- who was still driving under a learner's permit -- was speeding so fast that the brakes on the truck began smoking and his dad's soda spilled everywhere. But then Mark gave Brett an envelope containing $2,000, and Brett told his father that he would buy lunch. Everyone was happy.
Brett got barely two blocks before a swarm of unmarked police cars surrounded his truck.
"I think we've just been set up, Dad," he told his father, who had no idea what was happening. Brett pulled over and obeyed an officer's orders to toss the keys from the vehicle. Brett was torn from the truck and handcuffed. He watched as other officers yanked his father from the automobile, threw the disabled man to the ground and handcuffed him. His father had a hard time getting back up, so the police had to lift him into the cop car.
Brett looked into the sky and saw the police helicopter hovering low above them. He wondered what they were saying.
Brett was charged with over a dozen felony and misdemeanor counts, including impersonating a police officer, wiretapping, eavesdropping and making false reports. News of his escapades ran in papers across the country. But because he was underage, Brett's name was never released to the media, even as the case made its way through court.
It was a tremendously embarrassing -- and terrifying -- experience for the Denver Police Department to have a teenager infiltrate its network for so long before being detected. "This is an officer-safety issue, a public-safety issue," Deputy Police Chief of Operations Dave Abrams told a reporter at the time. "You can't have someone out there broadcasting emergency calls; the potential is frightening. This kid had the ability to wreak havoc with our communications system."
Things looked even worse for Brett after it was revealed that he'd been stopped in Littleton for impersonating a police officer just a month before. On April 6, 2001, Brett had a police jacket in his possession and was driving around with the radio in his father's truck, which was equipped with emergency lights. When another driver pissed him off, he attempted to pull the man over, but the motorist drove home and called the Littleton Police Department. When the Littleton cops caught up to Brett, the teen reportedly told them he was an off-duty officer, but then burst into tears and admitted he had made the whole thing up. That time, he was let off with a ticket.
