Drug Arrests Were Real; the Badge Was Fake
Virginia Lee Hunter for The New York Times
Mike Withington, 49, with his dog, Tess, has yet to be charged after being dragged out of bed in handcuffs one morning in May.


By MONICA DAVEY
Published: July 1, 2008
GERALD, Mo. — Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this small town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up.



Erik M. Lunsford/St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Mayor Otis Schulte of Gerald said Bill A. Jakob went to great lengths to make police officers think he was a federal agent.
Arrests began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,â€