See more of our coverage in your search results.
Now he wants to take a crack at the bench.
A Staten Island civil judge candidate has a wild, action-packed past as an undercover narc who posed as a dope fiend to bust dealers in NYC back in the 1980s.
Glenn Yost told The Post he made more than 500 drug busts with the NYPD – including the very first grand jury crack-sale case on Staten Island.
“I feel like I’ve come full circle in the law – enforcing it for 20 years, teaching it, and practicing it for nearly 20 years,” said the 63-year-old Republican lawyer.
Yost was born in Brooklyn and moved to Staten Island when he was 11 years old. He was raised by a single mother who worked at Sears.
He was 20 years old when he joined the NYPD and became part of the narcotics unit two years into his career, he said.
He ran undercover operations for the NYPD 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.
He assumed new identities like “Vinnie” – 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.
“Those shooting galleries, if there’s anything you can imagine close to hell, that would be it,” he said.
“It was scary because you didn’t know, you didn’t know who was who. You didn’t know if you were going to get robbed. It smelled horrible. People would go to the bathroom wherever they wanted to.”
Consistency helped him gain the dealers’ trust — so he became a repeat customer. A confidential informant helped cement the relationships.
“I think ideally what the undercover needs to be is very clever and cunning,” Yost said.
Sometimes, he was forced at gunpoint to sample the drugs to prove he wasn’t a cop. But Yost mastered the art of pretending to sample the goods by dipping his forefinger in the powder — but bringing his middle finger to his mouth. Dealers, he said, “never noticed.”
If he was asked to shoot up heroin on the spot, “I just pushed them away and started yelling and screaming.”
And just in case, he kept a .25 automatic Colt pistol hidden under his clothes for protection.
Yost played the part so well that one of the criminals he took down, “JD [John Doe] Handsome,” developed a deep friendship with his alter-ego.
“I kind of liked him,” Yost admitted. “He was a good person – other than being a drug dealer … He was thinking of making me the godfather of his kid.”
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.
Over the operation’s six months, the two were practically inseparable, hanging out to all hours of the night.
When he finally arrested his ‘pal’ and his pregnant, coke-dealing wife, the couple were stunned.
“If you can imagine the shock on this guy. I mean, I’m his friend,” Yost said. “He was just in complete shock [when they were arrested]. He could not get over the fact that I was a police officer.”
The key to selling his junkie bit was never taking no for an answer, Yost said.
“A heroin addict wants the heroin. If they tell you know ‘no,’ you still hang around and beg until you get what you want,” he said.
Yost went on to work as a youth outreach officer, co-founding the “No Staten Island Racism” school program before attending New York Law School and retiring from the NYPD at 40.
While studying for the bar, he taught criminal justice and history at St. John’s University and St. Joseph by the Sea high school on Staten Island.
He believes his unique background helped him empathize with all walks of life.
“I bring life experience, compassion, patience, and respect to the bench,” said the married father of five. “Compassion comes from observing and being part of people’s suffering.”
