PHARMACIST STEVE

The “sneak-and-peek” warrants, as they’re more commonly called, allow investigators to search a house, car, computer, other property or item, seize evidence and not tell anyone until much later. That differs from the typical search warrant, which requires police to provide immediate notice to property owners.

The delayed warrants mean agents can avoid tipping off suspects and jeopardizing an investigation, while potentially provoking them into revealing drug suppliers or other connections when it appears someone has stolen their cache.

 The technique appears to have backfired this time, imperiling an innocent bystander held at gunpoint and blowing the agents’ drug investigation.

“The danger of violence is obviously real, and this case makes it very evident. Someone could have been killed,’’ said Jonathan Witner-Rich, a criminal law professor at Cleveland State University who studies use of the warrants nationwide. “I think it illustrates this is a dangerous tactic, and the law is not requiring police to reduce such risks.’’

The federal statute that allows the warrants should incorporate extra safeguards to protect against this kind of outcome, Witner-Rich said.

Russ Baer, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, declined comment on the warrant or the agency’s tactics, citing the ongoing criminal investigation.

The government seeks the warrants “to preserve the secrecy of an investigation,’’ said Kevin Sonoff, spokesman for Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams. The office declined to discuss the ramifications of the warrant issued in this case.

The two men appeared furious and desperate. They were told someone had broken into their storage locker and cleared it out. They wanted to know who.

 After they lured Riley into a different unit, one of the gunmen grabbed him by the shoulder, pushed him against the wall and yelled, “Get down! Get the (expletive) down!” The man filmed the confrontation with his cellphone, the light from the camera shining into Riley’s face.

He ordered his cohort to bind Riley’s wrists and ankles with duct tape, according to the video, which was played in court. The intruders went through the manager’s pockets and took his keys as they repeatedly demanded to know who knocked off their unit.

At first, Riley wasn’t sure what the men were talking about, then he recalled the break-in days earlier.

“When I came in, the door was half open,” he told the men. “The door was ripped off the track. “They didn’t get the lock off, so they broke the door. … I reported the break-in.’’

Riley told his attackers that he fixed the door a couple of days later. It was around then that he learned who had broken the door, he said.

“I think the police did. That is what my boss said,’’ Riley told the men, according to the video. “Then my boss said it wasn’t a break in.’’

“You’re telling me the police took my (expletive)?’’ one of the men asked in disbelief.

If Riley was lying, they implied that they’d shoot him. “Pop goes the weasel,” said the man with the gun to the manager’s head.

Then the two then abruptly left, closing the storage unit door with Riley still trussed up but alive.

Before, during and after the Dec. 2 attack, Drug Enforcement Administration agents had been tracking the movement of one of the alleged gunmen and a woman through GPS traces of their phones and cars.

The monthslong surveillance was part of a broader investigation into black market trafficking of marijuana from Oregon to Texas, according to a prosecutor’s memo opposing the defendants’ release from jail before the trial. The DEA was working with a team of officers from Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI, Port of Portland police and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

Last August, investigators at Portland International Airport had found $184,740 in cash concealed in a shoebox in a passenger’s checked luggage, said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Narus.

Agents discovered that the money was tied to a man and a woman suspected of buying large supplies of marijuana in Oregon and smuggling the bundles back to Texas for distribution, Narus said.

Investigators identified the man, Jody T. Wafer, of Houston, as the one who coordinated buying the drugs in Oregon for transport back to Texas, records indicate.

DEA agents tracked Wafer and the woman, Brittany Kizzee, using undercover surveillance that included covert photography, wiretapping and even trick phone calls, according to court records.

They learned of the large stockpile of marijuana at the Public Storage outlet on Southeast 82^nd Avenue and decided to seize it before they suspected it might be shipped to Texas, court records show. The investigators also were still working to identify the drug suppliers in Oregon.

On Nov. 17, DEA agents got a judge’s signature on a delayed-notice search warrant, giving them authority to enter the Public Storage unit, seize property and not tell anyone for weeks.

Four days later on Nov. 21, the narcotics agents broke into the unit, knocked the door off its track, seized 484 pounds of marijuana and left the door ajar as if a real burglary had occurred.

Sometime in late November, the agents directed a district manager from Public Storage to make a “ruse call’’ to Kizzee, feeding the manager lines about what to say about a break-in at the unit.

Then on Nov. 30, the agents learned Wafer, Kizzee and a second man, Trent Knight, were flying from Texas to Portland, set to touch down about 8:45 p.m. The agents followed them when they arrived. They saw at the airport that Knight appeared to have a gun, according to court records.

On Dec. 1, the agents saw their targets driving in circles around Public Storage.

And that Saturday morning, Dec. 2, the agents tracked them in a pickup that drove up to the Public Storage unit. Two men got out. A woman stayed behind the wheel. About 10 minutes later, the truck drove away, according to court documents.

‘WEED IS LEGAL HERE’

After his assailants had left, Riley managed to break free and call 911 around 9:30 a.m.

Portland police responded quickly, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Officer Patrick Nagy took Riley’s statement and viewed surveillance footage from the storage business.

Nagy checked with Portland’s Drugs and Vice Division to see if it was involved in the marijuana confiscation at the Public Storage unit, but Portland police said they weren’t aware of it. They later learned DEA agents working with airport police were in on the marijuana investigation, though it was just the DEA that raided the storage unit.

“We just had to deal with the aftermath,’’ said Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger, head of the drug division.

Nagy and other officers arrested Wafer, Knight and Kizzee about two hours later, after the three had passed through security at Portland International Airport before boarding a plane to Houston.

As officers approached Wafer, he slammed his cellphone to the floor in an apparent attempt to break it, according to Narus, the prosecutor.