Managing Safety
Four months after graduating from St. John’s University in 1974 with a degree in criminal justice, Lew Rice was sworn in as a special agent with the then-newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration. By the time he retired 26 years later, he had been given assignments in New York City, Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Kingston, Jamaica. He had also become the special agent in charge of the New York DEA office, and written a book, DEA Special Agent: My Life on the Front Line (Dorrance Publishing Co.; $12), outlining his ascent in a dangerous industry as well as his involvement in the heroin investigations of Harlem drug lords Leroy “Nicky†Barnes and Frank Lucas.