Detective Dave Janisch had plenty of “uh oh” moments during his storied career working undercover drug investigations.

There’s been dangerous moment when the only reason he wasn’t shot was because the person holding the gun was actually his informant. There’s been drug deals involving gunfire. Other drug deals had radio equipment failures causing others to miss his signal to come in for an arrest.

And then there was that day a woman told him she couldn’t sell to him because she knew who he was ­– a detective with the Waukesha Police Department.

“She still sold to him,” said Police Chief Russell Jack, chuckling. “He is so good at his job, he closed the deal and she still sold for a couple hundred bucks.”

After working more than two decades in various undercover roles in the community after being a patrol officer, Janisch is retiring from his career in law enforcement.

“There is a lot of experience walking out our door,” said Sgt. Jerry Habanek. “… We are really going to miss the guy with his amount of experience and his tenacity and intensity.”

Janisch first got into law enforcement in 1976 and began with the Waukesha Police Department in 1979, Janisch said.

“A lot of cops say ‘I like helping people,’ I guess that is part of it,” Janisch said about why he first chose a career in law enforcement. “The way I look at it, you want to arrest bad people that endanger people’s lives. … That’s primarily why got into it – there were bad people that deserve to get arrested and go through the judicial system. … Plus it was interesting."

Leaving Behind the Blue Uniform

After working a few years as an undercover “acting detective,” he returned back to becoming a regular patrol officer. He soon found making traffic stops and wearing a uniform wasn’t his calling and eventually he was back undercover when he was promoted to detective in 1987.

“I got rid of all my uniforms then,” Janisch said.

His cover was so good that it surprised Jack at a softball game when Jack was a new police officer two decades ago. Jack arrived at the field and saw Janisch and another undercover officer and immediately questioned their appearance.

“They had beards and goatees,” said Jack, explaining his thought process when he saw the pair. “I thought 'what a bunch of scruffy looking guys out there. … Who is playing shortstop and who is our pitcher, because they are criminals. I thought this was a cop league.'”

Lifetime Achievement Award

It was a huge honor that Janisch received, but it was one that was kept quiet until now because of the sensitive nature of working with drug investigations. Janisch spent about 14 years with the Waukesha Police Department and another eight years with the Waukesha County Metro Drug Unit. As a result of his decades of undercover work, he was given the Wisconsin Narcotics Officer Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

“I couldn’t draw it up any better,” Janisch said. “My career has been fantastic. To be allowed to work drugs for such a long period of time, it is not very common because of the liability aspects and getting burned out. My supervisors throughout the years, they had enough faith to let me keep on doing it.”

Habanek described the ceremony as a “rock star moment.”

“He is constantly working on buying and selling drugs and making arrests for the right reasons,” Habanek said. “... He is just a person who is purposeful. He believes that drugs are wrong and he is going to do everything he can to eradicate that. He is invested in Waukesha. He wants to keep Waukesha a great city and that’s what he has been doing for 34 years.”

Janisch has touched more than just those at the Waukesha Police Department, according to Jack. The police chief said Janisch has impacted law enforcement throughout the state.

“He has touched so many people, so many cops’ lives when it comes to drugs,” Jack said. “Dave doesn’t just work on a local scale. He has worked on it here, but obviously drug dealers are not geographically restricted, so he has dealt with people here all the way to Texas as far as drug enforcement.”

Janisch on a long career while working with drug dealers and users:

"You pretty much have to take it with a grain of salt. You can’t let it bother you. You try to look at the humorous side and not take stuff so seriously.

"There is a lot of serious stuff. You see a lot of sad things.  You meet a lot of bad people. You try to look on the bright side. Plus the type of work is so intriguing and keeps you interested. I look forward to going to work every day. I still do. There is always something different every day.

"It is always a chess match out there. You are trying to catch the bad guys and you are trying to figure out ways to do it. Some bad guys are a lot more smart than others. You try to solve the puzzles."

On working with informants:

"As time went on, we started working more and more with informants. … I’ve had the same informants for six, seven, 10 years. The guys do it for a variety of reasons. They do it because they think it is the right thing to do, they have drug charges or traffic charges, they are eliminating the competition or payback or they are paid informants.

"… You have to be fair to these people. … They develop an allegiance. That’s why they keep coming back. If you lie to them, they are going to remember that, they are going to spread the word ‘don’t trust Dave Janisch because he is a liar. Don’t believe him.’"

On funny times:

Janisch was working with one confidential informant who was trying to work off drug charges. This particular informant had help the police department take down a lot of upper-level guys, according to Janisch. They decided to do one bust in Milwaukee.

"We were going to do what we called a controlled buy where I search the informant, put a wire on him, give him the money and send him on his way to buy drugs," Janisch said. "He comes out and turns the drugs over to us, I search him to make sure he doesn’t have any more money or drugs on him. When I told him we were going to do it that way, he became very offended. This was down on Layton Avenue, about 12 in the afternoon during the summer, and he was so offended that he thought I didn’t trust him.

"(The informant, who had a Middle Eastern accent, said) ‘David, I’ve been with you 100 percent. I’ll prove to you that I don’t have any drugs.’

"He gets out of the car and stands in the middle of Layton Avenue and he drops his pants.

"‘David, I told you I didn’t have any drugs.’

"That was kind of funny. All the people were driving by and here I have got this Middle Eastern guy with no pants on in the middle of the road."