'I infiltrated deadly mafia cartel and was moments away from being killed'

An ex-cop who swapped his badge for a bible has spilled the beans on his harrowing experiences while working undercover in some of Washington DC 's most dangerous drug operations.

Dale Sutherland, who served as both a pastor and a police officer, is set to reveal his chilling encounters in an upcoming four-part documentary series slated for release later this year.

Dale, who once juggled his duties as a pastor with his role as an undercover cop, has hung up his handcuffs but not before recounting the harrowing tales of his time on the force. In an exclusive chat with The Mirror , he divulged hair-raising details about infiltrating vicious gangs and near-death experiences that came with the territory of his perilous undercover assignments.

Click here to follow the Mirror US on Google News to stay up to date with all the latest news, sport and entertainment stories.

READ MORE: Roseanne and Sabrina the Teenage Witch star Martin Mull dies after 'fight against a long illness'

READ MORE: Michael Jackson conspiracy theories claim he's not the biological father of his children

In a gripping tell-all with The Mirror, Dale, a pastor who doubled as an undercover cop, recounts spine-chilling episodes from his past life on the streets of Washington DC. His stories include close calls with death and tense drug busts, all part of a new documentary series airing later this year.

In the eye-opening interview he spoke of times when he narrowly escaped death while infiltrating notorious gangs and conducting high-stakes drug deals.

Reflecting on a particularly narrow escape, Dale told us: "In 1992, I was part of a longer term case. The main guy was known to be a murderer and the group had murdered 10 to 12 people and I was going there with the informant, I had got to be friends with the informant, and we went to set up to do a deal."

He continued, revealing how his habitual tardiness unexpectedly became his savior: "I was late, like I'm always late, and I and I showed up, thank God, 45 minutes late. What we later found out was they had been waiting and when we would have pulled up on time they were just going to shoot us both in our car and kill us."

He added: "Instead, when we showed up 45 minutes late, they had kind of given up so there was nobody waiting for us. So, the informant got out of the car and said, 'Let me go get him to the car'. I said okay, fine. When he got out of the car, he found him and then they killed him. They shot him I remember 28 times. It was quite a sight.

"I went to the hospital. He'd been pronounced dead, and I remember seeing bullet holes up in his neck and bullets at his vehicles. So it was really terrible, and that would have been me, this guy, if we'd have been on time, if we'd have been there."

Recounting his undercover dealings with La Familia Cartel, Dale revealed: "I was posing as a guy who owned a bunch of recording studios. So I started my own recording studio. I took a house, a little one. We rented it, and then I got a foreman to build a wall that looked like a studio. We got eggshell cartons, put them all in the walls and tried to do as much we could. We actually got a soundboard from church, an old soundboard nobody was using, and made it look good and functional."

"I ended up getting to know these cartel guys and they were just trying to sell a lot a lot of drugs, a lot of marijuana, a lot of cocaine, a lot of crystal methamphetamine. And so anyway, one thought he struck gold, because [at the time] a Caucasian who was not a policeman, was known as having a lot of money and the ability to buy a lot. And so this opened him opportunities of bringing the cartel to Washington."

Delving into the gritty details, he confessed his initial cluelessness and how he gradually interacted with those further up the cartel hierarchy by earning their trust.

"You try to fill the idea they had," he explained. "With street buys, you have literally minutes or seconds to get their confidence. To really build confidence, though, you have to do a lot. That's why I would create an undercover business. I would have a lot around me. A lot of the time I wouldn't discuss drugs in the first meetings and would brag about stuff I did and not make a big deal about the drugs."

"If we did a deal for an ounce or whatever, I really would downplay it and change the subject, and I'd talk about anything other than making this a massive deal."

In one particularly tense episode from his time in the force, Dale recounted how he had to think quickly when a dealer discovered the wire he was wearing. He described a nerve-wracking encounter where, after being asked to enter a building, he was locked in and subjected to a search by gang members.

"When they search me, they find my wire. Now my wire was, in those days, a metal box that was about the size of a four inch by four inch metal box. It was in my waistband and when they found it, they just felt the metal, felt the hardness, and jumped back and said, what is that? ".

His quick thinking led to him claiming it was his gun - a two-inch revolver type the police were not known to carry at the time - and he was trying to sell it. He managed to take out a gun he had on him and revealed this get their attention diverted.

Dale admitted he doesn't know what would have happened had his story not worked or the group tried to buy his weapon.

Dale's four-part documentary, titled Dale Undercover will shine a spotlight on his double-life during the crack cocaine wars in Washington DC in the 1980s and 90s. Thanks to hundreds of hours of tapes, the public will get to see Dale's double-life as a police officer, minister, mobster, music producer and family man in this never-before-seen tell-all of his career.

* Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .