03E05 - The Good Collar

There's a drug overdose epidemic among the youth in a poor neighborhood, so Crockett and Tubbs are staking out the street where the local youth gangs like to make their drug deals. As a result, Crockett busts a scared young man called Archie Ellis who was sent there by "The Regular Fellas", the biggest local drug dealing youth gang, to deliver a package of black tar heroin to a buyer. Meanwhile, Tubbs busts a kid from the enemy gang called "The Apostles", who turns out to be Officer Ramirez, an undercover cop from the anti-gang unit. As for Archie, he turns out to be a good kid and a high-school football talent who's about to receive a college scholarship and move out of his bad neighborhood. He admits that he only agreed to do the drug deal to get enough money to buy a ball and a pair of new sports shoes for his football training. Since he shows clear signs of remorse for what he has done, has no serious priors and respectable, concerned community organizer Ed McCain is vouching for him, Sonny considers dropping the charges and using Ramirez instead to take on "Count", the cynical and overconfident fifteen-year-old leader of Fellas, who's real name is Curtis Walker but likes to call himself Count. Ramirez and his boss Lt. Lee Atkins have no problems with this plan either but disgruntled, crusading Assistant State Attorney William Pepin warns them that if their plan fails, he will prosecute Archie in order to get to Curtis. Sonny takes a liking to Archie and they start to bond.