State Panel Rejects Wiretap Authority : Issue Backed by Law Enforcement Figures, Opposed by ACLU

Despite claims that law enforcement agencies cannot effectively combat organized crime without it, an Assembly committee Monday narrowly defeated a proposal to give local and state police officers limited authority to use wiretaps.

Top law enforcement officials--including Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller and a top assistant to Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp--testified that wiretap authority is “desperately needed,” particularly in drug trafficking cases.

But the Democratic majority of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, yielding to concerns that wiretaps infringe upon individual privacy rights, defeated the measure on a 4-3 vote that followed party lines.

Federal agents and local officers in 30 states and the District of Columbia already have authority to use wiretaps.

But without the consent of at least one of the parties, police in California cannot legally listen to, or record, telephone conversations.

Defense attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the bill, saying it would allow law enforcement authorities to overhear private utterances of innocent people as well as those under investigation for suspected crimes.

Viewpoint of ACLU

“We have a tradition in California of respecting the right to privacy, which is recognized by the (state) Constitution,” said Marjorie C. Swartz of the ACLU.

The bill by Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), which passed the Senate 27 to 6 in May, would have allowed court-ordered wiretaps for investigation of murder, kidnaping, robbery, drug trafficking and conspiracies involving any of those crimes.

It also would have reversed a 1973 appellate court decision that prohibits state prosecutors from using evidence gathered in legal wiretaps by federal agents.

Presley said he will speak with the four committee members who voted against the measure to see if he can change “any number of things” to win their support before the bill is taken up again next year.

Presley said the safeguards and limitations in his bill would have made the California wiretap law “tighter than any” in existence.

Presley said concern about privacy that was raised by the measure’s opponents “pales in comparison when I weigh it against . . . the numbers of our young people who are being destroyed by drugs.”

Smugglers from South America are making California a major market for their drugs, “and we don’t have the guts to stand up to them,” Presley said.

California’s wealth and its prohibition against wiretaps is luring organized crime operatives to the state, Reiner testified.

“Without exception,” Reiner said, “there has never been a major organized crime operation broken when there has not been electronic surveillance.”