Drug Enforcers Losing Nation’s Cocaine War : Massive Government Eradication Efforts Are ‘Overwhelmed by the Bad Guys,’ Official Says

The war on cocaine in California and across the nation is being lost--dramatically--despite massive influxes of money, manpower, equipment, strategies and even military resources to combat international narcotics traffickers.

Law officers nationwide--from street cops to top federal drug agents--who once believed that they could destroy narcotics trade if only they were given the money and manpower--now acknowledge that they can no longer win the battle by themselves.

The federal government has spent more than $1.7 billion this year on law enforcement efforts to eradicate the drug--in the coca fields of South America, along the border and on city streets. But the efforts are being buried under an avalanche of cocaine--more than 100 tons will be snorted, smoked and injected by Americans this year, more than triple the amount of five years ago, and drug traffickers will take in more than $100 billion this year. What undoubtedly has forced talk of a “national epidemic” may well be the emergence of crystallized “rock” or “crack” cocaine.

“We are being overwhelmed by the bad guys in the dope war,” said Sgt. Eugene D. Rudolph, a longtime narcotics investigator in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

John Lawn, chief of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which with other federal agencies has seized more than 32,000 pounds of cocaine nationwide in the first six months of this year, agrees: “When I was with the FBI, before I took this job, I always assumed that with sufficient money and manpower, we could defeat the drug traffickers. But I no longer believe law enforcement can win the war on drugs. We are going to need an ally, and that ally is going to have to be a society that really is frightened about what is happening.”

Many in law enforcement said they were encouraged by proposals by the Reagan Administration and the House calling for money to beef up federal drug interception efforts, tougher sentencing of traffickers and money for drug education and treatment. But law officers warn that their efforts are doomed to fail unless Americans decide to stop using drugs.

Federal health officials estimate that 25 million Americans have tried cocaine. In 1985, a National Institute of Drug Abuse survey linked more than 600 deaths and 10,000 hospitalizations to cocaine.

In Los Angeles County, cocaine-linked deaths have increased by 172% since 1982, cocaine-related emergency room cases increased 314% since 1982, the number of admissions to county drug clinics has increased by 115% since 1983 and there is a four-month waiting list for admission to county-run drug treatment centers, health officials say.

‘Nose of the Nation’

“With South Florida hanging like a finger over Colombia, Miami always will be the cocaine smuggling capital of the country. But Los Angeles is the ‘Nose of the Nation,’ ” said James Walsh, chief prosecutor for the federal drug task force in Los Angeles.

Along the Southwest border, especially in California, officials have in recent months become especially alarmed as larger and larger seizures of cocaine seem to indicate that the area will soon rival the Florida coast as the center of a drug trade that law enforcement officials say has turned overwhelmingly to smuggling cocaine.

At the San Ysidro border, south of San Diego, 25,000 vehicles cross from Mexico each day. Brazen couriers, or “mules,” run the gantlet past understaffed U.S. Customs Service inspectors to carry cocaine for South American drug rings. Inspectors find cocaine in shoes, diapers, luggage, gas tanks and rectal cavities. In recent months, the trend has been toward much larger cargoes, with the drug often concealed under loads of broken glass, feathers or rubber tires. Most of it is bound for Los Angeles, where:

More than half of all murders are considered drug-related, as are 80% of bank robberies and 50% of burglaries, according to Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who says half his officers are involved in fighting drug-related crimes.

Already this year, Los Angeles police and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies have seized enough cocaine to get all 3.2 million residents of the city high on crack once a day for 10 days. There were more than twice as many cocaine seizures by police and sheriff’s deputies in the first half of this year than in all of last year.

The economics of cocaine have changed so radically that it is no longer restricted to the well-to-do. The processing of crystallized cocaine as “rock” or “crack” has so lowered the price--and increased the availability--that junior high school students are pooling their lunch money, “share cropping,” as one sheriff’s deputy called it, to buy cocaine from schoolyard dealers. In some areas of Los Angeles, the scene resembles a public market, with competing dealers loudly hawking their wares on the sidewalk, telling passers-by that their cocaine is better than the next dealer’s. In some areas, armed dealers make house calls in pickup trucks equipped with telephones to take orders.

Pressure on Users Urged

For months, law enforcement has been calling not only for more manpower and equipment to fight drug traffickers but for an assault on the demand side of the problem, laying the long-ignored responsibility on the shoulders of the millions of Americans who illegally use the drug.

In government meetings, in law enforcement strategy sessions, in scores of interviews, law officers have suggested that they cannot do the job alone. And Reagan Administration officials have admitted at congressional hearings that the nation’s drug program has collapsed.

The call for help comes amid several recent dramatic developments:

Health officials warn that crack--the inexpensive type of cocaine that is flooding New York and Los Angeles--is so addictive that it can make junkies of users in only a few weeks.

The deaths within eight days of two athletes--college basketball star Len Bias and Cleveland Browns defensive back Don Rogers--of cocaine overdoses have sparked renewed public concern.

President Reagan signed a directive in April substantially increasing the role of the military in the war on drugs. Three months later, six Black Hawk helicopters and 160 U.S. troops swooped into the jungles of Bolivia to provide support for a mission to destroy clandestine cocaine laboratories.

Last week, President and Nancy Reagan went on television to call for an end to drug use. Reagan proposed spending $900 million on efforts to interdict illegal drugs on the Southwest border and issued an executive order requiring drug testing for federal employees in sensitive jobs. As part of a similar $2-billion drug package, the House approved a bill that requires increased use of the military, calls for the death penalty for some drug-related crimes and allows use of illegally obtained evidence in drug trials. The plan also proposes money for drug prevention and treatment.

Law enforcement officers say they welcome the attention but add that the battle will be long and tedious.

Sigmund Freud called cocaine “a magnificent substance.” It has been used as an anesthetic, as a cure for hemorrhoids and as an early ingredient in Coca-Cola.

In the 1970s, rock singers, movie stars and sports heroes snorted cocaine, and movies reinforced the drug’s image as “charming,” several sociologists say. And because at first the drug gives people feelings of energy and power, many used it not only socially but on the job.

With massive amounts of the drug on the street, but minuscule amounts of health information, many Americans found themselves using more and more of the white powder, convinced that it was safe; in reality, it can cause seizures, depression, paranoia, heart attacks, respiratory paralysis and death.

It was 14 years ago that then-President Richard M. Nixon called the drug problem a “national emergency” and reorganized federal drug-fighting agencies, hiring hundreds of new agents.

Then Reagan, vowing to “do what was necessary to end the drug menace,” introduced the task force approach to drug enforcement, combining federal, state and local law enforcement resources to destroy smuggling networks. The first task force was set up in South Florida in 1982.

Historic Rivalries

The approach was devised to cut through historic bureaucratic rivalries. Hundreds of drug agents arrived to aid local law officers. The Customs Service increased patrol boat surveillance to 24 hours a day, and Army Cobra helicopters, two Navy radar planes and radar balloons began hunting smugglers.

Within several months, 12 more task forces were in place across the country, including three regional forces in California. These focused less on interception than on apprehending large traffickers, a policy that at least some agents question.

Most local and federal law enforcement agents agree that the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force did achieve cooperation among the agencies.

The task force approach tries to draw on the best skills of many federal agencies: the FBI’s surveillance techniques, the undercover skills of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the tax and money-laundering capabilities of the Internal Revenue Service, the Customs Service’s ability to track international movements of people and funds, intelligence capabilities from Coast Guard and military and the legal expertise of U.S. attorneys specially trained in narcotics cases.

There has been some debate among officials over whether intercepting drugs is the most efficient use of manpower and money. Said one ranking DEA official: “Interdiction is not a big bang for your bucks. . . . You are apprehending the non-career criminal.” Others believe that the highly publicized seizures give the public an erroneous impression that the drug war is being won.

Complex Trails

Traditionally most narcotics investigations worked from the bottom up, arresting low-level pushers in hopes of uncovering bigger operators. Such tactics have limited success on international traffickers, narcotics officers say, because the local agencies had little time and money to follow the complex trails leading to cocaine kingpins.

(The international complexity of such cases was illustrated recently in San Pedro, said Alan D. Walls, a special customs agent in Los Angeles. Agents say they found 129 pounds of cocaine in the bilge of the Merkur Beach, a Colombian freighter chartered from a West German company. The largely Filipino crew was supplied by a firm in Cyprus.)

DEA agents say the traditional techniques work even less well with violent South American drug rings, because couriers know they may be killed if they inform on their bosses. Likewise, agents have a difficult time infiltrating these groups because most are family operations.

Task forces work from the top down. By concentrating on upper-echelon bosses, they have been successful in following the money trails left by smugglers, federal narcotics officials say.

To sweeten the partnership between local and federal agencies--and to wound the traffickers in the pocketbook--the task forces have emphasized seizure of cash and assets along with cocaine. The booty--millions of dollars worth of boats, airplanes, yachts, apartment buildings, jewelry and cash--have been divided among local and federal law enforcement agencies who use it to beef up their own forces.

Three-Year Budget

For example, California’s Simi Valley Police Department, which recently participated in a two-year task force case, received $300,000 in seized money, enough to pay its narcotics squad budget for three years. And in southern Florida, the U.S. attorney’s office reports having handled $71 million in forfeitures with $50 million pending. Included in the government booty are a Learjet, a shopping center, multimillion-dollar houses and hundreds of boats, cars and planes.

This approach is especially satisfying because, as Walsh, the chief prosecutor and head of the Los Angeles regional task force, said: “We are using the smugglers’ own money to catch them.”

Before they started seizing assets, local and federal agents had too little money to purchase drugs for use as evidence, said Walsh. “The crooks would price us out of the market. They’d ask us for $60,000 and that would blow it, because that would be equal to our total buy money for the entire quarter.”

The policy has also helped supply equipment for law enforcement.

“We sent customs out in confiscated aircraft with binoculars to look for bad guys who were flying million-dollar planes with million-dollar equipment that could zero in on law enforcement communications,” said Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.). “These guys (smugglers) have incredible cash. When they post a million-dollar bond, they figure it’s just the cost of doing business.”

Sophisticated Smugglers

The sophistication of such trafficking groups was spotlighted in August, when federal authorities announced that a Pennsylvania grand jury had indicted a dozen people, including a man from Palos Verdes, on charges of smuggling 7 1/2 tons of cocaine. The ring used a charter air service to fly from four Colombian airfields to Florida, Pennsylvania and New York, according to U.S. Atty. James West.

The smugglers reportedly installed radio equipment in Colombia and set up communications equipment in Pennsylvania to monitor the flights, according to DEA officials. They also used decoy planes to confuse federal drug agents.

Since 1980, the suspects allegedly had been flying as much as $1 million in cash on each flight to Colombia, returning with up to 1,300 pounds of cocaine. The pilots were paid $3,000 per kilo per flight, and one load resulted in commissions of $1.8 million, West said. Federal drug agents have dug up $4.2 million stashed in 21 sections of buried sewer pipe at a mansion in the Pocono Mountains. Federal officials also seized $15 million worth of airplanes and other assets.

Breaking the case took two years, West said.

Another Enforcement Layer

To complement the task force approach, Reagan in 1983 established another layer of drug enforcement, the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System. It was to coordinate the nation’s drug effort, especially in the area of intelligence. With the attorney general’s National Drug Enforcement Policy Board already doing a similar job, however, many believe the move to be redundant.

A General Accounting Office report criticized Reagan’s new system, saying that although it made some improvements in coordination of drug-interdiction efforts, it also generates bureaucratic rivalries, creates an “image of action” and falls short of substantially reducing illegal drug flow.

The enforcement effort has been vigorous by all measures, with task forces reporting record numbers of investigations, convictions and drug seizures. The numbers show the scope of the smuggling problem:

Customs Service seizures totaled more than 56,600 pounds in 1985, compared to 7,051 pounds for all federal agencies in 1981. For the first six months of this year, federal seizures totaled 31,820 pounds. Cocaine-related indictments by the task forces increased from 110 in 1983 to 461 in 1985. The number of top-level leaders charged by the task forces with drug crimes increased from 200 in 1983 to 392 in 1985.

Seizures of assets by task forces increased from $35.5 million in 1983 to $164.5 million in 1985. Assets that were turned over to the federal government increased from $13 million to $56.2 million in 1985.

U.S. attorneys filed more controlled-substance cases in 1985 than in any previous year--more than 5,000 cases with 10,000 defendants. The DEA said that average sentences for drug offenses have increased 25% and that the number of prisoners convicted of drug-related charges has increased 15% since 1983. The IRS criminal investigation division recommended 840 prosecutions in 1985, nearly double the number in 1983.

But even with this effort, the cocaine trade has not only persevered, it has flourished.

Increasing Usage

Firm figures are hard to come by, but federal officials estimate that in 1981, before the task forces began work, Americans were using about 33 tons of cocaine a year. Today, after millions of dollars worth of law enforcement money and manpower has been committed to the drug war, usage is estimated to have increased to more than 100 tons.

The DEA has no idea how much cocaine is flowing through our borders, but it is enough to drive the street price down from $200 a gram to $50, and the wholesale price from $60,000 a kilo to $23,000.

Discouraged federal and local officials admit that the record seizures and arrests are not so much indications that they are doing a better job--although everyone agrees that they are--but that smugglers are also flooding the market with more cocaine.

“The higher-level traffickers are being taken off to jail; we’re getting a lot of cocaine, assets and cash. But the problem is deeper,” said William Meglen, Customs Service director of intelligence. “These rings are like Fortune 500 companies. You sometimes lose the chief executive officer and suffer some diminished profits, but the business goes on. Unlike regular businesses, however, there are more dire consequences: You can end up in the trunk of a rental car at LAX.”

The best estimate is that perhaps only 10% of smuggled cocaine is being intercepted, although the DEA suggests that figure is a wild guess.

Victim of Success

Some drug enforcement experts believe that America has been the victim of its own success in intercepting marijuana, hastening both smugglers’ and users’ interest in cocaine.

And they point to an emerging alliance between Colombian and Mexican drug dealers as a factor undermining U.S. drug-enforcement efforts.

Federal agents have estimated the size of the cocaine business by looking at cash surplus figures in regional Federal Reserve Banks--the amount of money taken in beyond the amount taken out. Much of this money represents drug profits being laundered, according to the President’s Commission on Organized Crime. Federal banking experts say, however, that there is no way to prove that the surplus is connected to the narcotics trade.

In 1980, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which covers Los Angeles, reported a $3-million cash deficit. By 1985, it reported a cash surplus of more than $1.6 billion. And in Miami, the figures rose from $89 million in 1971 to $5.9 billion last year.

In 1980, Operation Greenback was organized after the Treasury Department discovered an unusual surplus of currency in Florida financial institutions. The nationwide enforcement program focuses specifically on money-laundering, targeting attorneys, couriers, bankers and banks believed to be involved in helping the flow of drug money through financial institutions and across U.S. borders. In five years, indictments have involved hundreds of defendants and tens of millions of dollars.

Operation Buck Stop

Complementing Greenback, the Customs Service ran a crackdown on currency smuggling, code-named Operation Buck Stop, between October and May, seizing $29.4 million in cash believed to be the proceeds of drug sales. The 81 cash seizures, which resulted in 38 arrests, ranged in size from $15,000 to $4.2 million.

Customs officials at Los Angeles International Airport confiscated $10 million in cash hidden in cargo being shipped out of the country. Of that, $2.3 million was found in the cargo hold stuffed in a load of air conditioners, $1.9 million was hidden inside battery chargers and $816,384 was concealed in a compressor.

“All of that money was presumed to be from cocaine sales being sent back to the countries where the dope came from,” said Quentin Villanueva, Customs Service Pacific regional director. “No matter what kind of profit they are making, the dealers have to be hurt by that interruption in their cash flow.”

But in most areas of the drug war, the frustration remains high for law enforcers.

They liken drug interdiction to trying to fight a balloon--you punch it in one place and it pops up elsewhere.

Operation Alliance

Recently, the government announced establishment of a new Florida-type task force nicknamed Operation Alliance to operate in Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona. In those states, law enforcement officials have argued that because of federal successes in Florida, traffickers have changed their routes in favor of a longer but safer haul through Mexico and into the Southwest.

Alliance will be based in El Paso. Over two years, it is to bring 384 additional customs officers, 100 more IRS agents, 100 more DEA agents, 28 FBI agents and 60 federal prosecutors into the four states.

Equipment will include five aerostat radar balloons to find smugglers’ planes, four E-2C radar planes, six helicopters and two C-130 transport planes equipped with radar and intelligence-gathering equipment.

The search and investigative authority of officers also will be increased. Many of the 3,300 Border Patrol officers will be given direct authority to make drug arrests. Federal officials also want authority to pursue suspected smuggler aircraft up to 100 miles into Mexico, but Mexico has balked.

Still, Ted Hunter, top DEA official in Los Angeles, said it is erroneous to assume that the drug problem has merely packed up and moved west. “There is more cocaine everywhere, not just the southwest border. There is a bumper crop of cocaine,” he said.

At a recent hearing of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control in Florida, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) asked officials from the Customs Service and Treasury and Justice departments and local law enforcement: “If we tripled our enforcement resources, would it have any significant impact on the amount of drugs available on the street?”

Not a single official said yes.

Times researcher Susanna Shuster contributed to this article.

ASSETS SEIZED

1983 1984 1985 Property $20,913,861 $60,424,139 $115,050,285 Cash 14,627,125 61,651,875 49,509,989 Total 35,540,986 122,076,014 164,560,274

ASSETS FORFEITED

1983 1984 1985 Property $10,170,499 $29,544,501 $36,492,646 Cash 2,897,575 9,432,425 19,764,037 Total 13,068,074 38,976,926 56,256,683