Seizure Law Makes Crime Pay--for Police

Crime does pay, at least for the Police Department in this city.

West Covina has fared better than any other police department in the San Gabriel Valley under a 2-year-old federal program that allows local law enforcement agencies who work with federal agents to claim as much as 100% of the money and property seized in drug arrests.

As a result of drug investigations, the department expects to receive more than $3 million in cash and property for 1986, up from $356,000 in 1985, according to Police Chief Craig Meacham.

The 1986 amount, swelled by a major April drug seizure, would equal almost one-third of the department’s annual budget of about $9.2 million. The program requires that the money be used for law enforcement and stipulates that it cannot be used to replace current city funding.

“Drug smugglers are underwriting our drug enforcement efforts,” said Meacham.

The department has used the money to purchase equipment that would make the cops on television’s “Miami Vice” jealous.

Police now have at their disposal infrared lighting equipment, night-vision goggles, state-of-the-art recording equipment, a photography lab and an $85,000 mobile command unit equipped with telephones, a bathroom and cooking facilities.

Meacham called the mobile unit, which will be used at emergency and disaster scenes, “tangible evidence of the wisdom of the law. We thank the drug smugglers for making that available to us.”

Ten automobiles, including some late-model luxury cars, also have been seized in the raids or bought with money from the program and are being used in undercover work.

In addition, the money is being used to pay all the expenses of a special enforcement team assigned to narcotics.

Several San Gabriel Valley police departments do not participate in the federal program because they do not have the officers to spare for investigations that sometimes can continue for months.

“We’re a small department in a small city,” said Irwindale Police Chief Julian Miranda. Like several other departments in the area, his has neither sought nor received money under the program.

“Our lack of population doesn’t draw the big dealer,” Miranda said.

The Alhambra Police Department has not received any funds through the program, said Police Chief Joseph Molloy, mainly because his department concentrates on street dealers.

“Once we get to a certain level, we turn it over to another agency,” he said.

“I’m charged with trying to control street narcotics in Alhambra,” Molloy said. “I don’t have the resources to deal with the national problem. We’re interested in people dealing with the kids and nickel-and-dime dealers.

“When you’re dealing at the level that we’re dealing with, you’re not going to get the asset seizures,” Molloy said.

West Covina’s Meacham concedes that going for the larger busts can be expensive and time-consuming. He said a three-month investigation that culminated in September resulted in eight arrests, but nothing was seized.

“We apparently hit it right at a time when they were between shipments. When we got there, the cupboard was bare,” he said.

“But that’s the name of the game,” Meacham said. “Sometimes you’re fortunate and sometimes you strike out.”

Nevertheless, other police departments are hoping to duplicate West Covina’s success.

“They know how to communicate with the people close to the drug action and they’re successful,” said Capt. Richard Hoskin, operations commander for the Baldwin Park Police Department. “They work a whole lot of information coming in. Who is responsible, where, what’s the volume, whether or not there’s any potential for asset seizure.

“We’re working on the same kind of approach, hoping to model our (narcotics team) after theirs,” he said.

Hoskin said that his department received about $15,000 last year, from the sale of a boat that was linked to drug transactions. The money was used to buy a car that is used in narcotics investigations.

Hoskin said he expects the department to receive more funds through the program because “we’re stepping up enforcement of narcotics with a greater emphasis on asset seizures.”

He said he hopes to double the size of Baldwin Park’s three-man narcotics team early next year. “We’re doing it because of we know there’s a drug problem,” but the program “is an incentive,” he said.

Other police officials in the area agree that the program provides an incentive to increased drug-enforcement efforts, which is what the federal government had hoped would happen.

Effectiveness Cited

“I have never seen the networking of agencies more effective than with this program,” said Robert Strosser, a commander in the Pasadena Police Department.

Agencies tended to function independently in the past, he said.

“The fact that the local departments potentially and factually are going to benefit from these seizures at the expense of the dope peddlers does nothing but evoke even more contact between these agencies and additional cooperative efforts,” he said.

“In many instances, the dope peddler has better equipment and less budgetary constraint than do municipal police departments,” Strosser said, adding that his department “has repeatedly borrowed equipment that we simply don’t have.”

“It seems totally appropriate to me that the cost of properly outfitting portions of our Police Department should be borne by the people breaking the law as opposed to you and me as the taxpayer,” he said.

Pending Claims

Pasadena has not received money through the program but has pending claims amounting to at least $330,000, he said.

La Verne recently got $23,000 and three cars as a result of its participation in an investigation last year, said Police Chief Wesley Stearns.

Several other police departments have pending claims or intend to make claims. Azusa is seeking a portion of the $900,000 seized last month from an apartment in the city that was being used as a drop-off place for cash used in drug deals, Police Chief Lloyd Woods said.

The West Covina Police Department intensified its campaign against drugs about two years ago. The special enforcement team, originally charged with tracking career criminals and putting them in prison, was asked to help the federal Drug Enforcement Adminstration and the Los Angeles Police Department investigate cocaine distributors in West Covina.

‘Opened Our Eyes’

“That opened our eyes to the problems with regard to cocaine smugglers moving to (the West Coast) and moving to the suburbs,” Meacham said.

As a result of that cooperative effort, West Covina became one of the first cities in the nation to receive money through the program. The Los Angeles and Simi Valley police departments, which also took part, received part of the haul of more than $2 million.

Since 1984, the West Covina special team, which consists of five undercover officers, has confiscated about $2.78 million in cash; $240,501 in jewelry, which will be appraised and sold; $53,715 in stereo equipment; 148 weapons; 10 vehicles and $14,975 in office equipment, including two money counters, one of which is now being used in the city’s finance department.

The team also has seized drugs with a street value of about $143.8 million and has made 558 arrests.

The most surprising coup was a monthlong investigation that culminated in April, when a neighbor’s tip led to the arrest of 16 people in the San Gabriel Valley and the seizure of $2.4 million in cash and more than 600 pounds of cocaine.

‘Short and Sweet’

“That was short and sweet, but that was rare,” said Sgt. Lee Rossman, who heads the team, explaining that most investigations require much more time. He said the team was surprised to find the money, expecting to find only “a substantial amount of cocaine.”

What made the bust particularly lucrative for the department was that West Covina was the only local agency involved, allowing it to seek a major portion of the value of that haul, plus interest.

But the police often are not able to claim the money without a fight.

About half of the cases involving more than $100,000 in the U.S. Justice Department’s Central (California) District, which includes Los Angeles and Orange counties, are contested by people who claim that the assets were not related to drug transactions, according to officials at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Government a Winner

The government wins more than 90% of those cases, said James Stotter II, assistant chief of the civil division for the Central District. His office makes recommendations to the U.S. attorney general’s office on the distribution of assets in cases involving more than $100,000.

So far no one has contested West Covina’s claim to a share of the $2.4 million, Stotter said.

Since the program’s inception in 1984, $32 million has been distributed to police departments across the nation, according to the Seized Asset Management branch of the U.S. Marshal Service.

California departments have received $12.2 million, including $8.5 million distributed to departments in the Central District. About $3 million of that went to the Los Angel Police Department.

Seizures in Miami

More property and money are seized in drug cases in the Miami area, said Brad Cates, director of the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Office in Washington, but he said apparently local agencies there have not filed for “their fair share” or federal agencies are working independently of local agencies.

Cates said he expects the number of claims filed to increase as more police departments become aware of the program, and estimates that more than $100 million in cash and property will be distributed next year.

Still, West Covina officials concede that the increased enforcement has made nary a dent in the city’s drug problem.

Meacham said that it is his impression that trafficking in the city has remained steady or increased slightly since the team began targeting the narcotics dealers.

‘Still Out There’

“I thought that once the publicity of the several arrests got out, they’d shift and go away from West Covina,” he said. “But either they don’t read newspapers or watch TV or they don’t care. They’re still out there.”