Crackdown Planned on S.D. Drug Labs

Alarmed about the growth of methamphetamine labs in San Diego County, state officials are planning to crack down on drug trafficking and production in the San Diego area this year, state Atty. Gen. John van de Kamp said Wednesday.

Van de Kamp said he hopes to assign several new narcotics agents to San Diego County if the Legislature approves Gov. George Deukmejian’s request for 65 new agents statewide, reestablishing a presence in the county that was sharply curtailed during recent budget shortfalls.

“I’d like to get back into San Diego, particularly because of the back-county clandestine drug labs that are operating there,” Van de Kamp said at a breakfast meeting with Times reporters here.

Five agents have already been approved to help fight the spread of drug labs in the county, and, depending on how the governor’s budget fares in the Legislature, 6 to 10 additional agents could be assigned to the county, Justice Department officials said. As many as four of the five agents already approved will start work in April, officials said.

Currently, the state has only one drug agent in San Diego.

“It is clearer than ever that San Diego is a major port of entry for narcotics, including a great deal of cocaine that the Colombians and other groups are bringing through Mexico into California,” said Jerry Clemons, director of the Justice Department’s Division of Law Enforcement.

Clemons said Van de Kamp has told his staff that he wants some of the proposed 65 new agents to go to San Diego, though it is not clear how many will eventually be assigned to the county.

Whatever the final number, though, the decision to beef up the San Diego staff represents a turnaround from what has been the department’s policy for several years. What was once a full field office with as many as 15 agents was allowed to dwindle to about five agents before it was eliminated in mid-1984 during a budget shortfall, Clemons said.

“We had to pull out of San Diego . . . to re-prioritize our resources,” Van de Kamp said. “The (federal government) had a very strong presence down there, and we figured we could use some of our people more usefully elsewhere.”

But Van de Kamp said the increased number of drug labsconvinced him to assign more agents to the county. The labs, which use chemical processes to convert substances normally used for cold remedies into speed, have prompted local law enforcement officials to dub San Diego the “methamphetamine capital of the world.”