‘FUNDED by the CROOKS’ : Police Hail Bonanza in Out-of-Town Drug Battle

Early in the evening of June 2, 1986, a Glendale narcotics investigator knocked on the door of a South Gate home, search warrant in hand. At the same time, other Glendale officers, with assistance from three local police departments, knocked on doors in Sunland, Sylmar, Montclair and Pasadena.

Within three hours, they had arrested 17 suspects, seized 812 pounds of cocaine, $275,000 in cash and four new cars.

Department officials say the operation, which took Glendale police into the jurisdictions of four other police departments, was just good police work, the sort of thing needed to crush drug networks that respect no boundaries.

More guardedly, they also concede that it made good sense financially. Under recent anti-drug laws, the department got to keep much of the cash and had its choice of either using the cars or selling them for profit.

40 Major Outside Raids

In the last three years, a team of Glendale police officers has conducted about 40 major drug raids outside the city’s borders, confiscating hundreds of pounds of cocaine and seizing millions in cash and property.

In one of the department’s more tantalizing out-of-town ventures, Glendale investigators, working alone in areas as distant as Arcadia and Canyon Country, confiscated a 1986 black GTS Ferrari, cocaine, cash and military hardware.

They haven’t decided what to do with the Ferrari. Though it could bring $70,000, police might not want to sell the car because it could prove useful to the unorthodox, five-officer detail that has been so successful it has already paid its $330,000 annual budget two years into the future with forfeited funds.

“We’re entirely funded by the crooks,” said Lt. Mike Post, head of the department’s drug enforcement bureau.

Called the “Major Violators Unit,” the detail focuses on big-time drug rings--most of which operate outside the city’s borders.

To date, the unit has been involved in 54 major cases. It has arrested 245 suspected drug smugglers and dealers and has seized 16 vehicles, more than $8.5 million in cash and 2,666 pounds of cocaine with a street value estimated at $120 million, Post said.

Routinely, its officers travel as far north as Santa Barbara, as far south as San Diego.

“Staying inside your area is almost impossible,” Post said. “Out of necessity you are going to be all over the map here in the Los Angeles area.”

So far, through the complex and sometimes slow process for claiming seized property, Glendale has received 13 cars and about $1.3 million in cash, Post said. The department is expected to receive another $2.2 million and three more cars later this year, he said.

Done With Federal Blessing

The detail, inspired by the federal Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, is one of a handful of such specialized units operated by Southern California police departments with the blessing of federal law enforcement agencies. Sometimes, the local units will lead their own investigations, other times they work as a large task force assisting the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency or each other, said Anthony Ricevuto, a DEA supervisor in Los Angeles.

Police departments in Simi Valley, West Covina and Torrance operate similar full-time details, Ricevuto said.

Since 1985, such units have helped the DEA rake in nearly $1.2 billion in cash and property from criminals nationwide, said Cornelius Dougherty, spokesman for the DEA in Washington.

Following drug leads outside city limits is, in itself, nothing new for most local narcotics forces.

“If your investigations led you outside the city, you weren’t going to stop just because the street signs went from white to blue,” Post said.

But it was not until passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act that Glendale officials decided to regularly pursue major investigations with little or no direct tie to Glendale, Post said.

That law established civil procedures allowing local agencies to claim as much as 90% of the cash and property taken from suspected drug traffickers through major investigations. The remainder, a minimum of 10%, goes to the federal government. If more than one local agency is involved in the seizure, the departments divide the forfeitures.

From the Jan. 29 case, for instance, Glendale police are asking for all but the government’s share of the $186,000 seized money because the department worked alone. The department has also filed claims on the seized vehicles, which include a red 1988 Honda Prelude, a black 1987 Nissan 4-wheel drive truck and the Ferrari.

Some cars obtained this way are used for general department transportation. Others are used solely as undercover cars. Still others, especially expensive cars, may be traded in for several less expensive models, Post said.

Cocaine seized in raids is taken to a private incinerating company at an undisclosed location where “it roars and burns for a couple hours” until it is gone, Post said.

Any money returned to the city is restricted to police use for new equipment or new staff positions and cannot be used to cover existing salaries. Post said Glendale has used the money to fund the new unit and boost the department’s general crime-fighting capabilities.

For the first time, Glendale police are able to afford high-tech police surveillance equipment, including infra-red night-vision goggles, expensive video recording equipment, cellular phones and a sophisticated laser device that can read almost-invisible fingerprints, Post said.

“Five years ago we wouldn’t have even considered spending that kind of money and we would not have thought of being able to make use of sophisticated equipment, but now, the money is available,” Post said.

Profits Not Main Purpose

However, Glendale officials are quick to assert that recouping drug profits for their own use is not the unit’s main purpose.

“We’re not really in the business to seize money,” Post said. “We’re in the business to stop smuggling and importation of narcotics.”

The theory is that any damage to the drug trade outside the city means fewer drugs will make it into the city, he said.

“The people we are dealing with know no boundaries,” Post said. “Any improvement anywhere in metropolitan Los Angeles has to have a positive impact on all of the communities in the area.”

About 90% of the Glendale team’s effort is focused on cocaine and the organization of criminals who smuggle it out of Colombia and into the United States, Post said.

These smugglers, referred to by authorities as the Colombian Cartel, have been organized for less than a decade. But already, they earn an estimated $30-billion annual profit from the import and sale of cocaine in the United States, Post said.

Cartel ‘the Biggest Threat’

Post said the cartel represents “in our minds, the biggest threat to law and order.”

Glendale officials developed a heightened interest in the cartel when the city briefly--and some say unjustly--gained a reputation as a cocaine distribution center after a series of drug-related violent crimes in the early 1980s.

These began in September, 1980, with the kidnaping of an 8-year-old boy held ransom for what police believed was drug money, Post said. Three months later, police discovered a large cocaine processing lab in an expensive Chevy Chase Canyon home. By April of the following year, Glendale police were investigating three murders stemming from soured cocaine deals. That same month, they assisted Los Angeles police in a massive Highland Park gun battle that left dead a suspected Colombian drug dealer from Glendale.

Finally, the city suffered a major embarrassment when a national news broadcast on a Colombian cocaine connection between Florida and Southern California aired a shot of Brand Boulevard while identifying Glendale as the cocaine capital of the West Coast.

“In retrospect, we’re not so sure that we weren’t at the time,” Post said. “That’s really the whole reason why we came into being here.”

Abrupt Image Change

Post credits the drug detail with an abrupt change of Glendale’s image to that of a place that is hostile to drug traffickers. For the last two years, he said, the city has not experienced “a single incident . . . related to wholesale distribution of narcotics for sale.”

The unit began in 1984 as an experiment proposed by Gerald Stoltze, now a department captain.

Initially, the drug detail was made up of officers borrowed from other bureaus. But their quick success and ability to pay for their own cost won them permanent status by a City Council vote last year.

If the team agrees to assist in a federal investigation, the officers are considered agents of the government and have access to all information and jurisdictions. When the team operates its own investigations inside another department’s boundaries, it is expected to inform that department of its presence.

“There’s a system in place where the various agencies have a standing agreement to the effect that we can operate in their jurisdiction and they can operate in ours,” Post said. “We notify each other as a courtesy and as a safety function.”

Drug Busts in Glendale

In the last three years, outside agencies have made about three drug busts in Glendale without incident, he said.

Once an investigation is over, officers, who must keep meticulous notes on surveillance methods, often spend weeks writing detailed reports, preparing evidence for prosecution of suspected criminals and testifying in criminal trials.

Any cash or property seized is handled through one of two separate civil proceedings, one established by the federal government and the other by the state. Both employ complex bureaucratic reviews designed to make the agency show that the cash or property is actually the profit of illegal drug trade, said DEA Supervisor Ricevuto. Both provide appeals to the courts by others who claim the property.

Depending upon the complexity of a case, a local agency often waits up to a year before recouping forfeitures, whether from the federal or state government, Post said.

Under the federal system, forfeited cash and property is filed with the U.S. District Court, Assistant U.S. Atty. James Stotter said. The U.S. attorney’s office notifies potential claimants of the seizure, both personally and through a newspaper notice.

If no one claims the money, the government takes at least 10% and doles out the remainder the local agencies. Under the federal system, an agency can obtain property it seizes even if it makes no arrest and finds no drugs, Stotter said.

May Got to Jury Trial

If the application is contested, a U.S. District Court trial--before a jury if the claimant desires--is held to determine ownership. The state forfeiture system, which must be used under some circumstances, is less popular because it provides a stricter burden of proof. For instance, money and property cannot be seized unless drugs are also discovered, said Eldon Pritikin, deputy district attorney in charge of the forfeiture division.

Moreover, California requires that 35% of the forfeited money be turned over to the state. More than half of the money goes to the California Department of Mental Health, Pritikin said.

Also, the state does not allow local agencies to keep seized vehicles.

“The state will auction them off and just give us the money,” Post said. Sometimes, he said, it is much better to keep the car, especially one like the Ferrari, an item the department would find difficult to put on its budget alongside infra-red goggles and laser fingerprint detectors. Such a car might not be suitable for good old police work.

“But in certain times and certain places, these cars are just the ticket,” Post said. “You couldn’t ask for better surveillance vehicles. They’re the actual car the crooks use.”