Crime Does Pay : Or at Least Busting It Does as 3 Southland Police Departments Collect Shares of Seized Drug Assets

The Torrance Police Department, which has aggressively tracked major drug dealers from its city to other places such as Monrovia and Disneyland, saw that diligence pay off Monday--in cash.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh gave the department a check for $792,000 as part of a federal program that shares seized drug assets with local departments that assist in federal drug investigations.

The funds represent most of $1.1 million in drug money that Torrance police helped seize during a six-month drug trafficking and money laundering investigation in 1986 that led officers to Monrovia, Redondo Beach and Disneyland.

In a press conference at Torrance police headquarters, Thornburgh also presented checks for $113,217 to the Los Angeles Police Department and $56,000 to the Redondo Beach Police Department for their aid in the investigation.

Since 1984, when Congress passed the Equitable Sharing Act, local police departments in California have received almost $120 million under the program--more than $2 million of which has gone to the Torrance Police Department.

“This is money that did not have to come from the taxpayer’s wallet,” Thornburgh said. “These are resources seized from traffickers which can be recycled for use by those who are fighting crime, rather than to subsidize further illegal operations by drug syndicates.”

In the last four years, federal, state and local agents recovered more than $600 million in seized drug assets nationwide, $200 million of which has been “plowed back into state and local efforts against drugs,” Thornburgh said later at a U.S. 9th Circuit Judicial Conference in Laguna Nigel.

Torrance police had taken the lead role in the investigation of Jairo Hincapie, a Colombian national who police believe played a vital role in trafficking drugs from Colombia into Southern California.

Police said Hincapie was involved in the major drug operation that was later uncovered by “Operation Pisces,” the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s massive two-year undercover effort to crack down on drug trade from Colombia to the United States.

During the investigation, Hincapie was followed to Disneyland, where he made a cash transaction with other reputed drug traders, said Torrance Police Lt. David Marsden. Hincapie was also followed to a house in Monrovia, where a search uncovered records that led police to $1.1 million in bank security deposit boxes. Police believe Hincapie fled to Colombia.

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.