Ex-Drug Dealers Tell of Miami-to-L.A. Shift

A yearlong campaign by West Coast law enforcement officials to spotlight a shift in drug trafficking from Miami to Los Angeles--and plead for more federal assistance--took a turn toward the theatrical Tuesday with testimony by two former distributors.

Wearing bright red ski masks, the two men--both now police informers--were marched behind a white screen to tell a state panel how some Colombian cocaine importers began bypassing Miami.

“In 1985, I started losing business to the West Coast. . . . The Colombians were preferring straight runs into the (California) desert,” said a Florida informer called “Tony Jones,” his voice altered by an electronic device to sound somewhat like Darth Vader’s.

L.A. Hearing

The two men were witnesses at a hearing at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport before the Attorney General’s Commission on Narcotics, a group of law enforcement officials from around the state.

“It is ironic that 1989 should be the year Hollywood canceled ‘Miami Vice,’ because 1989 will also be remembered as the year that Hollywood, really all of Los Angeles, surpassed Miami as the cocaine capital of the United States,” said Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, who presided over the hearing.

It was a message that Van de Kamp and others have voiced repeatedly this year, and with increasing frequency in anticipation of the Bush Administration’s anti-drug program.

* In January, federal and local drug agents announced that they had seized more than $100 million in cash from drug dealers in Los Angeles in 1988--more than in Miami. Federal Drug Enforcement Administration officials concluded that while Miami remained the major import point for the cocaine, about 40% of the drug entering the country was being shipped to Southern California.

* In April, top officials of the Los Angeles offices of several federal law enforcement agencies joined the Board of Supervisors complaining that there was an Eastern bias in allocation of federal drug-fighting resources. They called for an infusion of federal funds and manpower similar to the one in 1982 that led to the creation of a South Florida task force.

* On Aug. 3, a report released by U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said Los Angeles street gangs have formed alliances with the Colombian drug cartels and are selling “crack” cocaine in every corner of the nation.

Just two weeks ago, Van de Kamp announced that he will seek $13 million from the Legislature to hire more than 200 new state drug agents, analysts and auditors effective Jan. 1.

Van de Kamp, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, has also proposed construction of an 8,000-bed prison camp in the desert for drug offenders and creation of a state “anti-drug superfund” to distribute $1.7 billion over eight years to local law police and governments.

Federal Bonds

Republican Sen. Pete Wilson, considered the front-runner to be the GOP candidate in the 1990 gubernatorial race, has called for a $4-billion federal bond program to fund the Bush anti-drug program, which will be unveiled in September by drug czar William J. Bennett.

Van de Kamp said Tuesday that he has seen a draft of the plan and expects California to get from $60 to $80 million, which he called “a drop in the bucket, not enough.” The day’s hearing was designed, in part, “to get Bill Bennett’s attention,” he said.

“Tony,” the Florida informant brought to the tightly guarded hearing, described himself as an expert in technical details of transporting drugs--knowing the optimum weight of airplane shipments depending on the distance flown, for instance, or the safest overland routes from Miami to Seattle.

He said bribes to Colombian officials were an accepted cost of doing business, explaining, “If you do not pay off the Colombian air force, you will be shot down on takeoff.”

The cartel kingpins have “duffel bags full of cash” sitting around, he said, and in one case “the rats ate over $1.5 million.”

The second informant testifying from behind the screen, identified as “John Smith,” said he distributed about 10 kilograms of cocaine a week after getting it from Colombians in Los Angeles, who brought it through Mexico.

Asked why he stopped, he said, “I was arrested.”

While California officials appealed for more federal assistance, two law enforcement representatives from Miami cautioned them that the federal presence there created problems as well.

Lewis Wilson, who oversees the Miami office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said federal agents arrived who were “outsiders . . . they couldn’t even find there way around,” and were of little use for two years.

In addition, interagency rivalry “existed then. It exists today,” with investigators from different groups often reluctant to share information.

Wilson said he doesn’t believe there has been a relocation of cocaine traffickers from Miami to Los Angeles, but simply “an expansion of criminal activity.”