Raid Rules Being Tightened : Rising Tide of Drug Cash Testing Honesty of Police

When Lewis Wilson traveled from Florida last month to share his drug-fighting experiences with a commission of California law enforcement officials, he was surprised by their opening questions.

The California officials, led by Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, did not ask him first about the successful tactics used by police task forces in Miami, but about corruption problems. “A whole agency is not going to be corrupt. There are going to be pockets,” answered Wilson, who heads the Miami office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

“They hit me pretty hard on that,” Wilson said later, recalling the commission’s unexpected focus on ethical issues.

Two days later, it was clear that the line of questioning was no abstract exercise. A distraught Block announced that nine veteran members of his narcotics bureau had been suspended and were under investigation for allegedly stealing cash confiscated in drug raids.

“Corruption has apparently touched members of my department,” Block said.

But not everyone was shocked that there might be such misconduct in the region where police confiscate more cocaine cash than anywhere else in the United States--they reported seizing an astounding $100 million from suspected drug dealers last year.

Leaders of the glamorous task forces that pursue high-level drug traffickers readily acknowledge that increased potential for corruption--necessitating new precautions--is an inescapable byproduct of the suddenly almost routine discoveries of huge sums of cash.

“Most people were aware that sooner or later, there was going to be an incident of some kind,” said Lt. Mike Post, who heads the drug squad of the Glendale Police Department. “It was inevitable.”

Torrance Police Lt. David Marsden, who heads one of the most active drug squads in California, explained the new temptations this way: “We were sailing along with 50 years of history where you may have gotten $20,000 or $40,000 cases once in a blue moon. You sat down and counted the money. All of a sudden, we have the Colombian drug money coming in.”

The result? “I’ve had over $1 million in the trunk of my car on three occasions.”

No ‘Fantasizing’

Marsden said he does not allow himself to imagine what he could do with that kind of money. “It’s too scary to even fantasize,” he said.

The task forces that deal with large amounts of cash, including the sheriff’s narcotics bureau, all follow procedures designed to guard against corruption--and also to protect officers against unfounded allegations that they pocketed cash, drugs or other property.

Raids are carried out by large teams and a second officer, usually a sergeant or higher-ranking supervisor, is immediately called to any spot where contraband is uncovered.

In some units, the cash and drugs are photographed before they are moved. They are never transported by a single officer. And only specialized crews, or banks, count the cash--a process carried out after the money is removed because it would simply take too long to count $200,000, or $2 million, at a raided home.

In the case of the Sheriff’s Department, cash is transported in what officials describe as tamper-proof bags that were developed for banks. At headquarters, it is locked up under security that resembles something out of an Indiana Jones movie: The bags are put in a safe behind a locked door that is connected to an alarm. Only lieutenants have the combination to the safe, and to open the locked door, you need a special key--which is kept in another safe.

Cracks in the Rules

But even the tightest precautions leave two openings for corruption: at the instant a lone officer stumbles on the cash or drugs, and when there is a conspiracy among members of a squad.

“If you have an officer searching a house and he discovers a suitcase (filled with money) in the garage and he’s by himself, that’s where everybody is most vulnerable . . . to slip a bundle out,” said Marsden. “The worst part is at the moment it’s found. Then, slowly but surely, more checks come in.”

Capt. Bob Wilber, who heads the sheriff’s narcotics bureau, said: “If a person’s going to be a thief and he’s alone . . . it’s going to be difficult to control.”

In the case of the suspended sheriff’s deputies, the suggestion is that they skimmed off money at this sensitive point.

Sheriff’s officials have not disclosed the evidence against the deputies, but other sources said federal agents videotaped at least two of them taking cash from a money bag and putting it into a separate pouch during a raid on a San Fernando Valley hotel. The raid reportedly was staged by federal agents in a sting operation aimed at gathering evidence against the deputies.

No charges have yet been filed, but one federal law enforcement source has said that at least $200,000 might have been taken in various narcotics raids during the last year.

The danger of corruption is not limited to the big money cases that make headlines.

Slow Skimming Charged

A Los Angeles police officer was charged with five counts of embezzling public funds last month, after an internal investigation found that he had pocketed $270 while arresting five street-level drug dealers in the San Fernando Valley. “He was not booking all the money,” police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said. “He was siphoning off a little bit at a time.”

The dimensions of the potential problem changed, however, after Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which allows law enforcement agencies to keep up to 90% of the assets they seize.

In a time of budget constraints, that provision provided a way of paying for new helicopters, computers or lasers to read fingerprints, and also of financing drug education programs. The glorious part was that the crooks paid the bill.

The net effect was that police found themselves with an extra incentive to seek out illicit cash just as the “crack” cocaine trade began to explode.

Total cash seizures by the Sheriff’s Department jumped from $2.8 million in 1984 to $33.9 million in 1988. By late last year, about $18 million already had been returned to the Los Angeles Police Department under the asset forfeiture provision, and claims for $24 million more were pending.

Roving Police Teams

The largest police agencies were not the only ones who got into the act. Around Southern California, nearly a dozen police departments in mid-sized cities assigned teams of up to eight officers each to specialize in high-stakes investigations of suspected major drug traffickers. These squads, from communities such as Glendale, Fullerton, Torrance, Simi Valley and West Covina, had authority to follow drug--and money--trails well beyond their municipal boundaries, and soon were making splashy busts throughout the region, sometimes in joint operations.

Just last weekend, officers from Glendale, Redondo Beach and Torrance arrested eight Colombians and seized 1,276 pounds of cocaine (found in compartments under the floor of a house) in raids on six locations--all in the San Gabriel Valley, well out of their territories.

The potential for corruption is increased by the fact that suspects rarely dare to claim ownership of cash found during such raids.

“Nobody wants anything to do with it,” said Wilson, the Florida official who appeared Aug. 29 before California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s Commission on Narcotics, which is chaired by Block.

$200,000 Unclaimed

Wilson recalled how two of his agents stopped a car several years ago and found $200,000 in the trunk. “The occupants didn’t own the car (and) they denied knowledge of the $200,000,” he said. The agents easily could have walked away with the money if they wanted to.

Wilson said he has heard crooked officers rationalize taking the drug cash by saying that “it’s bad guys’ money.”

The two major corruption cases in Miami have involved groups of officers “basically becoming a criminal conspiracy in and among themselves,” he said. “People would be enforcing 80% of the time, then ripping off 20% of the time.”

First came the “Cocaine Cops” a decade ago, members of a special drug-homicide unit who were protecting some narcotics traffickers and stealing from others. Then, a few years ago, there were the “Miami River Cops,” athletic young officers who preyed on drug dealers and others while working the night shift along the Miami River.

One of those officers drove a red Lotus, a car that cost four times his annual salary.

Recruits Poorly Screened

In that case, poor screening of recruits was largely to blame, Wilson told the California commission. The officers were among a large group that joined the force after a hiring freeze, and the department did few background checks. Some of the newcomers, it turned out, were basically thugs and had friendships or family ties with drug dealers.

For Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials, perhaps the most painful part of their brewing scandal is that the eight deputies and a sergeant who were suspended are anything but novices. None had less than nine years experience and, by the nature of their assignment, all were among the department’s elite.

“The people who target major violators, they’re a step up,” said Wilber, who would not disclose the total number of officers in the special drug units. “We try to select those people as the best officers. We look closely at a person’s previous history, allegations against him, his appraisals by superiors.”

And after they are selected, “we talk about integrity issues frequently,” he said.

Anti-Corruption Rules

Partially as a precaution against an established group of narcotics officers settling into conspiratorial corruption, many departments rotate officers through the special units, limiting service to three years in one case.

The Sheriff’s Department has no such policy, but Wilber said that other new procedures may be called for, such as testing for drug use and “reviews” of team members’ personal finances.

Wilber also mentioned periodic “integrity testing” procedures similar to those banks use to see if tellers are honest--perhaps setting up a raid in which supervisors plant a known amount of cash, then monitor how much money is turned in.

One federal source said the money-skimming inquiry began after receipt of an anonymous letter, traced to a sheriff’s copying machine, warning of “bad cops.”

In addition, an attorney for a Mexican national arrested by three of the deputies in a drug money-laundering case last November complained to federal prosecutors that the $135,000 the deputies logged as evidence was far short of the amount his client had been carrying.

Discrepancies in Cash

“This happens all the time in these cases,” said the attorney, Victor Sherman. “You mention it to prosecutors, and they just shrug. They’re not interested.”

Although most drug traffickers try to disassociate themselves from money seized in raids, periodically such complaints are lodged, task force leaders say. “Investigations are done,” said Glendale’s Lt. Post. “We’ve found they are either bogus claims or we inadvertently missed the money.”

A search team may overlook a hiding place, he said, and “one of the crooks” later retrieves the money for himself. The “crook” then has to explain to higher-ups why all the money he was given is not accounted for in the official charges, and blames a police rip-off.

Such allegations are one reason that police procedures for handling money are so tight, officials say. “It’s just sound management practice to always provide a defense for your officers,” said Marsden, whose Torrance task force has seized more than $2 million this year.

Bill May, a USC professor who teaches business and medical ethics and has conducted seminars for the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, says the most serious problem may not be the isolated group of crooked officers, but other officers who know what is going on and don’t report it.

“There is a long tradition of the code of silence,” he said. “There are two reasons for this: They are protecting another officer, and they are protecting themselves.”

Police who regularly find themselves carrying satchels with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash say that, in the end, it is essential to have rules to minimize reliance on trust in the handling of money. How can an officer who is earning $35,000 a year and is trying to pay the mortgage not be tempted at some level by a shoe box filled with $20 bills?

“On a couple of different occasions, I’ve had from $500,000 to a couple of million sitting on a desk in front of me,” said Post. “You’ve got to look at it as other than money, as just a bundle of property.

“If you say, ‘There’s a mink coat for my wife, or two Ferraris for the garage,’ you’ve taken a step in the wrong direction.”

For police officials who may have been lulled by the California law enforcement agencies’ nationwide reputation as among the most honest and progressive in the country, Post said, the incident in the Sheriff’s Department may be a good thing.

“If the initial indications are true,” he said, “that’s going to wake the last of the sleeping administrators up.”

CASH SEIZED Cash seized by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

1984: $2,770,000

1985: $4,237,000

1986: $11,308,000

1987: $26,382,000

1988: $33,940,000