Gates Sure Record Bust Will Draw Anti-Drug Resources to Southland

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told the City Council on Wednesday that he is certain the federal government will increase its drug-fighting resources in the Los Angeles area in light of the discovery last week of nearly 19 tons of cocaine in a Sylmar warehouse.

“I think we will begin to see a buildup of the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration), the FBI, Customs and even an enhancement of the Coast Guard in this area,” Gates told council members during a briefing on the Sept. 28 record drug seizure.

Gates said, however, that help may not come immediately and cautioned against expecting it at the expense of other significant narcotics distribution areas in the country, such as Miami.

“We don’t want to take resources from one area where they are doing a minimal job,” he said, “and spread them so thinly that we’re not doing a good job anywhere.”

Largest Seizure

The Sylmar seizure, which included more than $12 million in cash, is the largest anywhere, authorities said. Initially, the DEA said 20 tons was found stashed in the Sylmar warehouse, but after weighing the contraband the agency said the correct figure is just under 19 tons.

Gates and other local and state officials have said the large amount of drugs was evidence that Los Angeles has become one of the nation’s major narcotics distribution centers.

Even before that seizure, members of California’s congressional delegation and others had called on the federal government to immediately designate Los Angeles an official “high-intensity drug trafficking zone,” making it eligible for federal aid.

In Washington, Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) said Wednesday that he will ask members of a House-Senate conference committee working out a national drug spending plan to hurriedly give the designation to Los Angeles, San Diego and the other border communities in California.

Levine’s move was identical to one by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) on Monday asking that the conferees compel the Bush Administration to name the areas as drug zones by Nov. 1. Under current law, the Administration has until February to make the designations. It has steadfastly refused to move up the date.

Don Hamilton, a spokesman for Bush’s drug policy czar, William Bennett, said last week there were no plans to send aid to Los Angeles immediately. “We believe we need to approach the question of high-intensity drug trafficking areas seriously, soberly, systematically,” he said.

Gates told the City Council on Wednesday that he had talked to Bennett immediately after the Sylmar seizure and was left feeling confident that Los Angeles would eventually get the designation.

Separately, DEA agents in Texas, using search warrants, raided five El Paso homes belonging to suspects in the case--including that of Hector Tapia Anchondo, 38, son of Carlos Tapia Ponce, 68, of Juarez, the alleged leader of the cocaine-smuggling operation. Both men were arrested in Las Vegas.

The search of Anchondo’s home yielded what agents described as an inventory list documenting receipts for hundreds of kilos of cocaine in September. They also found a half pound of marijuana and a small handgun.

Times staff writers Cathleen Decker in Los Angeles and Louis Sahagun in El Paso, Tex., contributed to this story.