Area Police Drug Team Spreads Its Net Wider : Law enforcement: Four new police agencies will join the seven in WESTNET, a regional response to drug trafficking.

WESTNET’s first arrest nabbed more than $500,000 in cash and 30 kilos of cocaine just as the suspected dealers tried to move to a new location by concealing the cocaine in packages wrapped like birthday gifts.

Since that raid nearly 18 months ago, the Westside Narcotics Enforcement Team has seized more than $3.5 million in cash, well over a ton of cocaine and other drugs, and scores of vehicles and weapons, while arresting 57 suspected drug traffickers. Ninety-five percent of the arrests have led to convictions, according to the team’s leader, Capt. Tim Grimmond of the El Segundo Police Department.

The successes of the team--initially created by the Inglewood, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Palos Verdes Estates police, with Redondo Beach and Hawthorne quickly joining in--have attracted the attention of several other police departments.

This month, WESTNET will expand out of the South Bay as four new police agencies come on board--the Santa Monica Police Department, UCLA’s police force, the county Sheriff’s Department and the Signal Hill Police Department.

With the expansion to 11 agencies, WESTNET’s original team of nine officers will be joined by a second team of nine, doubling its investigative capacity.

The operation’s growth warrants giving it headquarters of its own, El Segundo city officials have decided. The city is putting up $100,000 to turn the basement of City Hall into a new home for WESTNET.

Each police department assigns officers to WESTNET when it joins the team. The agencies also provide equipment, such as cars, radios and computers.

Although Grimmond said he knew WESTNET would do well when it started in January, 1989, its rapid growth has pleased police agencies throughout the county.

“We’re a small community in Los Angeles, and we realize that criminals just cross jurisdictional borders without even thinking about it,” said Sgt. John Miehle, assistant to the Santa Monica Police Department’s chief.

“We can’t just close ourselves into our borders and think that criminals live here and commit their crimes here and nothing else,” he said. “That’s why we’re joining WESTNET. We’re more than happy to pool our information and our resources, because we know that always works out better.”

Before the team’s creation, Grimmond said: “South Bay police handled narcotics on a very local level, with very little surveillance and very little effort put into regional problems. We worked hand-to-hand sales and saw maybe two to three kilos in a big bust.”

In 1987 and 1988, however, local narcotics officers began noticing a proliferation of cocaine in the South Bay, at roughly the same time crack was coming on the scene, Grimmond said.

Although larger police departments had the resources to create special drug enforcement teams, smaller South Bay departments did not have that option.

WESTNET grew out of their frustration, Grimmond said.

Drug dealers “operate all over. They know no boundaries,” he said. “They move as fast and as far as cars and planes will take them. That’s how we have to move.”

Although the team’s cases all begin with information gathered in the South Bay, Grimmond said, most leads eventually take them out of this area.

Their biggest haul to date--491 kilos of cocaine hidden behind a false partition in a 20-foot tractor-trailer rig--was taken at a truck stop just outside Barstow.

On some cases, Grimmond said, individual officers have spent weeks on surveillance before making an arrest.

Police officials, however, say they are not concerned about the amount of time the team spends outside its home area.

“By pooling your resources, you can start to solve the problem. There are no walls around this place,” said Chief John Barber of the UCLA police agency. “One of the real benefits for us, too, is that an officer working on a specialized task force is working with some of the best experts in the world. . . . We get back a better officer.”

Officers assigned to WESTNET will rotate out every two or three years, Barber said.

Not least among the benefits, police chiefs say, is that federal drug asset seizure laws allow local agencies to keep a large portion of the cash, cars and other assets that have been used in drug transactions.

This means that at least $250,000 has gone to each WESTNET member agency so far, more than covering the operation’s cost.

“Our primary objective is to arrest these people and prosecute them,” Grimmond said. “But it’s been a big boon to law enforcement to have something like this pay for itself, too.”