TV Reviews : PBS’ ‘Cops’ Looks at Defectors in the Drug War

It sounds like a success story. Tons of illegal drugs captured at the distribution source. Just one arrest garnered $4 million; $100 million in drug money seized in just three years. But this booty snatched by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department may have turned poisonous, as several deputies are on trial for theft and conspiracy in the skimming of $1.4 million.

This case, one of the worst scandals to ever hit a local law enforcement agency, is at the heart of PBS’ “Frontline’s” rather humdrum report, “When Cops Go Bad,” (tonight at 9 on Channels 28 and 15; 10 p.m. on Channel 50).

Los Angeles, now the national drug-channeling capital, is hardly alone in the corruption department. As the report shows, money skimming by cops ranging from tiny Sea Girt, N.J., to Miami, from beat patrols to federal drug enforcement officers, goes hand in hand with the vaunted drug war itself.

Curiously, there is never a suggestion here that the scandals might be rooted in an ailing national policy to rid the country of drugs. Rather, the problem is one of good cops going bad because of bad values. The remedy: screen out the bad apples ahead of time through a rigorous interview process of new recruits. The Miami Police Department, for example, now rules out any applicant who has ever used an illegal drug.

But the problems are also bureaucratic. Harlan Braun, attorney for one of the indicted Los Angeles County deputies, suggests that a policy known as “asset forfeiture,” in which an agency keeps a portion of the seized drug cash to cover operation costs, is inherently corrupting. “All it is doing is taxing (drug dealers),” says Braun. “It’s certainly not putting . . . dealers out of business.”

“When Cops Go Bad” ends hopefully: Miami is supposedly corruption-free, Sea Girt has washed itself of its money-laudering, drug-dealing peace officers, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is now under intense scrutiny. But given the cash river that is the drug trade’s life blood, flowing mightier than ever, the program’s optimism feels like so much feel-good TV at work.