COUNTYWIDE : Anti-Drug Program to Get $1.14 Million
The Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics program will receive $1.14 million of more than $10 million allocated by the federal government to help Southern California agencies fight drug trafficking.
The money will go to Orange County’s Regional Narcotics Suppression Program. The rest will go to programs in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
“So, if you’re in the business of trafficking in drugs, life’s about to get a whole lot tougher for you,” Sen. John Seymour said in a press conference Monday. “Working together, we’re going to see that you’re off the streets and out of business.”
The money comes from a program headed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy to help finance the cost of policing the country’s busiest drug trade zones.
In January, 1990, then-drug czar William Bennett designated the Los Angeles area as one of the five high-intensity drug-trafficking areas to be targeted. The other areas are New York City, Miami, Houston and the Southwest border.
The Regional Narcotics Suppression Program is a “model interagency task force because it’s a combination of all different areas of expertise and has been so effective in attacking drug problems” since it began in 1986, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven Madison, who helped the program apply for federal money.
The program involves 26 law enforcement agencies in the county.
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