Agencies Welcome U.S. Plan on Drugs : Crime fighting: The DEA wants to form task forces with authorities in Ventura and two other counties.

Local law enforcement officials were generally receptive Friday to a proposal by the Drug Enforcement Administration to form task forces in Ventura County and two other central coast counties to step up the war on drug traffickers.

“We have a very positive reaction,” Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said. “We look forward to working with them.”

Ventura County Asst. Sheriff Dick Bryce said that increased drug trafficking has strained local resources and that working with federal investigators would be a valuable added resource.

“I hope something like this happens,” he said.

The DEA wants to establish task forces in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Meetings have already begun with some law enforcement officials, such as the Simi Valley police. But for the most part, the proposal won’t be unveiled to local agencies until later this month.

For Ventura County, the DEA envisions a two-pronged approach.

The agency is proposing that an existing task force in the San Fernando Valley be linked to local police agencies in the Simi and Conejo valleys in the eastern part of Ventura County. Additionally, the DEA has proposed a federal and local task force to operate in the Oxnard-Ventura area.

Typically, such federally funded task forces call for local detectives to work with federal investigators on drug investigations for a year or more. Washington usually picks up local police overtime costs and provides cash to underwrite surveillance and undercover operations.

Not all local police agencies have enjoyed working with the DEA, however, complaining that they are sometimes treated in a second-class manner. Indeed, in at least one instance outside Ventura County, the DEA was encountering some resistance, said William Modesitt, who supervises the DEA’s Goleta office.

Even in Ventura County, police officials said they would not blindly endorse the DEA plan.

“It depends on how (the task forces) are formed and what their goals are,” said Ventura Police Department spokesman Lt. Don Arth.

Generally, though, he said, Ventura Police Chief Richard Thomas “is always open to these kinds of ideas.”

“Resources are thin” in terms of the city’s 125 sworn officers, Arth said, so it is important to make sure that the task force “makes good uses of its resources.”

Local agencies have a history of cooperating with each other, Oxnard police Lt. Thomas Cady said.

“Everyone here tends to work together really well,” he said. “That’s because no agency in the county has the sources to go it alone.”

Even as officials reacted to the DEA proposal, Oxnard drug investigators were busy closing down a house in a middle-class neighborhood where residents were accused of dealing crack cocaine.

The DEA’s Modesitt said earlier this week that Oxnard is “a major drug distribution area for the central coast.”

Two arrests Thursday in Oxnard appeared to support the DEA’s view that no community is immune to drug dealers, who can root themselves in seemingly peaceful neighborhoods.

A one-story house on west Birch Street and an adjacent garage were locked by police Thursday evening. The home’s owner, Robert Carter, 59, and a woman, Sheila Boyd, 24, were arrested and booked on suspicion of trafficking in crack cocaine, Oxnard police said.

Four to five grams of crack cocaine were seized at the house, said Sgt. Joseph Munoz, who supervises the department’s drug unit.

“It’s a small case, but it impacted an entire community,” he said. “It generated a significant outcry. The house, in my opinion, was contributing to the deterioration of the neighborhood.”

The alleged crack operation also caused a continuing headache for Oxnard drug investigators, he said. Although police responded 38 times over a period of 42 months to complaints of suspected drug trafficking, Munoz said, they were never able to find enough evidence--until Thursday--to shut down the house.