County Anti-Drug Force Has Made Itself Felt : Narcotics: First-of-kind program, nearing 5th birthday, has produced 220 arrests. Officers have seized $104 million and tons of drugs but haven’t put an end to the traffic.

Sgt. Al Coutts had been following the two young women, weaving his car in and out of traffic, all morning, and he was becoming impatient.

“Come on, go somewhere, do something. Don’t just drive around all day,” the sergeant mumbled as he ran a red light to catch up with them.

He watched as they stopped at a house and picked up a third woman and her toddler, then headed to the MainPlace/Santa Ana mall. But there they drove aimlessly around the parking lot, with Coutts doggedly trailing.

An hour later, the women finally stopped the car and went into an office building. Carefully selecting a shaded but inconspicuous spot, Coutts put the car in park and turned up the air conditioning.

“Now, we wait and hope that something is going down,” he said, watching the door. “If we get lucky, they’ll come out with something. Then, we move in.”

This was typical of Coutts’ days, spent in endless hours of quiet pursuit and restless stakeouts. But for him and the others on his surveillance team, the occasional prize makes the tedium worthwhile.

Coutts, 48, an officer on loan from the Sheriff’s Department, is a member of the Orange County Regional Narcotics Suppression Program, a countywide force whose fifth anniversary is next month. Its purpose is to bring together county police departments, the Sheriff’s Department and state and federal drug enforcement agencies to fight the burgeoning drug business in Orange County.

The program’s tally shows 34,150 pounds of cocaine, 2,260 pounds of marijuana and 31 pounds of heroin seized and 221 people arrested.

The program, first of its kind in the nation, has also paid for itself from money seized and has been copied in at least four other California counties.

But even as law enforcement officials statewide are applauding it, program members themselves say they are far from thwarting the flow of drugs.

“The amount of money that we’ve taken off the street is pretty impressive to the average Joe, but the drug problem is so massive that we have made no major inroads,” said Capt. Tim Simon, who supervises the program. “We have, however, made a major impact.”

What the program has accomplished, officials agree, is to make drug dealing in the county more difficult. Some dealers are even moving elsewhere because of the last five years of arrests and seizures, officials say.

“A lot of organizations that have moved from Los Angeles to Orange County years before” are now moving out because their warehouses have been raided and drugs confiscated, said Ralph Lochridge, a spokesman with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which also has an agent participating in the program.

“As long as drugs are in demand, we’re not going to eliminate the dealers,” Lochridge said. “But, by having a strong regional program, (the county) is constantly disrupting their lines of communications and their flow of drugs. That costs (the dealers) money. . . . When they have to relocate and move, they have to look at what they’re doing and rebuild their operations.”

But getting dealers to that point requires weeks or months of investigation and tedious tracking by officers. “It’s a game of cat and mouse,” said Coutts, who heads one of five teams that track suspected dealers or watch buildings suspected of storing contraband.

“They drive, we drive after them, but they don’t know they’re being followed. Pretty boring stuff sometimes, just driving around,” the sergeant said. “It’s not the stuff you see in the movies or read in the books.”

The force consists of 63 officers, each on loan for a two- or three-year stint, from 27 law enforcement agencies. Those include police departments, the Sheriff’s Department, the DEA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Customs Service.

Only La Palma does not participate, but that will soon change. In March, an officer from that city will join the force, Police Chief Norman Hansen said.

Since its inception, the force has confiscated $104 million in laundered money. Under a federal law that allows seized drug money to be returned to the arresting agencies, that $104 million not only has paid for most of the program’s costs, but a portion has been returned to the participating agencies.

Copying the program, Los Angeles County in July started its own such force, the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force, or LA IMPACT, which consists of officers from 42 agencies in the county.

“We’re not exactly proud that we were a few years behind of Orange County,” said L.A. Sheriff’s Capt. Tim Grimmond, who heads that program. “But the key to this whole thing is that we finally did it. Undoubtedly . . . Orange County should certainly be proud of what they have.”

But the problem is far from being solved in Orange County, which--because it is near the Mexican border--continues to be a major route for drugs smuggled into the state from Colombia via Mexico.

“Go down to Tijuana on a Friday afternoon and see cars and cars lining up waiting to get” across the border, Coutts said.

“Then on a Sunday, they’re lining on the opposite side to leave. It’s a patented routine with the dealers. They could body-pack dope. They could fill up secret compartments in cars with drugs. They come in with the drugs and who should (the Border Patrol) stop? There are so many cars, which ones do you stop, and which ones do you let go?”

The county also appeals to distributors because of John Wayne Airport and because of its tourist attractions, Simon said.

“Orange County is also a financially secure base where the affluents live. . . . It’s a major drug distribution point and is especially attractive to the narcotic dealers because of the many people who come and leave the county,” he said.

“That makes it just as easy for dealers from Colombia to come and go without detection.”

Also, an abundance of cocaine from Colombia in recent years has driven the wholesale price down, officers said.

“When I started in drugs . . . it cost $70,000 to $75,000 per kilo,” Coutts said. “Today, you can get it up here between $10,000 and $12,000 a kilo. You could buy a lot of dope with a few thousand. You could be extremely rich extremely fast.”

Drug dealers, he said, are “still importing the drugs and exporting the money. Nothing has changed except that programs like (these have) helped to slow the trafficking down.”

As Coutts’ surveillance dragged on this particular day, he knew that the three women “may just be doing ordinary, everyday errands. Or they may be getting ready to make a big trade, and they bring the kid along for the ride.”

As it appeared the former was the case, Coutts said: “I guess it’s time to call it a day. They’re not doing anything today. Maybe it’s because they know we’re several cars behind them; maybe it’s because today is just not the day.

“Either way, we’ll be back tomorrow because they’ll be back tomorrow.”

Cashing In on Drug Busts

In addition to thousands of pounds of cocaine, marijuana and heroin, the Orange County Regional Narcotic Suppression Program has seized $104 million since its beginning five years ago. The seized money pays for the program, with the remainder distributed among the participating law enforcement agencies according to their seniority and the number of officers they assign to the program.

The figures below show the amounts collected between Dec. 15, 1986, and Nov. 18, 1991, and the expected distributions in each of the jurisdictions:

Expected Jurisdiction Collected Share Anaheim $1,811,223 $1,057,506 Brea 397,480 445,201 Buena Park 110,806 284,154 Costa Mesa 919,166 651,441 Cypress 335,675 286,702 Fountain Valley 21,796 226,870 Fullerton 635,232 553,275 Garden Grove 1,916,049 1,099,928 Huntington Beach 1,657,787 833,370 Irvine 541,293 605,936 Laguna Beach 614,089 404,751 La Habra 398,224 361,949 Newport Beach 967,040 630,485 Orange 571,781 396,600 Placentia and San Clemente* 882,919 417,530 Santa Ana 3,049,947 2,041,042 Seal Beach 71,117 197,765 Tustin 1,038,017 661,285 Westminster 2,028,742 1,193,640 O.C. Sheriff’s Dept. 8,062,213 5,582,124 Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement 587,335 403,074

*Because these two small cities joined the program at the same time, they were combined in one file. They share those totals.

Source: Orange County Regional Narcotics Suppression Program