State Kills Plan to Shut Local Drug Enforcement Office : Law enforcement: Outcry over proposal to move all 21 agents to L.A. in budget move convinces Department of Justice that abandoning county would be a mistake.

Plans by the state Department of Justice to close its only drug enforcement office in Orange County and move all 21 agents to Los Angeles County have been scrapped, the department confirmed Wednesday.

Local law enforcement officials joined the head of the Orange County office in criticizing the proposed closing as a backward step in the fight against drugs here. J.D. Miles said the move would be tantamount to abandoning the county because there was no plan for the agents to regularly investigate cases here.

Officials proposed the closure of the local Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and Bureau of Investigation offices as part of an effort to cope with a $12.7-million budget cut.

But Joe Doane, bureau chief in Sacramento, said officials decided that it was important that the agents continue to operate out of the area they serve.

“We will be there,” Doane said. “We are going to leave all the agents there.”

Orange County, he said, “is a unique office. It is in a very small area but has high population density and is in the thicket of high drug activity.”

The local office seized $5 million in drug assets and about three tons of cocaine last year, according to the bureau. Working with local police and federal agents, they helped dismantle more than a dozen methamphetamine laboratories in the Southland, officials said. The office, one of nine statewide, costs about $1.7 million annually, Doane said.

But the drug agents and investigators did not emerge unscathed from the prolonged state budget battle, which ended Sept. 2.

The agency’s budget was cut $3.5 million, meaning a reduction in the amount of overtime pay agents can earn.

And while Doane said the agents would stay in Orange County this year, there were no guarantees for the next fiscal year.

Miles said he had no comment on the decision, referring all questions to officials in Sacramento.