DEA Helps Local Police Crack Down on Drug Dealers

A low-key federal program aimed at attacking neighborhood drug dealing has been sweeping through California cities over the past 22 months, bringing money, staffing and expertise to local police agencies overwhelmed by the violent illegal drug trade.

The so-called Mobile Enforcement Team program has completed five operations in Southern California, teaming agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency with police in Los Angeles, Compton, Gardena, Ventura and San Luis Obispo to make more than 500 arrests.

“We’re not coming in with any magic bullets,” said one Drug Enforcement Administration official. “We’re coming in with highly trained narcotics agents.”

In a sixth operation this fall, teams in the Lancaster area have arrested 55 people and seized a crack house for use in a sting operation, part of an ongoing effort with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in the Antelope Valley.

Armed with more cash, equipment and training than their state and local counterparts, the federal drug agents more easily gather evidence and arrest drug dealers, who are generally familiar with the faces and techniques of local undercover officers, federal and local officers said.

The federal team typically spends 60 to 90 days in a community, at a cost to taxpayers of between $100,000 and $200,000. Team members target drug dealers believed to be responsible for homicides and other violent crimes and who supply street sellers.

While some critics have argued that the DEA should go after high-level drug kingpins in Latin America, the program has been hailed by Clinton administration officials as representing the best of community policing. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has frequently remarked that the program, the brainchild of DEA head Thomas A. Constantine, represents the perfect match between federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Seizing on that reputation, the DEA this year is requesting that funding for such programs be increased to $5.9 million so it can add 60 field agents to its 325 nationwide. The DEA has 19 strike force teams nationwide.

Mostly, the federal government is seeking to aid communities that are fighting rising drug use and violent crime with shrinking police budgets.

The DEA agents say they typically let local police guide them and that they focus on assisting in analyzing, collecting and sharing confidential information.

In the Century-Lennox stations of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in the Compton area, the team made 30 arrests--several on suspicion of heroin possession--and recovered nearly a dozen guns, from assault rifles to sawed-off shotguns.

In San Luis Obispo County, agents assisted six sheriff’s deputies in a major undercover raid in the Paso Robles area. In all, police made 81 arrests and seized drugs worth $250,000.

And in Los Angeles’ high-crime Rampart area, the team made more than 400 arrests, including dozens of known gang members, the LAPD said. Overall violent crime, including assaults, robberies and rapes, dropped by about 25% during the 90-day operation, the LAPD said.

But while Rampart Division Capt. Nick Salicos praised the effort--”We shook hands when they left and said we couldn’t wait to have them back”--he said the crime rate is again creeping up.

“Unfortunately . . . all we do is move criminals from one area to another,” Salicos said. “We’re beginning to see the same activity starting up again.”

Federal agents say credit for the arrests should go to local agencies, because the DEA sees its role as an assistant, not as the driving force behind the crackdowns, federal agents said.

But the agency can’t help but receive widespread attention after its operations. In the Rampart area, residents bought a billboard thanking the DEA (and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which also aided in the effort) for the agents’ help.

“Please Come Back!” the billboard read.

Left off the billboard was the LAPD.

The DEA acknowledges that crime dips when the teams show up and tends to return--albeit slowly in places--when the agents move on. But agents add that they often arrest the major players in an area, holding down the pace and the quantity of the rebound.

In Arlington, Texas, agents say they arrested methamphetamine traffickers from Mexico who were believed to be the major suppliers of the drug in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And in Galveston, agents arrested two suspected drug dealers whom they believe supplied crack houses across Galveston County. One was supplying 400 kilograms of crack cocaine to gang members each year, the DEA said.

To be sure, the teams don’t always nab the highest-level drug traffickers, nor do they always seek to.

The target “may not be a major drug kingpin, but you might have a group of individuals responsible for a lot of violent crime in an area . . . and we are the premier experts when it comes to drugs and law enforcement,” DEA spokesman Van Quarles said.

Whatever the numbers, the wrap-up of each operation is almost always met with news conferences touting arrests and seizures, and much mutual backslapping.

The DEA, however, tries to keep a low profile. In its briefing book, it states: “Significantly, the DEA will not involve itself in any way with the press. . . . All media relations and press announcements concerning the progress and outcome of the investigations will reside solely with the requesting agency.”

Times correspondent Sharon Moeser contributed to this story.