Disbanded drug task forces look for forfeiture, federal pork money

Will agents from Texas' Tulia-style drug task forces, most of which will reportedly close down soon, simply latch onto other pork barrel funding streams to pay their salaries?

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports today ("Drug Task Force Agents May Not Be Funded," Jan. 3) that the Tri-County drug task force in southeast Texas is closing in March because of reductions in funds to the federal Byrne grant program. According to the task force's project director:

"It's our understanding that this will be the end of the governor's office funding for these types of task forces past that date," [Aransas District Attorney Patrick] Flanigan said. "It sounds like they don't want that anymore."

That's welcome news, but the same article announces that agencies participating in the Tri-County task force are still looking to profit from asset forfeiture revenue and federal grants:

Aransas County Sheriff Mark Gilliam said one of his two officers in the tri-county group will move in January to the task force run by the local division of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Aransas County will continue to fund that agent's salary and benefits, a cost of about $70,000.

With this new arrangement, the county will share in the seized assets with the other members of the DEA task force."We should be able to snag a good portion of that and put it to good use," Gilliam said.

Gilliam said most agencies with the DEA group receive more than $100,000 in seizures each year.

"It's a win-win for Aransas County, partnering with DEA and we have an opportunity to share in some of those seizures and that's going to be good for Aransas County, and hopefully if we seize enough money we'll be able to add another officer."

Here we see, IMO, the real motive for local law enforcement's participation in federally funded drug task forces -- both the ones funded by the Byrne grant program and others: Maximizing generation of asset forfeiture income, which always seems to matter to local agencies much more than reducing drug abuse or crime. Drug enforcement is the only law enforcement activity viewed as a revenue generator.

The Aransas Sheriff's quote also points to the prescience of Grits' law enforcement commenters who predicted that Texas drug task force agents wouldn't fade gently into that good night. When I reported in December that Congress cut the Byrne grant program that pays for task forces for the second year in a row, a former narcotics agent responded to predict that counties hoping to continue suckling on the drug war funding teat would rush to seek funding from and participation in an array of other sources, including several types of federally backed task forces:

HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area): This is the retirement home with large salaries for retired DEA Agents who dedicated their careers and the efforts of their DEA division to the state and local authority who selects HIDTA directors. If you don't believe me go to their website. 80% of those directors retired from DEA with 90,000 retirement salaries and now run HIDTA at a combined income of 200,000 or more. What area in the U.S. is a Low Intensity Trafficking Area?

MET (Mobile Enforcement Teams): MET Teams are DEA Agents who travel from a DEA Division to areas where the locals claim they need help. The costs of these federally financed teams costs more than the drugs they seize. In short, they come to town and arrest everyone. Then they leave and go to the next town with the same problem, only to see the same problem in the town they just left quickly return. That means they get to go back again, and again, and again.

Asset Forfeiture Fund: Most departments have built up funds from drug forfeitures and it's called their asset forfeiture fund. There's alot of money in most of those funds and it's used for more enforcement, more police, and more arrests. How is it that taxpayers finance the results from drug prosecution/arrests and drug profits only finance the effort that produces the arrest.

OCDETF (Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force): Another federal fund that can be tapped by state and locals who know how to write interesting reading proposals. The proposals aren't scrutnized or factually accurate. They're not used as proof at trial but they're fun to read and they were all prepared with a go-by. That's an OCDETF proposal that was approved in another geographical area and uses the language that's required by OCDETF to get funding.

I can't tell from the Caller Times article which type of "DEA task force" Aransas County hopes to joint, but it's likely one of those described by this commenter. (The HIDTA task forces have also been targeted by the Bush Administration for funding reductions, as Grits mentioned earlier.) Another commenter on the same string identified the national guard as a source of federal drug war funding to watch:

When are you going to tackle the Texas National Guard's boondoggle Counter Drug Program? With an actual war going on, this program is sucking valuable resources (people and money) from the NG's real mission; and pissing it away on nice cushy jobs for active duty soldiers, who are wasted anwering phones for the narcs.

Like the Byrne grant funds, Governor Perry controls Texas' national guard troops, though also like the Byrne grant funds it's likely he'd focus their efforts on the border before they worked rural areas covered by Texas' dying breed of Byrne task forces.

In any event, we should be just as concerned at Aransas' participation in a DEA task force as in a Tulia-style task force funded by the Byrne grant program. The same former narcotics agent quoted above (who I've spoken to and corresponded with independently) identified in the comments to this post the fundamental flaw marking all these pork-barrel projects -- they reward outcomes that result in large numbers of arrests but don't reduce drug use or improve public safety:

Local and State police compete for federal funds and the funds which pay for overtime, cars, guns, and other law enforcement perks are awarded to those agencies that have the highest numbers of arrests and seizures.

High numbers of arrests are newsworthy and large numbers of arrests makes the police look like they are effective, cooperating, and busy.

Tulia embodies this law enforcement model and so does every other drug task force across the United States with only one [difference].

The operations of Tulia were closely scrutinzed and that hasn't happened yet to other drug task forces in the other 49 states.