October 16, 2005 San Antonio Express News "Drug agencies in transition"

A witch's brew of funding cuts, accountability mandates and public distrust has reduced the number of regional narcotics task forces in Texas to 23 — less than half as many as there were three years ago.

Civil rights groups are cheering the demise of the multijurisdictional units, created in 1987, which they say are prone to corruption and a poor use of grants.

"They have a structural accountability problem; they're federally funded, state managed and locally staffed, therefore accountable to no one," said Scott Henson of the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas.

"There have been many scandals, not just two or three," he said. "Drug task forces setting up innocent people, stealing money from their confidential informant fund, stealing drugs from evidence lockers, coercing informants."

But some county officials complain their constituents are being placed in jeopardy by others' misdeeds, and that drug smugglers are the big winners of the recent statewide changes.

"I think you had a few bad apples and it's killed the rest of us," said Richard Dolgener, county judge in Andrews County, one of three rural West Texas counties in the Trans-Pecos Drug Task Force until it disbanded Sept. 30.

Last week, the spreading cloud of uncertainty engulfed the unit that serves Kendall, Kerr, Gillespie and Bandera counties.

"This task force, as we know it, will probably go away," said Bill Hill, head of the seven-officer 216th Judicial District Narcotics Task Force.

The end of funding next March from a federal grant — which Hill said covered $442,000 of his $600,000 budget last year — is a big reason multijurisdictional units say they're disbanding.

In 2004, task forces received about 80 percent of the $31.6 million in so-called Byrne "formula grants" sent to Texas, second only to California, from the program that doled out $475 million nationwide.

The governor's criminal justice division, which administers the federal funds, recently told Texas task forces they can apply to receive new "justice assistance grants," a marriage of the formula grants and a federal block grant program.

According to a Sept. 14 letter to task forces, the new program, which brought about $21 million to Texas this year, "will support a statewide strategy that focuses on disrupting and dismantling criminal enterprise through collaboration between federal, state and local agencies."

But Hill and other task force officials aren't optimistic about getting sufficient funding from the smaller grant pie that will be sliced to serve more needs.

The state began tightening rules for task forces in 2002, when Gov. Rick Perry required the units then operating in 216 counties to submit to Department of Public Safety oversight to remain grant-eligible.

Nearly 50 of the multijurisdictional units existed then, targeting street-corner pushers and drug-smuggling barons alike.

The governor's decision stemmed from embarrassing episodes of misconduct by task forces, most notably in the small Panhandle town of Tulia.

There, on July 23, 1999, a sweep resulted in 46 people, nearly all of them black, being arrested for allegedly selling drugs to Tom Coleman, a white agent for the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force.

Despite the scant evidence and complaints that racism drove the investigation, 38 of the defendants were convicted — and given prison terms as long as 90 years for those convicted of dealing cocaine.

But the state's case in Tulia and the secretive arena of task force operations began unraveling as doubts mounted about Coleman, who offered no drugs or recordings as evidence, only his word.

In 2003, Perry pardoned 35 Tulia defendants, and in 2004 the plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit reached a $6 million settlement with the task force and other parties involved.

By then, Coleman had found himself in the role of defendant, accused of perjury for testimony in 2003. Earlier this year, he was convicted and received probation.

The push for greater accountability by task forces continued this year with a new law that any multijurisdictional unit not submitting to DPS supervision and rules must surrender to the state any money or assets it seizes from suspects.

The law allows law agencies within a single county to form task forces without DPS oversight. Backers of the measure said it actually will help preserve the regional task forces that brought shame, and the prospect of federal funding cuts, upon Texas.

"Multijurisdictional task forces would eventually have been wiped out entirely if we had not instituted professionalism in administration of those grants," said state Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, chairman of the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.

"The U.S. Congress, in regard to their oversight of Byrne grant funding, had expressed concern about the problems in the old way that we had been doing things here, and there was serious discussion about whether Texas was going to receive any more funding for these kind of programs," he said.

"The changes were instituted in order to give Texas the best chance possible to receive these kind of funds to continue these kinds of operations," he said.

"They were going away under the old law, not just because the left was looking at it and the feds were concerned about it, but because the local law enforcement in rural areas were not being well-served by this arrangement," he said.

"These were originally set up to do narcotics interdiction in rural areas where it was not being addressed," he added. "Instead they were gravitating toward more populated areas because that's where the money was, and the seized money often went to help fund their operations."

State officials say all programs eligible for the two old grants qualify for the new "justice assistance grant," but Andrews County Sheriff Sam Jones said the Trans-Pescos unit disbanded after being told it would receive no future grant funds.

"We're just going to have a lot more drugs and contraband flowing free across the state because they've taken the task forces away and they've made it where you can't hardly work narcotic cases anymore," he said. "They've hurt us real bad."

He's been advised that his deputies can't confer with deputies in another county on a drug case unless they seek and receive DPS oversight, because otherwise their actions would constitute an illegal task force.

"In our view, it's referring to formal task forces," he said. "Routine cooperation between law enforcement regarding crime is not prohibited."

Pat O'Burke, the DPS deputy commander over narcotics, said there are 23 regional drug task forces left in Texas.

"Several have dropped out and others are planning to drop out," he said. "Obviously, I think you can assume that funding is an issue."

He's waiting to see what level of narcotics interdiction will occur by local entities in areas where task forces disband when grants dry up in April, but said, "If they expect all of the work to fall to DPS, that would be a concern."

Hill, head of the 216th task force, predicted agencies in Kerr County will form a new unit to carry on the fight.

"The drug problem is not going to go away and anybody in law enforcement will tell you that law enforcement is not going to solve the problem," Hill said. "But at least we served as a deterrent to a great many people, to either not get involved in it or to keep their heads down."