DRUG MONEY

Police Probe Needs Prompt Resolution

EVEN THOUGH it no longer formally exists, the Organized Crime Unit of
the Memphis Police Department, by reputation, continues to soil the
good name of the force and its dedicated officers. Long-standing
allegations of corruption in OCU need to be resolved, promptly and
publicly, to remove the stain. Letting the clock run out on potential
prosecutions won't achieve that goal.

Like many other police departments, MPD uses money it seizes in
narcotics raids to help pay for drug buys and other undercover
operations. The idea has a basic logic: use the ill-gotten gains of
the drug trade to attack it. Although state law permits drug funds to
be used for other law enforcement purposes, such spending must have
advance approval and must be paid for by check, not cash.

The department's OCU administered the forfeiture fund. The Commercial
Appeal reported last year that seized drug cash stored in an MPD
vault - as much as $80,000 at a time - was routinely used to pay for
such apparently improper items as out-of-town travel, overtime and
even lawn care and golf fees. Credit cards supported by the drug
fund, ostensibly to finance secret drug investigations, were used
throughout the department to charge meals and travel.

A state audit that followed the newspaper reports cited a "blatant
lack of internal controls over undercover cash operations" in OCU.
Auditors concluded that officers got $43,000 in seized cash to pay
"apparently nonexistent confidential informants."

Such revelations stimulated a joint investigation of the unit and its
officers by state and federal agents. Eighteen months later, no major
prosecutions have emerged from the OCU probe.

The statute of limitations that would have allowed misdemeanor
charges arising from the investigation to be brought in state court
has expired. Key evidence has vanished. State and federal prosecutors
evidently failed to share some information in a timely fashion.

Shelby County grand juries have brought a few relatively low-level
cases as a result of the investigation. Two officers were fired and
charged with keeping $900 meant to pay their hotel bills while they
were out of town on official business for OCU. Another officer was
charged with taking MPD pay while he moonlighted as a security guard.
A former OCU lieutenant was indicted on a theft charge.

A former OCU commander, who the state audit alleges broke the law 329
times in overseeing the disbursement of more than $100,000 from the
drug fund in 1998 and 1999, effectively was forced to quit the police
department last summer. She has not been charged and has denied
violating the law.

She has sued the city and several current and former officials,
including Mayor Willie Herenton and Police Director Walter Crews. She
alleges the defendants made her a scapegoat for the irregularities in
OCU, punished her for being a "whistle-blower" and discriminated
against her because of her sex.

Citizens have no way of knowing the status of the OCU investigation,
because state and federal law enforcement officials refuse to discuss
it.

No one would expect, or want, premature publicity to compromise the
investigation. But when so much time has elapsed, taxpayers may
reasonably begin to wonder whose interests such secrecy is designed
to protect.

The OCU disclosures have had positive results. OCU has been renamed
and, it appears, reined in. Tighter controls now govern MPD spending
in general and the forfeiture fund in particular.

But those administrative reforms, however vital, are inadequate to
resolve fully the lingering questions about OCU. If the unit's
officers and supervisors broke the law, they should face criminal
charges. If prosecutors cannot make a case, they should acknowledge
that.

Either way, a year and a half seems a reasonable amount of time to
reach those judgments.