OCU PROBE

Investigation's Outcome Is Long Overdue

SEVENTEEN MONTHS is too long to wait for the outcome of an investigation of
what was formerly known as the Organized Crime Unit (OCU) of the Memphis
Police Department.

It is too long for the department to have operated under a cloud. It is too
long for targets of the investigation to have kept their futures on hold.

But 17 months have passed since the beginning of state and federal
investigations of how some OCU members used drug forfeiture money and
payments to confidential informants. Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill
Gibbons has suggested his office soon may take action. Federal officials
aren't saying what, if anything, they plan to do about concluding their review.

The OCU probe began after reporters for The Commercial Appeal in early 1999
began sifting through the unit's credit card expenditures, travel
itineraries and other matters. Their examination included how officers were
spending an $80,000 fund intended to finance undercover drug buys and pay
informants.

The newspaper found money from drug forfeiture cases going to feed foreign
police officials who were visiting Memphis. Those proceeds also funded
improvements to the OCU gym, paid fees for an out-of-town golf tournament,
bought a $36,000 sport utility vehicle for department commanders, and
provided the food for an OCU cookout.

The fund paid for car repairs, tips for car washes, pillows for a police
administrator's office, and travel expenses for police officials, Mayor
Willie Herenton, the police review board and others.

Credit cards held by OCU officers and other members of the police
department financed office furniture and restaurant outings. They paid for
travel to Las Vegas, Orlando, Detroit, Sun Valley, Phoenix and elsewhere -
apparently for seminars and conferences - as well as side trips to such
destinations as Los Angeles and New York.

The Police Department has tried to proceed with the work that had been
assigned to OCU by reorganizing the unit and renaming it Narcotics/Vice. It
has a new commander and new personnel, including undercover officers
recruited from police academy classes. It has new safeguards to restrict
the use of credit cards, travel expenses and payments to confidential
informants.

Former deputy police chief Brenda Jones, who had been singled out in a
state audit of the unit, was among the employees Police Director Walter
Crews dismissed when he reshaped his command staff this summer. Crews said:
"We have good leadership and are trying to bring it up to full strength."

A resolution of the OCU investigation would help the department move ahead
with its efforts to control narcotics and other forms of vice in Memphis.
After 17 months, investigators should be in a position to take action or
punt. New evidence is not likely to fall from the sky.

The office of Tennessee's chief auditor, Dennis Dycus, released a scathing
audit of OCU a year ago next month. A few days ago, Dycus expressed
thoughts that many Memphians likely share.

"There is only one question to ask, and that is why, why has it been quiet
so long," he said. "It doesn't take months and months."

Auditors identified illegal drug fund spending and a blatant lack of
control over undercover cash operations when they looked at the OCU books
last year. Officers in the unit spent money on travel and meals in a manner
that betrayed public trust and displayed a misplaced sense of entitlement
that can occur when large sums of cash are lying around and fiscal control
is lax.

Agents of the FBI and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation have been studying
the unit, at great length. An account of their findings is overdue.