RETIRED COMMANDER TO LEAD COUNTY DRUG INTELLIGENCE NETWORK

On Jan. 28, John D. McMahon returned home from his tour of duty as
Pittsburgh police commander of the North Side station and began taking off
his uniform.

And then it hit him. He would never again put on that uniform. Moreover, he
realized, there would be no McMahon on the force for the first time since
1941, when his father, the late Lt. John F. McMahon, first donned his
police blues.

For a moment, the thoughts were unsettling. But then McMahon thought about
why he is officially retiring today and he was excited by the prospect of
what he views as a "new adventure."

McMahon has been hired by Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A.
Zappala Jr. to head what is planned to be the first countywide drug
intelligence network. Under the plan, Zappala's office will create a
database and act as a clearinghouse for drug-trafficking intelligence
gleaned by individual municipal police departments from their patrols and
probes and by his staff from the thousands of drug cases they have handled
over the years.

"We're not going to stop with street-level dealers," Zappala said. "We're
going to develop these [drug-selling] conspiracies and make very enhanced
use of the grand jury. We are going after the people who traffic in narcotics."

Zappala hopes to fund the intelligence network as well as educational
seminars for municipal officers and equipment purchases by means of
$600,000 in state funds available to district attorneys. That funding won't
be available until after July 1, but Zappala wants McMahon on board now so
that the operation can begin quickly when the money comes in.

As for McMahon, neither drug investigations nor working as a supervisor in
law enforcement is a new venture. From 1986 through 1995, he served as
sergeant and acting commander of the Pittsburgh bureau's office of
organized crime, narcotics and intelligence. Twenty-one of his 31 years on
the force were spent as a supervisor, either in the bureau's operations or
investigations branches.

In his new job, he'll be working for a former Pittsburgh police colleague
- -- Chief of Detectives Terrence P. O'Leary, who retired as a homicide
detective in July 1998. In his 33-year Pittsburgh police career, O'Leary
also worked as a narcotics detective.

Zappala and O'Leary recruited McMahon, viewing him as the perfect fit for
the new enterprise. McMahon was chosen for the post from a "short list" of
30 potential candidates, many of whom are chiefs of police and longtime
criminal investigators.

"I consider him to be one of the finest police officers in the community,"
Zappala said. "He was chosen for a lot of different reasons, not the least
of which were his background and reputation with the city police. Half of
my cases come out of the city and I needed somebody who has a great feel
for the city."

McMahon said he saw the job as "an opportunity to try something new. I
think it's a good idea. I see it as an adventure, something new altogether,
something that will help the county.

"This will allow me to look at the problem from a different angle,
countywide instead of just the city."

McMahon said it was important that all law enforcement agencies come
together to battle drug selling regionally because it is now a problem that
is no longer primarily centered within the city's boundaries.

"You can no longer think of this [drug problem] being confined to the city.
You need to look at the metropolitan area," McMahon said.

That's why Zappala's plan holds such promise of success, he added. All
departments, from the one-man variety to the Pittsburgh force, will have
the advantage of having in hand the drug-selling information recorded by
thousands of officers throughout the county and investigators in the
district attorney's office.

"The [plan] is to share information, to provide [municipal officers] with a
database that they can access," McMahon said.

"This is the district attorney offering some new ideas, new equipment and
intelligence so that it's easier for them to do their jobs and so that they
can do it even better."

McMahon said he took the job because, "it will allow me to specialize in
what I'm interested in."

"As a commander, your concerns are spread out to everything, including
parking complaints and barking dogs," he said.

"In drug investigations, you can get satisfaction because there's a goal
there. You target somebody ruining a neighborhood or some people's lives
and you can actually see what you've produced by getting the guy off the
street and, down the line, saving so many kids."

But if his years in drug investigations have taught him anything, it's that
law enforcement officers need to be realistic in their expectations about
winning the long-standing war on drugs.

"You have to look at the individual victories," he said. "If a neighborhood
is complaining about someone who's the main guy and he's the reason there
are so many burglaries and robberies and you take him off, people feel they
won a little battle.

"They may not have won the war, but they at least won that battle."