PANEL TAKES AIM AT DRUG-SMUGGLING

A congressional subcommittee held hearings to find ways to fight the problem.

Using sophisticated surveillance cameras, federal agents watch dock workers
unloading cargo from ships.

Suddenly, an "accident" disables the camera. By the time agents scramble to
the scene, it's too late -- workers have already offloaded a cache of cocaine.

Scenarios like this are all too common in South Florida's ports: The Port
of Miami and Port Everglades led the nation in cocaine seized in the United
States during the late 1990s, according to the U.S. Customs Service.

This reality brought members of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Criminal
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources to Port Everglades on Tuesday.
They held hearings to figure out what can be done to combat what one
official called a "plague" of drug-smuggling.

"We do have a problem in Florida," Jim McDonough, director of the Florida
Drug Control Policy Office, told the congressional panel. "We have a [drug]
problem on the demand side; we have a problem on the supply side."

It was the supply side that officials focused on Tuesday. The panel, which
included U.S. Reps. Clay Shaw and John Mica, heard testimony that roughly
65 percent of the cocaine that comes into the United States arrives through
Florida -- the vast majority of which is smuggled through South Florida's
two major ports.

Authorities have been clamping down during the past two years. The
crackdown is part of a cooperative effort between federal, state and local
law enforcement agencies.

Examples: Two weeks ago, federal agents seized $1.5 million worth of
marijuana and $8.4 million in cocaine from Port Everglades container ships.
In March, agents arrested six Port Everglades workers accused of smuggling
in thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana.

Last week, Customs seized nearly $11 million worth of cocaine and marijuana
on the Miami River, according to Mica.

The result of the crackdown: This year, Puerto Rico and Tampa replaced Port
Everglades and the Port of Miami as the sites of the country's greatest
volume of cocaine seizures, according to Bob McNamara, director of field
operations for South Florida at the U.S. Customs Service.

But officials acknowledged there were still glitches in security.

Officials now conduct background checks of all workers. Depending on when
they were hired, those with felony convictions in the past five to 10 years
are fired. But the Port of Miami has a lengthy appeals process -- which can
allow workers with shady histories to stay on the job while exhausting
their appeals.

Roughly 20 percent of South Florida port workers have been convicted of
felonies, McNamara testified.

"There are individuals who have problems who are still there," acknowledged
Chuck Towsley, director of the Port of Miami.

Among the prescriptions offered by those who testified: Forbid port workers
from parking personal vehicles near offloading sites; install checkpoints
along access roads at Port Everglades; beef up security along the Miami
River, where a significant portion of the cocaine smuggled into Miami is
offloaded.

An official from the dockworker's union said longshoremen were being
unfairly targeted.

"To even suggest that they, as a workforce, are any less trustworthy, is
demeaning," testified Art Coffey, vice president of the Florida
International Longshoreman Association.

"They're not a bit less concerned than fathers, brothers and mothers of
their counterparts who work inland."