AUSTIN POLICE IGNORED DRUG PROBLEMS, FEDS SAY

A mid-1990s federal investigation of an Austin-based drug network
turned up reports that 10 Austin police officers may have been
working with the smugglers or using cocaine on duty, court records
show.

The investigation crumbled in 1997, however, when police
administrators transferred Austin officers from the federal task
force, depriving it of personnel needed to pursue the leads,
according to an Internal Revenue Service agent and an assistant U.S.
attorney who ran the investigation, code named Mala Sangre -- Spanish
for Bad Blood.

Police supervisors appeared uninterested in investigating their own
officers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Marshall testified in a sworn
deposition.

``It appeared to me that a lot of people just wanted to avoid that
embarrassment,'' said Marshall, Mala Sangre's administrative
supervisor. ``There were a number of things we could have done if we
would have had the manpower."

Austin Police Chief Stan Knee disagreed, saying the U.S. attorney's
office was asked whether transferring the officers would cause a
hardship.

"Every time the department made an inquiry into whether these people
were necessary to the investigation, the information that was
returned to us from the U.S. attorney's office was, no, they
weren't,'' said Knee, who discussed the investigation with police
supervisors after taking over the department in 1997, after Mala
Sangre had wound down.

According to court documents that surfaced after two lawsuits against
the City of Austin were recently settled, Mala Sangre began in 1995
and quickly turned up leads about wrongdoing by police officers.

The key document is a ``summary of allegations.'' Drafted by Mala
Sangre's lead investigators in 1999 to update their supervisors, the
summary details information provided by 15 confidential informants,
including at least three police officers.

Knee said the department did all it could to investigate wrongdoing
turned up by Mala Sangre. But internal affairs investigators were
hampered, Knee said, because the federal task force refused to
identify the confidential informants, leaving police with allegations
based on innuendo and unsubstantiated evidence.

``It's just hard to fight ghosts,'' Knee said.

Marshall, the assistant U.S. attorney, blamed the Austin Police
Department for a lack of support.

The Police Department began pulling officers from the investigation
about the time some officers were implicated in wrongdoing, Marshall
said in a February 2000 deposition.

Marshall testified that a turning point came in the summer of 1996,
after officer David Mattox was reported to be selling cocaine out of
his patrol car and a civilian police photographer compromised a Mala
Sangre investigation into a drug dealer.

``I sort of pin the lack of personnel and the lack of support to
about the time that Mattox and those guys were having their
difficulties,'' Marshall said in his deposition. ``I couldn't get
officers to come in and review (surveillance) tapes. . . . Granted,
it's boring as hell, and I wouldn't want to do it either, but my God,
we do it. And it wasn't happening."

Marshall declined to comment for this article, citing Department of
Justice restrictions.

Mala Sangre claimed 20 arrests across the United States, including
retired Austin narcotics officer Bob Black, sentenced to 18 months in
federal prison for buying cocaine on Feb. 21, 1996. Robert Sanger,
police chief in Premont, a town of 3,000 about 20 miles southwest of
Kingsville, also was convicted for possession of almost a ton of
marijuana.

No Austin police officers were charged with a crime as a result of
Mala Sangre, although Mattox was fired from the department when he
tested positive for cocaine use. Any drug-dealing charges would have
had to come from the U.S. attorney's office, Assistant Police Chief
Rick Coy said. No local charges were filed because Mattox was not
found in possession of any narcotics, Coy said.

Of the 10 officers named in the summary as taking drugs, working with
drug networks or tipping off drug dealers, eight remain on the force.

Behind two storefronts

The Mala Sangre task force of federal and local agencies began in
October 1995 with surveillance on two businesses in the same East
Austin shopping center: Angela's Furniture Store, owned by Roger
Lopez, and Mike's Formal Wear, owned by Michael Borrero, who is
serving time in federal prison.

Almost immediately, confidential informants began reporting that
Austin police officers were using cocaine and protecting Lopez's
narcotics network and other drug dealers, according to the summary of
allegations and an accompanying chronology.

That summary was written in April 1999 by the lead Mala Sangre
investigators -- now-retired IRS agent Wayne Young and Austin police
officer Stan Farris -- to be given to the Austin Police Department
and the FBI.

Testifying in a February 2000 deposition, Young said the report was
his supervisor's idea. However, he said, it was not distributed
because his supervisor retired.

Young, who lives in Austin, retired from the IRS in 1999. He did not
return telephone calls Thursday and Friday.

The summary next surfaced in police Capt. Cecil Huff's whistle-blower
lawsuit against the City of Austin. Huff supervised police officers
working on Mala Sangre before his transfer in 1996. His lawsuit
alleged that he was transferred after running afoul of a senior group
of officers Huff claimed received preferential treatment and
interfered with disciplinary and criminal investigations into its
members.

Huff settled his lawsuit in early January for $6,000, just enough to
cover his legal fees.

In the summary, an informant listed nine officers known to frequent
Angela's Furniture Store and Cocktails Nightclub, an eastside bar
where Lopez was a regular. Another informant named six officers seen
buying cocaine from Borrero.

Drug task forces often rely on confidential informants to determine
how to focus investigations. Because many are involved in the illegal
activity, investigators typically need to corroborate their
statements.

Other information in the summary includes:

- --Two officers carried cocaine from South Texas to Austin for Lopez.
They also supplied pagers, cell phones and information on
investigations to Lopez's network, according to confidential
informants identified only as CI-9 and CI-13.

- --Seven confidential informants said on-duty and off-duty police
officers regularly attended after-hours sex and drug parties at the
former Cocktails Nightclub, 2003 E. Riverside Drive. Several officers
also worked security at Cocktails -- off-duty jobs approved by the
department -- and one informant was told not to worry about the
security detail ``because those officers knew what was going on."

- -- Three officers, named only as confidential informants, said a
police lieutenant made frequent disparaging remarks about Young, one
of the lead Mala Sangre investigators. The frequency and repetition
of the remarks caused them to believe the lieutenant carried a
``hidden and suspicious agenda,'' and two officers said they feared
cooperating with Mala Sangre investigators could bring retaliation
and threaten their careers.

- --Two Austin police officers accompanied Lopez on all-expenses-paid
trips to the 1994 Super Bowl. The officers took separate trips to the
1995 Super Bowl and a prize fight in Oklahoma -- also paid for by
Lopez, who was convicted of drug trafficking in 1998 and sentenced to
seven years in prison.

Assistant Police Chief Coy said there is no department policy
prohibiting officers from associating with felons, including friends
or family.

- -- After Lopez was arrested in August 1996, telephone records showed
he was using a cell phone leased by an Austin police officer. Knee
said the officer was investigated, but the allegations could not be
proved.

Knee dismissed the summary, saying it contained little more than
rumors, was written in an unprofessional way and relied on
investigative notes that should never have been made public.

``Most of the allegations I found to be old,'' said Knee, who
received a copy of the summary about one year ago. ``Many of them I
had been briefed on. I also, in reviewing that document, determined
that it was not really a case summary of the investigation, but more
investigators' investigative notes."

Shrinking presence

Mala Sangre was run by federal agents, but its muscle came from local
law enforcement agencies such as the Austin Police Department.

Because there aren't enough federal agents to do an investigation's
grunt work, the U.S. government pays for overtime, travel costs and
other expenses incurred by local law enforcement. The relationship is
formalized as an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force.

The Mala Sangre task force was led by the IRS and included the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. attorney's office, the Texas
Department of Public Safety and the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms.

The Austin Police Department joined the investigation in 1995 by
contributing eight to 10 officers. By March 1997, only lead
investigator Farris remained, and he was transferred away four months
later.

Farris and two other officers -- Dennis Clark and David Gann -- filed
a whistle-blower lawsuit against the City of Austin in October 1997,
claiming they were transferred from Mala Sangre to shut down the
investigation of fellow officers.

The department, then and now, maintains that the officers were
transferred because of a five-year rotation that was required of all
patrol officers. But in their settlement of the lawsuit, the city
conceded that the five-year rule was selectively enforced. Clark, for
example, had spent about eight years in special investigations before
his transfer; Farris had been in narcotics for 5 1/2 years.

Clark, a 23-year veteran, said in a February 2000 deposition that the
investigation needed just a little more time.

``We could have gotten to the end result very easily,'' Clark testified.

Clark and Farris, a 23-year officer, declined to be interviewed.
Gann, an officer since 1986, was on vacation last week and could not
be reached.

Coy said officers were assigned to other duties because the
department believed the task force had closed its Austin case to
concentrate on South Texas. The department was waiting for the task
force to finish its investigation and present its allegations to
Austin's internal affairs unit, he said.

No conclusions were turned over to the department, Coy said.

Young, in his deposition, said police supervisors were kept abreast
of all developments during weekly task force meetings.

``If I have got a captain and lieutenant and sergeant sitting there,
and they hear information, I shouldn't have to go over and berate
them to do something,'' Young testified.

Reporting misconduct

Farris, Clark and Gann settled their lawsuit in December for $80,000
- -- $12,500 apiece and $42,000 to their lawyer, Derek Howard.

``Policy was not equally implemented,'' Knee said. ``The settlement
was appropriate."

Howard said the settlement amount did not reflect the strength of the
officers' complaint. None was fired, he said. In fact, since filing
the suit, Gann and Clark have been promoted to detective.

``There hasn't been any demonstration of loss of income,'' Howard
said. ``In cases where whistle-blowers are fired, you have much
higher damage awards."

As a result of the lawsuit, the department has changed policy to
require officers to report criminal misconduct by other officers.
Knee said those who fear retaliation can bypass the chain of command
and report misconduct directly to him or to internal affairs.

Knee couldn't say whether any officers named by Mala Sangre
informants would be investigated further. New information could
surface at any time, he said.

``We do in fact follow up on . . . every allegation of criminal
misconduct,'' Knee said.