FIGHTING FOR FUNDS

Loebsack Wants To Restore Millions Cut From Drug Enforcement Budget

OTTUMWA -- When he started making drug arrests 20 years ago, Ottumwa
Police Lt. Tom McAndrew said a $300 meth arrest was a big deal. These
days, it's hard to get overworked federal prosecutors to take a
$25,000 meth bust seriously.

But meth dealers are being taken off the streets. Manufacturing labs
have been reduced. And imported drugs are being confiscated. Locally
that's because of a sufficiently funded drug task force, McAndrew
told his congressional representative Saturday.

Congressman Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, was at the Wapello County Law
Center meeting with McAndrew, OPD Chief Jim Clark, Wapello County
Sheriff Don Kirkendall and Chief Deputy Mark Miller.

Loebsack wanted to know what the federal $660 million dollar
Byrne-Justice Assistance Grant reduction was going to do to efforts
to reduce drug trafficking in the area.

"The cuts are going to be devastating to the Drug Task Force,"
McAndrew said. "It'll strangle us."

Chief Clark fears it would be back to the old way of doing
things.

"The only drug enforcement would be if a patrol officer pulls someone
over and smells some pot, and pulls a baggy of marijuana out of the
car," he said.

When McAndrew joined the OPD, there was one anti-drug officer. Their
budget was so small, an undercover officer could barely afford to buy
drugs. He remembers getting that $300 bust and they all were
thrilled. A few years later, federal funding started coming in, and
they could get serious, he said.

They hired more plainclothes officers, paid overtime to work cases
and were able to make serious buys with major drug dealers. The
change was overnight, he said: They started making arrests and
confiscating tens of thousands of dollars in meth.

Last month in Washington, a worried Congressman Loebsack authored
legislation to provide emergency money to restore funding back to the
$660 million that had been voted on, up from the $170 million that
ended up being signed into law at the end of 2007.

In his travels around the state, Iowa's Drug Czar, Dale Woolery,
heard concern over lack of money for drug enforcement from local
peace officers..

He told Clark, Kirkendall and the others his office is trying to make
some money available to keep drug enforcement efforts going.

"There is grant money from the state but it's a stopgap measure," he
said. "We don't know what's going to happen in [Washington, D.C.] or
[Des Moines]. I wish we knew more."

In the meantime, he said, his office is preparing as if the cuts were
really going through. He urged local law enforcement to start sending
their grant applications in soon.

Upon hearing this, Clark asked Loebsack what kind of support the
Byrne-Jag Funding Restoration Act had. Loebsack said he couldn't
predict what would happen with his fight against the cut.

"Right now, the 67 percent funding cut is in place," Loebsack
said.

But he did say he was seeing support from both sides of the aisle when
it came to getting that money put back in the budget.

"There's been a lot of bipartisan support, I want to make that clear.
We're trying to get as much of that 490 million [dollars] back in.
There is bipartisan support for fighting drugs and fighting the bad
guys who make the drugs and sell the drugs," Loebsack said. "It's not
a partisan fight. We've got to put aside that bickering."

There is money in government, Clark claimed. He said he's seen plenty
of wasted funding spent on whatever the political "issue of the day"
happened to be. At one point, a government grant for national security
paid for a portable GPS, a Global Positioning System to help the
Eddyville Police Department navigate its way around town. Eddyville,
poppulation 1,064, is about 1.2 square miles. While Clark said he
supports a strong effort in national security, there's probably a
better use for some of that cash.

"They need to be allocating these funds for... purposes like drug
enforcement," Clark said.

That's because a great national security protecting us from outsiders
isn't going to do much good if a country loaded with drug addicts is
tearing itself apart within its own borders.

The drug task force has helped make that happen, said Lt. McAndrew,
the unit commander. Up to 90 percent of the meth in Ottumwa comes from
outside the state, much of it from drug dealers with connections in
Mexico, the investigators believe.

"More secure borders will make things more secure here," Miller
said.

It's not the mother carrying her baby across the scorching desert
that's been the problem, either. There are drug dealers with Mexican
connections who seem to know what they are doing.

"When we ask how they got here, they laugh and say they just drove, or
walked across a bridge," said McAndrew. "We're trying to fight a
national problem at a local level."

It could get worse, Loebsack said: Instead of every state getting some
funding as is done now, in 2009, the president wants to make the
Byrne-Jag funding for drug enforcement an "open grant application"
program. In that case, Loebsack said, the priority would probably be
sending money to large populations areas, especially those with high
violent crime rates.

"So the money would end up going to the same places that always get
the money," Clark said. "It's very frustrating."