BUREAU: TARGET DRUGS AT SOURCE

Director Hiring 12 Intelligence Analysts To Help Agents

In 1990, a man shot Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics agent Danny Norton
as he served an arrest warrant in Byram for a prescription forgery.

Norton's injuries forced him to take medical retirement, said MBN
Deputy Director Ron Pitts.

"That probably would not have happened," said Pitts, 44, "if we had
intelligence analysts gathering tactical information on the suspect.
Right now, agents have to do all of that."

Under Director Don Strange, former chief of intelligence for the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration, the newly reorganized MBN's goal is
not just trying to put drug dealers in jail, it's trying to get at the
source and dry up the supply.

To do that, Strange, appointed March 1, is hiring 12 intelligence
analysts -- retired police officers, people with Department of Defense
backgrounds and college graduates -- to analyze, collect and input
information into networked computer databases. One analyst will be
assigned to each of the bureau's 12 districts.

"More and more it's a thing of the future," said Strange, 51, who runs
the only state narcotics bureau outside of California, Maine and
Oklahoma. "It's a major tool in taking down drug organizations."

At the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, 77 agents work the streets while
five criminal intelligence analysts, assigned to one of five
districts, talk to FBI agents, police chiefs and sheriffs, amassing
facts on drug arrests and crimes.

The Oklahoma analysts concentrate not only on bureau cases but assist
statewide law enforcement agencies, said agency spokesman Mark Woodward.

"Our analysts' work is incredibly vital to the operation," said
Woodward, 31, whose state Web site www.state.ok.us currently
advertises two openings for OBN criminal intelligence analysts.

"It's info you could spend hours searching through file cabinets for,"
Woodward said. "There's just so much information we can share with our
agents. They can be sitting in the middle of a marijuana field and
pull up a file on an offender."

In 1998, the OBN started a methamphetamine database, tracking who's
cooking the drug, where chemicals are being bought, the names and
nicknames of those arrested and known associates, the tag numbers of
vehicles seen near labs, the type of weapons seized and what booby
traps might have been set up, among other pieces of data.

"You never want to hit a house blindfolded," Woodward said. "When we
kick in a door to serve a no-knock warrant we want to know the layout
of the house and where the suspect keeps his guns."

Woodward said Oklahoma's law-enforcement community shut down 34
methamphetamine labs in 1995, 241 in 1997, and in 1999, a year after
the database debut, 781. This year, the state's on pace for nearly
1,200 busts -- third only to California and Missouri in seizures of
methamphetamine labs.

"Our databases can tell an agent if the dealer keeps his guns hidden
under a couch cushion or if the back door's usually chained and has a
bureau pushed in front of it," Woodward said. "We want to know all of
this. These people are violent and very paranoid."

The MBN's analysts fall under the wing of Bill Taylor, 50, assistant
director of operational support, who manages intelligence resources,
the domestic marijuana eradication program and training.

"Our intelligence division was almost done away with by the last
administration," Taylor said. "But if you want to target class 1
violators -- not just the users or the street dealers 97 you need to
gather tactical information in the field."

Intelligence analysts will be tasked with compiling activities of
violators, source lists, and suspect profiles; checking telephone
records; gathering court and local law enforcement agencies'
drug-related case files; performing criminal background checks;
tracking drug activity patterns; and writing reports. And each new
hire will have some type of subject specialty, such as cocaine,
heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, motorcycle and prison gangs.

Candidates must have a bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year
college or university or a high school degree or equivalent and four
years of related experience. Starting salary is $23,000.

Unless Strange gains legislative OK to make the 12 analyst positions
permanent in the next budget year, the jobs remain
contractual.

"Analysts will cover all the bases for agents," Strange said. "They'll
make sure there's no deconfliction -- meaning if another law
enforcement agency is investigating the same violator, you won't end
up with undercover agents pointing guns at one another."