PRISON, TREATMENT BOTH USEFUL, POLICE SAY

'There's Got-To Be Some Accountability'

Seen from the front lines, the war on drugs is far more personal than a
collection of policies, budget requests and prison statistics.

Ifs a woman giving birth to a baby in her bathroom and then walking back to
bed for another hit of crack. It's a man convincing a jury he didn't know
the package he was carrying when arrested contained cocaine. It's an
addicted drug peddler appearing repeatedly on the same comer.

And it is a public and politicians that too often see law enforcement either
as the panacea for America's drug problems - or as the poison.

That is the war on drugs seen by the veteran police and prosecutors who have
been the primary weapons against American drug abuse for more than a decade.
Today, many of those officials say they $till are making progress - but some
say they can do little more without allies.

Alameda County established a narcotics task force in 1977 to target major
drug traffickers and allow city departments to concentrate on street dealers.

I During fiscal year 1998, the task force 4- which includes officers from a
dozen city, -county and state agencies - seized 10.8 million worth of
cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin, recovered 87 weapons and arrested 184
people.

I Steve Angeja, an Alameda County Sheriff's deputy who joined the task force
as an Oakland police officer in ~989, still believes in the ability of law
enforcement to help win the war.

I "There's no way we shouldn't be winning this thing. (But) we're not
putting all our resources on it," he said. "We've got to keep on these guys
so we can keep a lid on it. You've got to keep the lid on it."

The federal government could do far more to catch drugs coming into the
country, Angeja said.

He and some other police contend the court system does not deal hard enough
with those charged with or convicted of drug crimes. But he also believes
the criminal justice system can . do only so much; that other approaches -
education and drug treatment - must be a larger part of the overall drug
control solution.

Alone, Angeja said, "We'll never win the war."

Oakland police Sgt. Kevin O'Rourke has a similar perspective. The narcotics
officer joined the squad in the late 1980s, when crack was coming into its
own and outsiders were beginning to call Oakland "Smokeland."

In some ways, things have not changed, O'Rourke said - drugs are being sold
today in many of the same places as they were 10 or 20 years ago. It can be
frustrating, he said, especially when drug control policy seems to be set by
people who do not understand the realities of drugs on the street.

"What are they really going to know about some 16-year-old kid smoking crack
in a tenement?" he said. "Have they ever seen somebody coming down off heroin?"

But O'Rourke and many other officers are equally frustrated by critics who
seem to believe all drug offenders should be handled with kid gloves, put
through a treatment program - and protected from punishment.

"Because of dope, I've seen neighborhoods destroyed, families destroyed -
both personally and professionally," he said. "You can't just blanket say
that they're poor people that need to be helped . . . somewhere along the
line, there's got to be some accountability. There has to be."

The public certainly expects ft. said Russell Giuntini, who sees many of
Angela's and O'Rourke's arrestees as a assistant district attorney for
Alameda County.

"People are fed up," he said. "If you live in a neighborhood where you've
got drug dealing going on, you want to slam them."

That frustration comes across in public meetings and private phone calls,
Giuntini said, and encourages prosecutors and judges to come down hard on
the drug offenders.

But exposure to the public also educates criminal justice professionals
about another fact of life, he said: There are a lot of drug law offenders -
especially young ones - who still have a chance.

"We're building all these prisons, that's fine. But on the front end, we've
got to invest more in our Juveniles, in our young people we haven't lost,"
he said. "It's almost immoral that we're setting these kids up for failure."

But there is a fine line between helping drug offenders and releasing them
from responsibility for their actions, said George Driscoll, commander of
the West Contra Costa County Narcotics Enforcement Team.

Suggestions that the war on drugs has failed and that treatment can be a
miracle cure for society's drug-related ills are disingenuous," Driscoll
said. Further, he said, critics of jailing drug offenders ignore the
realities of drugrelated crime.

"Those who go to prison for a drug offense, they are substantial violators,"
he said. "and many substantial violators who are convicted of a substantial
drug crime, they still don't go to prison."

Law enforcement still is the most effective tool to address society's drug
problems, with prevention second and treatment a distant third, Driscoll
said. But that does not mean that other approaches should not be considered,
he said - as long as they do not mean a law enforcement withdrawal.

Many law enforcement officials like the sound of some of the new approaches
being touted by national drug policy-makers: approaches that use the
criminal justice system as a stick, encouraging drug lawbreakers to follow
the carrot of treatment and rehabilitation and backing up the importance of
anti-drug abuse education.

Drug courts, prison treatment and tough residential programs seem to work
for many addicts, treatment providers say. And they provide the context of
responsibility and punishment that both cops and treatment experts say must
be part of any solution - but again, not the only part.

"I don't think there's a solution using law enforcement period. It's got to
have education and prevention," said Hayward police Lt. Paul Wallace, who
heads the Alameda County task force.

"I think we do a good job with what we're doing," he said. "I'd like to see
a little more from other parts of the system."