CUSTOMS RETRAIN DRUG SEARCHERS

WASHINGTON - While the Customs Service was confronting lawsuits
from innocent travelers who were strip-searched, the number of heroin
and cocaine smugglers it caught in airports dropped by one-fourth
last year.

That leaves Customs with a double problem: reversing the decline in
drug seizures while tempering public anger over the way international
air travelers are searched.

Agency officials are worried that the lawsuits, generally filed
against individual officers, may have caused some inspectors to search
passengers less aggressively, Customs spokesman Dennis Murphy said.
They don't believe the number of smugglers decreased.

"This search authority is crucial for us," Kelly said in an interview
with The Associated Press. "We're trying to show movement in the right
direction so that we keep the authority but make it a less onerous
process."

To address complaints about body searches, Customs Commissioner
Raymond Kelly has begun instituting a host of changes: retraining
inspectors, updating guidelines in the agency's search handbook,
providing more information about the process for travelers, and trying
new technology to reduce the need for invasive body searches.

In pursuit of smugglers who swallow packets of drugs, officers have
subjected passengers to strip searches, taken them in handcuffs to
hospitals for X-rays, and detained some for hours or even days.

Almost 100 black women in Chicago are pursuing a joint lawsuit
claiming they were singled out unfairly because of their race. It is
one of 12 lawsuits nationally over Customs searches of airline
passengers, a spokesman said.

A traveler won a $450,000 judgment against Customs officers in San
Francisco last year.

"There is concern that these lawsuits have caused people to back off a
little bit," contrary to agency policy, Murphy said. The spokesman
said there is no proof of that, however.

The number of travelers caught carrying cocaine or heroin under their
clothes or inside their bodies fell from 916 seizures in 1997 to 677
in fiscal 1998. The number had been rising every year.

Murphy said other reasons for the decline might be a temporary shift
of some resources away from personal searches for a crackdown on cargo
smuggling last year and inventive new tactics used by drug suppliers.
For example, some now send a decoy passenger to distract inspectors
while four or five drug couriers on the same flight slip by undetected.

Only a small fraction of the 69 million passengers who pass through
Customs each year are questioned. About 50,000 were subjected to some
level of body search in 1997. Searches usually begin with a frisk or
pat-down and, with reasonable suspicion, can proceed to a strip
search, X-ray or monitored bowel movement.

Drugs were found on about one-fourth of passengers subjected to
partial or full strip searches, the agency says. The rate was close
to 100 percent a decade ago, Kelly said, but smugglers have become
more sophisticated and difficult to recognize.

Kelly acknowledged body searches can be traumatic and have become a
"significant problem" for Customs.

The Senate Finance Committee, the General Accounting Office and the
Treasury Department are all investigating Customs' airport searches.
Illinois senators raised the issue last year after WMAQ-TV reported on
complaints from black women searched at Chicago's O'Hare airport.

In December, the AP reported that travelers across the country were
complaining of abusive searches.

Since then, Customs has taken several steps to defuse the
issue:

An extensive new training program began last month for inspectors at
airports. "It involves both what to look for but also how to handle
people, cultural diversity training, that sort of thing," Kelly said.

Since Feb. 1, inspectors at Miami International and New York's
Kennedy airport have given travelers chosen for a pat-down the option
of standing in front of a body-imaging machine instead. Twenty-three
people have agreed to the low-radiation imaging, which looks through
clothing. In Miami on Tuesday, one of the machines revealed 3 1/2
pounds of marijuana in a bicycle tire strapped around a man's waist,
officials said.

Body imaging may be added to other airports if it proves effective and
less objectionable to passengers, a spokesman said. In some cases,
travelers also have been given the option of submitting to an X-ray in
lieu of a strip search.

The Customs Service plans to install X-ray machines and technicians
at major airports to check suspects without transporting them to a
hospital. The agency is looking for a contractor and has requested $9
million for the program in 2000.

Customs is also researching whether breathalyzer technology could be
used to detect latex condoms and balloons, which smugglers fill with
drugs and swallow.

Signs and brochures were being installed in airports this week to
explain why travelers might be subjected to a body search, and new
comment cards make it easier to complain about mistreatment.