TROUBLE SEIZES STATE DRUG BUREAU

Low pay, lawsuits and managerial tactics contribute to low morale and
unfilled positions at the agency.

California's drug enforcement agency has been hit by costly sexual
harassment lawsuits, reduced its hiring standards and faced
accusations of mismanagement during the seven-year administration of
Attorney General Dan Lungren.

The Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement also has sought criminal charges
against workers who complain about their supervisors, a Register
review shows.

Bureau agents have gone years without a raise and now rank among the
lowest-paid law-enforcement officers in the state. With recruitment a
problem, the agency - which manages dozens of anti-drug task forces
statewide - has lowered its previous education and law-enforcement
experience requirements.

Lungren attributes the problems to "some bad apples."

"But if you look overall at the people at the BNE, we have a very good
record for the quality of people we have," he said.

California is the center of the nation's methamphetamine trade. And
consequently, methamphetamine is a target of bureau agents,
particularly in recent years.

Lungren says his agents have seized more than $7 billion in narcotics,
closed 4,300 drug labs and made more than 60,000 arrests since he took
over in 1991.

"Our BNE agents are involved in taking down more, or about the same
number, of clandestine labs in California as the DEA takes down in the
entire country outside of California," said Lungren, who is running
for governor.

Internally, Lungren's agency has been doling out hundreds of thousands
of dollars to deal with complaints of sexual harassment — including
one against bureau Chief George J. Doane.

The state has paid $521,000 to settle three lawsuits accusing the
bureau of harassment and retaliation in the past four years, according
to records obtained under the California Public Records Act.

An analysis of those cases found that: - The male-dominated drug
agency - 25 of its 336 agents are female - has been labeled a hostile
workplace in lawsuits. - The agency has countered two complaints by
asking local prosecutors to file criminal charges against the workers.
Both times, prosecutors declined. - Doane said none of the male
employees named in sexual harassment cases, including himself, were
disciplined. Two of the men later retired.

Michelle Reinglass, a Laguna Hills lawyer who has extensive experience
in sexual-harassment cases, said the drug agency's handling of cases
seems to represent "pretty outrageous" examples of
retaliation.

"It makes the cases far more egregious," said Reinglass, who has no
connection with any past or pending suits against the agency. "More
often than not, the sexual harassment was not the most devastating
aspect of a situation. It's the repercussions that follow."

Doane disputed in an interview that the agency has retaliated against
employees who complained.

"I know what it looks like, but you can't allow process to be governed
by what things look like," Doane said. "If in the course of
investigating your complaint, we find out you, too, did wrong things,
we're going to do what the situation mandates."

The drug agency's 336 sworn agents would make it the fourth-largest
agency in Orange County. No comparably sized police agency in Orange
County has had as much legal trouble with sexual harassment as
Lungren's drug-enforcement agency.

The Anaheim police, with 389 sworn police officers, and Santa Ana
police, with 406 officers, have paid no sexual harassment damages in
the past five years, officials in those cities said. The Orange County
Sheriff's Department, whose 1,459 deputies make it more than four
times the size of the state anti-drug agency, has been sued seven
times for sexual harassment in the past five years and paid one settlement.

The state agency, meanwhile, has had other troubles.

Special Agent Richard Wayne Parker of San Juan Capistrano is awaiting
trial at the federal court in Los Angeles for allegedly trafficking
cocaine.

Perhaps even more embarrassing, the Lungren administration also has
had to deal with the disappearance of 650 pounds of cocaine from a
poorly guarded Riverside office - a theft Lungren described as a "gut
punch."

The state agency also has been questioned for some of its tactics in
the war on drugs.

It has given known drug dealers a key ingredient in the making of
methamphetamine. The dealers are then followed and arrested in these
"reverse stings." In one case, 57 pounds of methamphetamine was sold
to the public and went unrecovered, according to court documents filed
in a criminal case.

State officials say they stand by their reverse stings, noting that
agents have recovered far larger quantities of methamphetamine in
these operations.

The agency also has dealt with less serious disciplinary issues and
abuses of state equipment. Special Agent Rolando Garcia resigned in
1996 after he was caught running license plates through the Department
of Motor Vehicles database to find addresses of women he considered
attractive.

Supervising Special Agent Don Rominger, who manages the bureau's
aviation unit, was reprimanded in the same year for flying his
daughter from Los Angeles to Sacramento in a narcotics-surveillance
plane, Doane said.

In the past four years, task forces run by the agency have paid
$812,000 in civil damages and settlements for bad search warrants,
civil-rights violations and property damage. These task forces
typically involve several police agencies, under the state bureau's
supervision. The state's share has been $212,000 in these cases.

Claims filed against the agency have increased in each of the last
three years, rising from five in 1996 to 14 so far this year.

Union officials representing the agents say they believe the rise in
claims is related to the low pay. That, in turn, has made it difficult
to hire quality agents. The agents are paid less than patrol officers
in many police agencies in the state.

"We're having a terrible time getting anybody with good backgrounds,"
said Christy McCampbell, the special agent in charge of the agency's
San Jose office. "Some agencies are making about double what our
agents are making."

The highest special-agent salary - $4,695 a month or $56,340 annually
- - is less than the amount the Los Angeles Police Department pays a
rookie detective. Small departments such as the Palo Alto, Mountain
View and Berkeley police pay as much as $800 more a month. A Santa Ana
detective can earn $1,000 a month more than a special agent with the
same experience level, agency records show.

Doane said 27 special agents have resigned this year — most taking
higher-paying jobs at the Department of Corrections. All told, the
agency now has about 90 jobs vacant, Doane said. As recently as five
years ago, the agency lost only a handful of agents each year, mostly
to retirement, Doane said.

Because the agency has had trouble recruiting, the state lowered its
hiring standards last year. Before October 1997, the agency hired only
peace officers with investigative experience and a four-year college
degree. Now, it has dropped the education level to two years of
college with prior law-enforcement experience, and eliminated
investigative experience as a requirement for new recruits.

"This used to be the leading, exemplary agency," said Sam McCall,
chief legal counsel for the California Union of Safety Employees,
which represents the special agents at the bargaining table. "Law
enforcement officers were champing at the bit to move to it. It was
the leader. Now they're having trouble recruiting competent, qualified
people."

McCall said Gov. Pete Wilson's negotiators have been largely to blame
for denying pay raises to special agents. But he also blamed Lungren.

"I have not seen any attempt on his part to do anything for the agents
to keep them as a premier law-enforcement agency," McCall said.

Lungren, who is trying to succeed fellow Republican Wilson as
governor, said he has tried to persuade Wilson to increase the pay of
the state's special agents at a critical time in California's war on
drugs. But Wilson, who negotiates collective bargaining agreements
with state workers, hasn't budged.

Doane acknowledged having trouble hiring top-quality agents, but he
attributed the rising number of claims and lawsuits to "an
increasingly litigious society."

"A lot more people used to want this job," Doane said. "Not only was
it a respected job in law enforcement, the cream of the crop, but the
pay was good. The pay package has diminished, but I don't believe the
esteem of the agency has gone down."

The agency recently mailed out 2,500 examinations to job candidates
who had expressed interest in becoming special agents. Just half of
the tests were returned, Doane said.

Lungren said he considers the problems at the agency to be "isolated"
cases.

"I would never say they're minor," Lungren said. "If we have a
problem, I wouldn't consider it minor. If you look at the work we do
overall, we're recognized around the country."

But the low pay, the lawsuits, the embarrassing scandals and the
alleged retaliation have led to morale problems, says Special Agent
Jesse Reyes of the Sacramento office.

"I want to feel like I work for a credible law-enforcement agency,"
said Reyes, a 24-year law-enforcement veteran. "Right now I don't."

SIDEBAR: $521,000 PAID TO SETTLE SEXUAL HARASSMENT, DISCRIMINATION
LAWSUITS

The California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement has paid $521,000 to
settle sexual-harassment and workplace-discrimination lawsuits since
1994. Here are the cases:

- - Laurie Woods, one of the bureau's first female special agents when
she was hired in 1979, was paid $140,000 in a settlement. Her lawsuit
alleged that bureau chief George J. Doane suggested that they get
married and invited her to dinner and drinks. In 1991, Woods met with
Doane and told him the harassment must stop, Woods said. The agency
audited the Fresno office she supervised, according to her lawsuit. An
investigation was launched by the agency, concluding that Woods had
sexually harassed male employees. As part of the settlement, Woods was
given a $3,100 a month early retirement. Doane, who has run the agency
since 1986, was not disciplined. "That's because I did nothing wrong,"
he said. Doane did say, however, that he discussed "inappropriate"
things with Woods and would not do the same thing today.

In a related case, John Balbach, who was second in command to Woods at
the Fresno office before she left in 1994, filed a lawsuit alleging he
was denied a promotion because he refused to provide damaging
testimony against Woods. The agency responded by asking the Fresno
County District Attorney's Office to prosecute Balbach for illegal
wiretapping. Prosecutors declined to file charges, said Balbach's
attorney, Scott Williams. The state later agreed to pay Balbach
$81,837 in a 1997 settlement. - Risa Coates, a secretary for the Santa
Clara County Sheriff's Department, complained in 1994 that agency
supervising Special Agent Peter Mouriski made inappropriate sexual
comments to her while she worked for a drug task force, she alleged in
a lawsuit. A few days later, the agency launched a criminal
investigation of Coates, accusing her of falsifying agents' time
sheets, her suit said. The agency asked the Santa Clara County
District Attorney to file charges. Prosecutors declined, Doane said.
The state paid $300,000 to settle the lawsuit. Mouriski retired. -
Tanya Martino, a special agent assigned to the Orange County office,
alleged in a lawsuit that her supervisor, J.D. Miles, told her she
could keep her job, despite a 1994 shoplifting arrest, if she had sex
with him. She declined and was fired. Prosecutors dismissed the
shoplifting case for insufficient evidence, Martino was reinstated and
Miles retired, according to court and state records. The state and
Martino are negotiating a settlement, but the case remains open, said
her attorney, Gregory Petersen.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry