TROUBLE SEIZES STATE DRUG BUREAU-PART 1

Law Enforcement: Low pay, lawsuits and managerial tactics contribute to low
moral 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 damates 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.

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."

Checked-by: Don Beck