WHEN BUSTS GO BAD

The Heat Takes Some Heat Well-Publicized Drug Raids Come Up Empty

SLO County residents arrested during bungled narcotics raids are
challenging the tactics of both of the county's narcotics squads.

An Atascadero woman sued the Sheriff's Department last month because its
narcotics officers blasted through the windows and doors of her home
instead of raiding the neighboring address listed on their search warrant.

In a second case, a San Luis Obispo man spent 16 days in jail and had his
name broadcast on television and printed in newspapers as an accused
methamphetamine manufacturer. The white powder narcotics officers found at
his home turned out to be sodium benzoate, a common food preservative.

Police and deputies defend their actions in both cases, claiming they made
legitimate arrests but lost both cases on technicalities.

"They thought they had the big banana," said Howard Leasure, who was
arrested March 18 during a Narcotics Task Force raid on property he rented
on O'Connor Way near SLO. The NTF had watched the property for at least six
months.

Leasure, who is Cheyenne, hosted regular spiritual gatherings at a sweat
lodge on the property. The sweat lodge consisted of willow branches curved
in a dome shape, covered with a tarp. A fire burned in a hearth nearby.

"I noticed whenever we had sweats, they were up in the hills watching us.
They had white shirts on. It was so obvious."

Leasure was on his way to pick up his wife from work on March 18 when
narcotics agents met him at the gate with a search warrant. They ransacked
the property, collecting evidence they said pointed to methamphetamine
manufacturing.

"They destroyed the sweat lodge and they knew what they were destroying.
They made a mess of it. They just totally desecrated it."

Leasure believes agents began watching his home after a man drove up from
Los Angeles to view a vintage car - a Packard - that Leasure's landlord
kept on the property. Leasure believes Los Angeles NTF agents were
following that man, and they reported his destination to local agents.

Police records suggest a different scenario. Narcotics agents had been
tracking Nickolaus Kopp, a Cambria sculptor who rented a workshop on the
same property. Agents traced phone calls between Kopp and a man they had
arrested at an earlier date for selling methamphetamines.

Agents raided two other properties rented by Kopp on the same day, and they
arrested both Kopp and Leasure on suspicion of manufacturing
methamphetamines.

San Luis Obispo Police Chief Jim Gardiner, then chairman of the Narcotics
Task Force, hosted a press conference on the property. Agents displayed
evidence including several crushed five-gallon cans the agents said once
held freon, a gas used in the manufacturing process.

Leasure contends those cans predated him on the property and that they
represent a small portion of tons of trash that has been dumped there over
the years. The cans were burnt, unlabeled, and rusty. Leasure has similar
explanations for other items found by police.

"There's stuff in your house that can be considered a chemical that can be
used to make methamphetamine," Leasure said. The NTF's display included
kitty litter, for example, which agents contend masks the odor of drug
manufacturing.

"Nothing's been going on here," said Leasure, who lived on the property for
11 months. "There's no lab. There may have been before I was here."

NTF agents concede that individual components can be explained away but
insist that together they add up to methamphetimes.

"There is virtually nothing that is only used for the manufacture of
methamphetamine," said Sgt. Jim English, a spokesman for the NTF.
"Everything has some other purpose. However, when you take everything we
found, we feel and the Department of Justice chemists feel that we have a
good case for manufacturing."

At the time of the arrest, NTF agents told the press that Kopp and Leasure
had manufactured up to 50 pounds per month and that waste products polluted
the property.

"I'm native American," Leasure said, "and we don't do that."

The state Department of Toxic Substances Control took soil and water samples.

"All the sample results we took came back below any levels we would
regulate," said Jerry White, who supervised the testing. The Regional Water
Quality Control Board is continuing to look for water contamination.

On July 17, the District Attorney's Office dropped the case. It withdrew
charges against both men. The most dramatic evidence against Leasure - more
than 10 pounds of white powder - turned out to be sodium benzoate, a
preservative found in most soft drinks. Leasure said he used it to test and
treat water in a mobile-home water tank.

"It doesn't even remotely mean that it wasn't a meth case," Sgt. English said.

"In any manufacturing case, you don't expect to find finished product. We
just happened to find something that looked like it initially. It had the
same color and consistency, and we thought maybe this is meth. If it had
been, that would have been gravy. It would not have been instrumental to
the case at all."

The NTF contends it withdrew charges only because its case threatened to
jeopardize a broader multiagency investigation. The district attorney can
refile these charges, English said, any time within the three years
stipulated by the statute of limitations.

As for Leasure's sweat lodge, English said: "No comment about anything like
that. I don't even know what a sweat lodge is."

Sheriff Ed Williams pulled his deputies out of the Narcotics Task Force in
1997 after an undisclosed internal dispute. Detective Nick Fontecchio and
Deputy David Marquez began conducting independent drug investigations for
the Sheriff's Department. Those included a July 2, 1997, early morning raid
on the Atascadero home occupied by Carole Ann Martin.

Fontecchio, Marquez, and other officers burst through the home at 6:30
a.m., clad in assault gear and armed with assault weapons. They charged
into the bedroom where Martin slept with her 3-year-old son.

Martin was sleeping unclothed, and she contends the officers refused to
allow her to dress or cover herself "for an appreciable length of time."

"Don't believe everything you read in the complaint," said Clayton Hall, an
attorney hired by SLO County to defend the deputies.

"She wasn't held naked in front of the officers as she claimed. That's
bunk. She was immediately turned over to a female officer and taken care
of."

Martin lived at 9101 San Gabriel Road. The search warrant held by the
deputies listed the address of the home next door - 9105 San Gabriel.

The warrant also named a different woman as the subject of the search. But
Hall contends the officers targeted the right woman, and the right house,
despite the wrong name and the wrong address.

"The arrest was suppressed based on a faulty warrant, but it wasn't really
faulty. The only thing that was faulty was that they had the wrong address,
off by four digits, but they properly described the house. They hit the
intended house. The one they intended to hit was the one she was residing
in."

Many people lived in the house, Hall said, and deputies arrived in assault
gear because they expected to encounter a well-armed man who is an
"enforcer" for the drug groups.

The officers cited Martin for being under the influence of a controlled
substance, but they did not arrest her. The allege that she confessed under
questioned to using "crank" and marijuana. They took a urine sample, and
Hall said it tested positive for both methamphetamine and THC, the
psychoactive component of marijuana.

Martin contends in her lawsuit that the officers falsified that
information. The court threw out the charges against her, but Hall argues
it did so based only on the wrong address, which deputies acquired from the
Atascadero Planning department.

"They won on a technicality on the criminal prosecution," Hall said,
calling the civil lawsuit "spurious."

Martin's lawsuit is not the first based on a faulty drug raid.

In 1994, Dirk and Lauren Winter sued the Narcotics Task Force for raiding
their Cambria home. Agents burst in at 6:30 a.m., held them at gunpoint,
and, they said, handcuffed them and made disparaging remarks about them in
front of their children.

The agents were investigating a meth lab down the road. They had a search
warrant, but it did not name the Winters. It described their home, but it
included incorrect directions to get there.

As in the raids on Leasure and Martin, the agents found no drugs.

"We settled with them, and we got about $10,000, and we had to pay the
lawyer out of that," said Lauren Winter.

"We felt that they pretty much owned up to it - that they were in the
wrong. It probably would have been morally right to stick it out and go to
court, but it's too much of a hassle."

The Winters' neighborhood has become much quieter since the settlement,
Lauren Winters said.

"It's been a lot better because they stopped buzzing over here with the
helicopters." [end icon]