DOCKS ARE VULNERABLE IN WAR ON DRUGS BY KEVIN G. HALL
Copyright (c) 1997, Journal of Commerce, Inc.

Any military planner will warn that if you are going to
fight a war, you'd better cover your flanks.

When it comes to the war on drugs, however,
authorities enforcing U.S. laws concede they have a
wideopen flank _ the waterfront of many of the nation's
ports. ""I would say part of the problem is that there
seems to be no control over who works on the docks,'' said
John McGhee, a U.S. Customs assistant special agent in
charge of drug investigations at the Port of Miami. ""Any
person with any kind of background is allowed to work on
the docks.''

Miami and other Florida ports, key entry points for
goods from Latin America, have long been a problem area for
drug interdiction authorities. Those ports handled some 6
million tons of imports from Latin American countries in
fiscal 1996 ended Sept. 30.

Over the last two years, however, there has been an
alarming increase in drug seizures tied to longshoremen
working the docks. Local customs officials, in fact, said
dockworkers were involved in more than 50 percent of all
drug seizures.

DOCKERS INVOLVED

Of the 53 drug seizures by Customs at the Port of Miami
during the 1996 fiscal year, 32 cases involved dockworkers.
In the prior year, 37 of 54 seizures involved dockworkers.
The port has longshore work conducted exclusively by the
International Longshoreman's Association, while neighboring
Port Everglades is worked by the ILA, the Teamsters union
and nonunion longshoremen.

The Miami Herald, in an expose Monday on the drug
problem, found in a random check of 50 out of 435 Miami
dockworkers that more than two dozen had arrest records.
Customs officials say there are numerous dockworkers with
multiple felony records on the waterfront on any given day.

""It is way out of sync with the rest of the
population,'' said Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., RFla., a member
of the House Trade Subcommittee. He has asked the
subcommittee's chairman to hold hearings in Washington and
Florida, and is calling for a national dialogue about
possible mandates of criminal background checks for
dockworkers.

James McNamara, an ILA spokesman in New York, refused
comment about the increase in unionmember activity in drug
smuggling or background checks. He confirmed, however, that
the ILA tests its workers for drugs.

But in the Miami Herald Monday, Mr. McNamara suggested
that nonunion workers, not ILA members, are the ones with
criminal records. ""That's ludicrous. In Miami, they
probably have more that have criminal histories than don't
have,'' Mr. McGhee countered.

Renegade dockworkers affect Customs' interdiction
efforts in a variety of ways, he said, from blocking
government television cameras to countersurveillance on the
waterfront and communication via cellular telephones.

All the statistics point to increasing dockworker
involvement in drug smuggling. Customs and other federal
agencies have worked with ocean carriers on all three
coasts, as well as with truckers at the U.S.Mexico border,
to cooperate in the search for drugs. But no such attempt
apparently has been made with the unions.

Therein lies the wideopen flank in the war on drugs.

Customs officials said privately that they haven't
talked to the ILA because they have been channeling their
efforts on enforcement and interdiction.

""They are a very singular group,'' said Mike Sinclair,
a Customs supervising cargo inspector at the Port of Miami,
saying the union has a lukewarm record of cooperation with
government on numerous fronts. BRINGING LABOR INTO THE WAR

Cautioning that his main concern was spotlighting
attention on the lack of background checks and not
unionbashing, Rep. Shaw suggested that congressional
hearings could bring labor into the war on drugs.
""There's no reason we can't cooperate with the unions to
come up with solutions,'' he said.

Still, there are questions as to why the federal
government has worked with the ocean carrier industry to
put in place the Carrier Initiative Program and with the
international trade community on the Business
AntiSmuggling Coalition, yet has not brought such a
fundamental component of the equation into the effort.

""Yes, I am surprised,'' said Torsten Tyralla, Columbus
Line's Miamibased director of Caribbean and Central
America operations, when asked if it was odd that carriers
but not longshoremen were sought out to help the fight
against drugs.

Antidrug procedures carried out by Columbus _ a party
to the government sponsored antidrug effort _ include
thorough checks on exporters using shipping services out of
Colombia and Jamaica. GRAPHIC: Photo Customs agents
inspect boxes of imported frozen fish. Agency officials say
enforcement and interdiction make up the bulk of their
effort in the war on drugs. (Journal of Commerce Photo)