BUDGET CUTS BRING END TO STOCKTON NARCOTICS UNIT

STOCKTON - There was a short stack of reports on the desk of police
Sgt. Cliff Johnson, a Stockton narcotics investigator, on Thursday
morning, each of them from someone complaining of illegal drug
activity. They were about to become someone else's problem.

"If we can't get to them within the next two days, the information
will be forwarded to patrol," Johnson said.

The Stockton Police Department's narcotics unit will shut down
Sunday, a casualty of another year of budget cuts at the Police
Department. The burden of enforcing drug laws and responding to
citizen complaints will fall to beat police and outside agencies.

Johnson, who has been with the narcotics unit five years, doesn't
think that makes a lot of sense.

"Drugs affect every aspect of this community: income, housing,
employment, education. You've got people selling crystal, people
killing each other over pounds of heroin," Johnson said. "How do you
get rid of the only investigative unit in the city dealing with the
drug issue?"

Johnson said narcotics investigations, even the simplest, require
time that a patrol officer doesn't have - time to develop informants,
time to watch houses and street corners and time to show up in court.

"The only thing a patrol officer can do is go out and knock on a
door," he said.

Police Chief Blair Ulring agreed that patrol is not adequate to
handle Stockton's illegal drug trade.

"I'm very concerned in the impact it may have," Ulring said.

The move was made to maintain patrol staffing at a level adequate to
deal with calls for service, as many as 1,000 a day.

Johnson said Stockton is well known as a hub for narcotics traffic
from Mexico and Southern California to the Pacific Northwest, Canada
and even the Midwest. Last week, Johnson got a call from a Minnesota
law enforcement agency working a case back to Stockton.

Stockton's narcotics unit, already small, has generally kept to local
street- and house-level trade. It receives about 10 to 20 complaints a week.

"We are a small unit. To do the things we would really need to do to
see a difference, we would need to be larger," he said.

On Friday, the unit served what was likely to be its last warrant, at
least until the Police Department's budget recovers. At a house in
the 400 block of Prado Way, Johnson's team found about 400 marijuana
plants. The residents claimed to be members of a medical marijuana
collective but were stealing electricity, Johnson said. One man,
39-year-old David Groomes, was arrested.

"How many people do that on their last day of work?" Johnson said.