Day 4 - Part 1, South Texas Trafficking - Anatomy Of A Pipeline

DRUG FUNDS BUILD JAILS

Area Officials: Money Is Mixed Blessing

ALICE - Sgt. Ray Escamilla Jr. makes sure the Jim Wells County Sheriff's
Department gets its cut of action from the South Texas drug pipeline that
passes through the county on U.S. Highway 281. Escamilla - who has seized
more than $3 million in cash over the past four years - does so by stopping
southbound traffic. Escamilla knows that while the drugs flow north, the
cash goes south. And that cash has been a boon to his department.

"Stuff that we can't get in the budget, we can get with this," said the
mustachioed lawman who has printed his own trading card.

Escamilla's cash seizures, along with seized vehicles that are later
auctioned, have allowed the Jim Wells sheriff's department to buy patrol
cars, guns, holsters, SWAT team gear, specialized training, a bomb dog and
three drug-sniffing dogs, said Capt. Richard Miller.

But the Jim Wells County Sheriff's Department is not the only law
enforcement agency in the Coastal Bend to profit from the flow of drugs and
money.

For some counties, drug seizure money has proven a spectacular benefit that
has allowed them to build new jails. The drug seizure money, which comes
from the sale of auctioned vehicles as well as seized currency, also has
become a divisive force in some communities, as entities struggle over
control of it.

Most recently, Brooks County, home to the country's most productive Border
Patrol checkpoint, completed construction on a new 40-bed jail in March.
Not a cent came from county tax coffers: A private detention firm paid
$500,000 for the rights to a federal detention center adjacent to the jail.
Drug seizure funds covered the remaining $350,000.

In Brooks County, the drug seizure fund is generated largely through the
sale of vehicles seized at the checkpoint south of Falfurrias.

Brooks County Judge Homer Mora said, though, that any monetary boon from
the seizure fund is offset by the cost of fighting drugs and prosecuting
drug cases. "We get money from the seizures, but we, as a county, have to
foot the bill," he said.

Refugio County is perhaps the area's biggest beneficiary of drug seizure
money. In April, Refugio opened a $140,000 police station paid for entirely
out of the police department's drug seizure fund.

And in 1996, the county built a $2.8 million jail with drug money, thought
to be the first time in the country a county has built a jail from scratch
with drug seizure money. That year, the county's drug seizure fund equaled
about 89 percent of Refugio County's 1996 budget.

A major chunk of the county's seizure fund was built in 1994, when
sheriff's deputies found $4.3 million cash in a tractor-trailer headed
south on U.S. Highway 77. A shotgun-toting deputy guarded the money at the
sheriff's department overnight until eight bank employees spent eight hours
counting it.

Drug seizure funds also have caused divisions between law enforcement
agencies and the city councils and county commissioners that oversee them.
In Kleberg County, which receives income from vehicle seizures at the
Sarita checkpoint, disputes over control of the seizure fund almost caused
the commissioners court to sue Sheriff Tony Gonzalez in 1999.

The lawsuit was averted when Gonzalez agreed to put $100,000 in a fund
overseen by the county. "It is not my intent to withhold the drug money,"
Gonzalez said at the time.

In Premont, control of the police department's drug seizure fund helped
cause deep rifts that polarized and paralyzed the City Council for much of
2000.

In June 2000, Police Chief Joe Hinojosa quit because he said he was unable
to get along with the City Council. Mayor Norma Tullos said Hinojosa came
under fire because he refused to provide an accounting for drug seizure funds.

The South Texas Specialized Crimes and Narcotics Task Force, a multi-county
agency that patrols area highways for drugs and drug money, also has been
the subject of tugs of war between area counties looking for a greater
chunk of the task force's plentiful seizures.

The task force was hours from possibly being disbanded in January when
divisions between Kleberg County Sheriff Gonzalez and the city of
Kingsville threatened to allow the deadline for a grant application to pass.

The disagreement between Gonzalez and City Manager Hector Hinojosa involved
Gonzalez's demand that Kleberg County receive a share of the task force's
assets, which he estimated at about $1 million.

After weeks of wrangling, the agreement gave Kleberg and other counties in
the task force a portion of the assets seized during operations in which
they participate.

Most law enforcement agencies also have agreements with local district
attorney's offices, giving them a share of the proceeds.

Checks And Balances

According to Nueces County Attorney Laura Garza Jimenez, state law gives
control of the funds to individual law enforcement bosses. While the chief
or sheriff decides how the money is spent (it can only be used for law
enforcement purposes), purchases must go before the city council or
commissioners court if they are over a certain amount.

"The law enforcement agency decides what the law enforcement purpose is,"
Jimenez said. "(The council or court) decides who gets the contract."

Law enforcement agencies must send annual reports to the state comptroller
and the Department of Justice, where officials review expenditures.

"It's kind of like a check and balance to make sure we're making proper
purchases and not sending the chief to Tahiti or anything," said Steve
Zastrow, legal adviser to the Corpus Christi Police Department.

Financial 'Addiction'

But while some praise law enforcement's ability to buy equipment and jails
with the bad guys' money, others say it signals a dangerous dependence.

"It's just unbelievable that we have vested interest both by drug lords and
law enforcement to perpetuate the status quo," says Judge Jim Gray, a
Republican Superior Court Judge in Orange County, Calif. who has written a
book, "Why the War on Drugs Failed and What We Can Do About It."

Law enforcement agencies - from federal ones like U.S. Customs to small
town police departments - "are addicted to drug money," he said.
"Particularly when they get into asset forfeiture. They're addicted to that
as well."