Chapter III (continued)

4. Enforcing the Nation's Law

The correlation between drugs and crime is high. Drug users commit crimes at several times the rate of people who do not use drugs. More than 51 percent of inmates reported substance abuse while committing the offense that led to their conviction.⁴⁶ The heavy toll drug abuse exacts on the United States is reflected in related criminal and medical costs totaling over $67 billion. Almost 70 percent of this figure is attributable to the cost of crime.⁴⁷

Law-enforcement professionals show supreme dedication and face risks daily to defend citizens against criminal activity. Since 1988, nearly seven hundred officers throughout the country have been killed in the line of duty, and over 600,000 were assaulted. We owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who put their lives on the line in defense of our safety.

The United States is based on the rule of law that ensures the security of all people. Reducing drugs and crime is one of the nation's most pressing social problems. Trafficking and use of illicit drugs are inextricably linked to crime and place a tremendous social and economic burden on our communities. Drugs divert precious resources that support the quality of life all Americans strive to achieve. Illegal drugs create widespread problems that produce fear, violence, and corruption. Residents are afraid to go out of their homes, legitimate businesses flee urban neighborhoods, and the quality of life suffers. The data in Chapter II documents the nexus between drugs and crime. Strong law-enforcement policies contribute a great deal to reducing drug abuse and its consequences by:

Reducing demand — Through enforcing the laws against drug use, police strengthen social disapproval of drugs and discourage substance abuse. Moreover, arrest — and the resulting threat of imprisonment — offer a powerful incentive for many addicts to take treatment seriously.

Disrupting supply — The movement of drugs from sources of supply to our nation's streets requires sophisticated organizations. When law enforcement detects and dismantles a drug ring, less heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or marijuana finds its way to our streets. Seizures reduce availability.

To use the power of law enforcement effectively, the Strategy promotes coordination, intelligence sharing, advanced technology, equitable sentencing policies, and a focus on criminal targets that cause the most damage to our nation.

Law Enforcement Coordination

In unity there is strength. The more local, state, federal, and tribal law-enforcement operations reinforce one another; the more they share information and resources; the more they "deconflict" operations, establish priorities, and focus energies across the spectrum of criminal activities — the more successful will be the outcome of separate activities. The illegal drug trade is not a local but a national problem that is, in fact, international in scope. Drug trafficking gangs do not confine their activities to limited geographic boundaries. Accordingly, various federal, state, and local agencies have joined forces on national and regional levels to achieve better results. The El Paso Intelligence Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center (in Johnstown, Pennsylvania) produce strategic assessments of the drug threat and direct support to state and local law enforcement.

An example of outstanding collaborative efforts among law-enforcement agencies was the partnership between the United States Marshals Service (USMS), United States Customs Service, and Internal Revenue Service in 1999. That year, the USMS arrested more than twenty-five thousand federal and fourteen thousand state and local fugitives. Over 85 percent of such arrests have a drug component. USMS leads fifty-four federal, state, and local Fugitive Apprehension Teams.

The Departments of Justice and Treasury have developed the Special Operations Division (SOD) — a multi-agency national law-enforcement entity composed of agents, analysts, and prosecutors from the DEA, FBI, Customs, and the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section of Justice's Criminal Division. SOD coordinates regional and national investigations against major drug-trafficking organizations threatening the United States — particularly transnational organizations. SOD works closely with OCDETF, HIDTA, and U.S. Attorneys' offices across the country. These operations also frequently depend on the cooperation of foreign authorities. Operation Millennium is an example of a successful SOD operation. On October 13, 1999, Colombian National Police arrested fourteen individuals in Bogota, one in Cali, and fifteen in Medellin. These individuals were all indicted on cocaine and money laundering charges on September 30, 1999, by a federal grand jury in Miami. The U.S. has formally sought their extradition, as well as the extradition of a Colombian national arrested in Mexico by Mexican officials.

Operation Southwest Express, another SOD case, targeted a Mexican trafficking organization, based in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Mexican transportation groups used by this organization to transport cocaine and marijuana to the U.S. This investigation identified a Mexican drug distribution network operating in Chicago, New York, and San Diego and other distribution networks operating in Boston, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Nashville, Chicago, and Atlanta. The DEA, FBI, Customs, INS, IRS, numerous state and local law-enforcement offices, as well as twelve U.S. Attorney's Offices, and Criminal Division attorneys were involved in the investigations that resulted in the arrests of more than 100 defendants in August 1999.

Assisting State and Local Agencies

The Department of Justice has adopted a two-pronged approach to help state and local communities. First, DOJ provides funding and technical assistance to law-enforcement agencies at all levels. Second, DOJ funds initiatives by promoting testing and treatment for offenders, thus helping communities offer employment opportunities and prevent drug abuse.

The U.S. Attorney, as chief federal law-enforcement officer in each judicial district and the Department of Justice as a whole, works with state and local law-enforcement agencies to develop priorities, implement strategies, and supply leadership. DOJ assists communities and neighborhoods through the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program. Grants support multi-jurisdictional task forces, demand-reduction education involving police officers, and other activities directly related to preventing drug-related crime and violence. The local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program contributes funds for hiring police, improving school safety, purchasing equipment, and setting up multi-jurisdictional task forces. Major national coordination programs include:

High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA)

HIDTAs are regions with critical drug-trafficking problems that harm other areas of the United States. The ONDCP director — in consultation with the Attorney General, Secretary of Treasury, heads of drug-control agencies, and appropriate governors — designates these locations. There are currently thirty-one HIDTAs. In addition to coordinating drug-control efforts, HIDTAs assess regional drug threats, develop strategies to address the threats, integrate initiatives, and provide federal resources to implement initiatives. HIDTAs strengthen America's drug-control efforts by forging partnerships among local, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies; they facilitate cooperative investigations, intelligence sharing, and joint operations against drug-trafficking organizations. The Department of Defense gives priority support to HIDTAs in the form of National Guard assistance, intelligence analysts, and technical training. In 1999, the director of ONDCP designated selected counties in the following areas as HIDTAs: Central Valley California, Hawaii, New England, Ohio, and Oregon.

The HIDTA program advances the National Drug Control Strategy by providing a coordination "umbrella" for agencies to combine anti-drug efforts through an outcome-focused approach. The resulting synergy eliminates unnecessary duplication of effort, maximizes resources, and improves information sharing within and between regions. Intelligence is coordinated at HIDTA Investigative Support Centers, which offer technical, analytical, and strategic support to participating agencies with access to agency databases and supplemental personnel. Currently, 949 local, 172 state, and thirty-five federal law-enforcement agencies and eighty-six other organizations participate in 462 HIDTA-funded initiatives.

Community-Oriented Policing

Community-Oriented Policing is an innovative crime-fighting strategy which recognizes that neighborhood problems can be solved best when police and community work together. This collaboration between civilians and officers has successfully decreased drug-related crime. The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) advances policing of anti-drug actions at the street level. It has funded the addition of over 100,000 community police officers to the beat. The COPS Office supports four drug-related grant programs: (1) a Methamphetamine Initiative that combats production, distribution, and use (2) the COPS Technology Program, which deploys the Southwest Border States Anti-Drug Information System; (3) School-Based Partnerships that encourage law-enforcement agencies to work with schools and community-based organizations against crime; and (4) the Distressed Neighborhood Pilot Project in eighteen cities that face particularly high crime rates. Building on the successful COPS initiative, the President has proposed a new twenty-first Century Policing Initiative to help communities hire, redeploy, and retain thirty-thousand to fifty-thousand additional community policing officers, acquire the latest crime-fighting technologies, and engage the entire community in anti-crime measures.

Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF)

The most effective way to attack sophisticated drug-trafficking organizations and attendant criminal activity — like money laundering, corruption, violence, organized crime, and tax evasion — is through coordinated, inter-agency task-forces. Accordingly, the Department of Justice calls upon the OCDETF program, with its nine federal law-enforcement agencies, to employ a wide range of expertise in disrupting and dismantling drug-trafficking organizations. The collaboration between law enforcement and U.S. Attorneys, as well as state and local district attorneys and attorneys general, plays an integral part in OCDETF's fight against drug traffickers. In 1998, OCDETF initiated 1,356 investigations with 2,447 indictments returned (more than double the number during the previous two years combined, with a 41.6 percent increase in indictments).

In 1999, OCDETF had the single most productive year in its history — initiating over 1400 investigations against the nation's most serious drug trafficking organizations. On September 20, 1999, five members of the drug trafficking organization known as the Seventh Ward Soldiers were each sentenced to life in prison, plus additional time of 5-20 years, following their jury convictions for marketing crack cocaine and murdering and shooting other drug dealers and witnesses. Police records indicate that since these gang members were taken into custody, the community they previously terrorized has experienced a 42 percent decrease in the number of shootings and 42.8 percent decrease in the murder rate.

Weed and Seed

This flagship neighborhood-based program is a multi-disciplinary approach to combating crime. Present in 176 sites across the nation under the leadership of U.S. Attorneys, this program brings together federal, state, and local crime-fighting agencies, social service providers, representatives from the public and private sector, prosecutors, business owners, and neighborhood residents. Weed and Seed sites implement programs to reduce drug-trafficking in particular geographic areas, e.g. campaigns to investigate and prosecute individuals involved in methamphetamine manufacture and sales (Salt Lake City, Utah), cocaine distribution (Las Vegas, Nevada and Galveston, Texas), and trafficking in crack and powder cocaine, marijuana, and heroin (Tampa, Florida). In Seattle, violent crime in the Weed and Seed area dropped 54 percent between 1991 and 1996 while crime city-wide decreased only 38 percent. In Hartford, Connecticut the number of violent crimes in the Weed and Seed target area decreased 46 percent in 1996 compared to 1994 — the year before Weed and Seed was started. During the same period, city-wide crime declined only 22 percent. In Las Vegas, serious crime in the target area dropped 8 percent between 1993 and 1996 while city-wide crime decreased 3 percent.

Anti Money-Laundering Initiatives

Illicit drug trafficking produces billions of dollars in income domestically and internationally. The success of drug-traffickers, and organized crime in general, is based largely upon the ability to launder their criminal proceeds. Through money laundering, the criminal transforms illegal proceeds into funds with a seemingly legal source. This process can have devastating social and economic consequences. Criminals manipulate financial systems in the United States and abroad to promote a wide range of illicit activities. Left unchecked, money laundering can erode the integrity of financial institutions, cause greater volatility in foreign exchange markets, destabilize economies, place honest businesses at comparative disadvantage, undermine public trust, erode democratic institutions, and breed violence. The Department of Treasury, Department of Justice, Postal Inspection Service, Internal Revenue Service, federal regulators, and state and local law enforcement work in an integrated manner to target specific sectors of the financial system, susceptible or vulnerable to financial criminal activity.⁴⁸

In light of the threat to national security concerns posed by money laundering, Congress passed the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Act of 1998, which calls for the development of a five-year anti-money laundering strategy. In September 1999, the Departments of Treasury and Justice responded by releasing the first National Money Laundering Strategy (NMLS). This document, and its subsequent annual reports, provides a comprehensive overview of all U.S. government efforts to combat the subversion of our monetary system. Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers and Attorney General Janet Reno call the NMLS "a new stage in the government's fight against money laundering." The NMLS calls for: (1) designating high-risk money laundering zones where coordinated law-enforcement efforts can be concentrated; (2) focusing attention on suspicious activities across the range of financial institutions; (3) implementing the Money Laundering Act of 1999 to bolster domestic and international enforcement; (4) reviewing measures to restrict the use of accounts in the United States by offshore institutions that pose a money-laundering risk; and (5) intensifying pressure on nations that lack adequate controls to counter money laundering. This strategy entails an enhanced level of coordination and cooperation among government agencies and between the private and public sectors. The Department of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) serves, with growing sophistication, as the principal center for strategic analysis and investigative support for efforts aimed at narcotics-related financial crimes.

To assist further in the fight against money laundering, banks are required to report financial activity they suspect involves funds derived from criminal activity.⁴⁹ This information is placed in a secure database co-owned by the primary bank and credit union regulators and administered by the Department of the Treasury. High priority has been given to the problems raised by criminal abuse of a group of financial service providers known collectively as "money services businesses" (MSBs).⁵⁰ In August 1999, a ruling that announced the registration of MSBs was finalized. Over the next year, the Department of the Treasury will be extending mandatory suspicious reporting to other financial service provider sectors vulnerable to money laundering, including money service businesses like money-wire transmitters, "casas de cambio," and sellers of money orders and travelers' checks. Thereafter, suspicious reporting will be extended to casinos, brokers, and dealers.

DOJ's Special Operations Division (SOD) has formed a Money Laundering Section, which is comprised of senior agents and analysts from Customs, DEA, FBI, and IRS, and supported by attorneys from DOJ's Criminal Division. This section will support and coordinate drug-related money laundering and financial investigations conducted by federal, state, and local law enforcement in coordination with United States Attorneys' Offices. The section is designed to comprehensively attack domestic and foreign drug-trafficking organizations and their money laundering elements.

Treasury's Money Laundering Coordination Center (MLCC) is another example of interagency collaboration and support to money laundering investigations and prosecution. The MLCC was created through collaborative effort between the U.S. Customs Service and the FinCEN and is housed at FinCEN. With agents and analysts from USCS, DEA, FBI, IRS, OFAC, and USPS, the MLCC serves as repository for all intelligence information gathered through undercover money laundering investigations and functions as a coordination and deconfliction center for both domestic and international undercover money laundering operations. Additionally, the Treasury Department created the National Center for State and Local Enforcement Training, located at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, GA, to share Federal experience, resources, and expertise in fighting money laundering activities.

Enhancing Asset Forfeiture

The Department of Justice and Department of Treasury use asset forfeitures to attack the economic infrastructure of drug-trafficking organizations and money-laundering enterprises. Both strategically integrate this tool into their overall enforcement plan to strike traffickers at the source of their power. Asset forfeiture is part of the department's Southwest Border Initiative. In FY 1998, Operation Magnolia trafficker Luis H. Cano consented to a twenty-eight million dollar forfeiture judgment. Operation Kids in Puerto Rico resulted in defendants being found liable for the forfeiture of 4.1 million dollars in drug-related assets.

Treasury Bureaus incorporate seizure and forfeiture of assets belonging to narcotics organizations as an integral segment of their comprehensive attack on narcotics organizations. Their goal is to deny the organization the wherewithal to continue operations and ensure its total dismemberment. Federal, state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies work together to follow the "money trail" wherever it may lead. In a joint investigation of the largest and longest operating Thai marijuana smuggling group in Oregon, IRS-CI, USCS, DEA, and Swiss authorities were able to seize $11.7 million from a single drug trafficker. In FY 1999, IRS-CI alone sized in excess of $80 million and through the Treasury Asset Forfeiture Fund shared $19.5 million with foreign, federal, state, and local agencies. The Equitable Sharing Program law-enforcement cooperation by dividing the proceeds of a forfeiture among agencies that participated in the investigation. During FY 1998, DOJ worked with nearly three-thousand agencies that took part in this program.

Preventing Chemical Diversion

Precursor and essential chemicals are crucial for manufacturing most illicit drugs sold in the United States. Two DOJ initiatives target chemical distributors involved in diverting chemicals to the illicit marketplace. Operation Backtrack targets "rogue" chemical companies that sell methamphetamine precursor chemicals without adhering to federal regulations and international protocols. Since its inception in February 1997, this initiative resulted in 146 arrests, seizure of 9.6 million dollars in assets, and confiscation of chemicals that could have been used to produce 9,400 pounds of methamphetamine. In FY 1998, regulatory controls by the DEA prevented the diversion of 49.95 tons of ephedrine and fourteen tons of pseudoephedrine. The California Precursor Committee (CPC), chaired by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego, and involving all four U.S. Attorneys in California and more than twenty federal, state, and local agencies in California and neighboring states, coordinates an effort to reduce the availability of precursor chemicals through investigation and prosecution of methamphetamine chemical suppliers. Since inception of the CPC, dozens of investigations and prosecutions against rogue chemical suppliers within California and out-of-state have occurred. In an eighteen month period ending in early 1999, California chemical cases resulting in convictions netted the seizure of approximately nine-hundred kilograms of pseudoephedrine tablets, two million ephedrine tablets, 21,000 gallons of freon, 30,000 pounds of iodine, 4,000 pounds of red phosphorus, and in excess of 2,000 pounds of hydrogen chloride gas. The efforts of the CPC have recently been expanded through the HIDTA-supported National Methamphetamine Chemicals Initiative which has sponsored the training of over one-hundred federal prosecutor, and will sponsor training of hundreds of agents, investigators, and inspectors in the methods of investigating and ferreting out rogue chemical suppliers.

Intelligence/Information Sharing

Intelligence gleaned from the collection, evaluation, analysis, and synthesis of information must be shared in order to reduce cultivation, production, trafficking, and distribution of drugs. Cooperation in sharing and deconflicting strategic and operational intelligence is critical for combating the international and domestic drug problem. Tactical intelligence is time-sensitive and crucial to the execution of arrests and seizures. Agencies must be able to share relevant information across jurisdictional boundaries without risk of compromise to intelligence and the operations that derive from it.

Under the Border Coordination Initiative (BCI), personnel from the U.S. Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Border Patrol have been co-located into Intelligence Collection Analysis Teams along the Southwest border to gather and disseminate tactical intelligence. DOJ's Regional Information Sharing System consists of a network of centers that jointly process intelligence on drug trafficking, violent crime, gang activity, and organized crime. In FY 1999, this network contributed to the arrest of 4,160 individuals and the seizure of drugs valued at 104 million dollars. The HIDTA program establishes Information Support Centers in designated areas specifically to create a communication infrastructure that can facilitate information-sharing between federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies. Additional developments in counterdrug intelligence sharing are discussed in Section Five of this chapter.

ONDCP's Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center

Technology can play a dramatic role in combating drug-related crime. Law-enforcement agencies increase their effectiveness by integrating technology and coordinating operations. ONDCP's Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC) was established by the Counter-Narcotics Technology Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-510). CTAC is the federal government's drug-control research and development organization. It coordinates the activities of twenty federal agencies. CTAC identifies short, medium, and long-term scientific and technological needs of drug-enforcement agencies — including surveillance; tracking; electronic support measures; communications; data fusion; and chemical, biological, and radiological detection.

CTAC research supports law enforcement in such areas as drug detection, communications, and surveillance. CTAC conducts an array of operational tests and activities to evaluate off-the-shelf and emerging technology prototypes for use in the field. In 1998, Congress authorized a technology transfer program (TTP) for CTAC to provide these technologies to state and local law-enforcement.⁵¹ During its firts eighteen months, CTAC's technology transfer program has provided 892 systems to 631 agencies across the country. Since nighttime counterdrug operations are especially dangerous for officers and undercover narcotics agents, many of the technologies requested by law enforcement have dealt with improved officer safety through more reliable communications and night-vision systems.

The companion volume to this annual report — Counterdrug Research and Development Blueprint Update — reviews CTAC's research agenda in support of efforts to reduce the availability and abuse of drugs. It also assesses the effectiveness of federal technology programs aimed at improving drug-detection capabilities used in interdiction and at ports-of-entry.

Targeting Gangs and Violence

The Department of Justice — through the FBI, DEA, USMS, United States Attorneys' office, and Criminal Division along with state and local law-enforcement counterparts — is focusing on identifying, disrupting, and dismantling criminal gangs. Available tools include the application of federal racketeering statutes, federal and state narcotics and weapons laws, and collaborative multi-agency task forces. DOJ's Anti-Violent Crime Initiative, which targets gangs and violent crime, has reduced drug trafficking substantially. Gangs are involved in the national distribution of drugs and frequently use automatic weapons.

The DEA and FBI lead federal efforts to break up trafficking organizations. The FBI's National Gang Strategy is the framework for combating such violence in America. In 1998, for example, the FBI — in conjunction with the New York Police Department and the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development — targeted the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation. This organization was involved in violent criminal activity, including murder, robbery, and drug and weapons trafficking. The FBI established 166 Safe Street task forces to address violent crime, much of which is drug-related. In early 1995, DEA launched the Mobile Enforcement Team (MET)^* program to assist state and local police in combating the problem of drug-related crime. METs have been established in all but one of DEA's field offices and are deployed in diverse communities throughout the country. The Department of Justice is using the National Gang Tracking Network, a comprehensive computer database that keeps tabs on gang members operating across state lines.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) targets armed drug traffickers through the Achilles Program, which oversees task forces in jurisdictions where drug-related violence is severe. The ATF also conducts Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) in schools. Since 1992, more than two million children received G.R.E.A.T. instruction.

Equitable Sentencing Policies

The Administration supports revision of the 1986 federal law that mandates a minimum five-year prison sentence for anyone possessing either five hundred grams of powder cocaine or a mere five grams of crack cocaine. This law, which punishes crack cocaine involvement one hundred times more severely than powder cocaine crimes, is problematic for two reasons. First, since crack is more prevalent in black, inner-city neighborhoods, the law has fostered a perception of racial injustice in our criminal justice system. In fact, 90 percent of those convicted on crack cocaine charges are African American. Second, harsher penalties for crack possession compared to powder have resulted in long incarceration for low-level crack dealers instead of increased apprehension of middle and large-scale cocaine traffickers.

The Administration recommends that federal sentencing treat crack as ten times worse than powder, not one hundred times worse. Specifically, the amount of powder cocaine required to trigger a five-year mandatory sentence would be reduced from five hundred to two hundred and fifty grams while the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger the same sentence would increase from five grams to twenty-five grams. This difference would reflect — without gross exaggeration — the greater addictive potential of crack (which is smoked) compared to powder (when snorted), the greater violence associated with the trafficking of crack cocaine, and the importance of targeting mid and higher-level traffickers as opposed to smaller-scale dealers. The Administration also recommends that mandatory minimums be abolished for simple possession of crack. Among all controlled substances, crack is the only one with a federal mandatory minimum sentence for a first offense of simple possession.

Community support is critical to the success of law enforcement. When people lose confidence in the fairness and logic of the law — as has been the case with the 1986 statute — law-enforcement suffers. By revising the inequitable sentencing structure for powder versus crack cocaine, the Administration intends to restore overall respect for the law and foster a more effective division of responsibility between law-enforcement authorities.

State Drug Laws

State laws are an important vehicle for translating the concepts in the National Drug Control Strategy into action. The Strategy's policies are embodied within a tangible legislative framework with which state policymakers shape policies and laws. With this goal in mind, Congress in 1988 mandated the creation of a bipartisan commission to develop state drug laws. The resulting President's Commission on Model State Drug Laws drafted forty-four drug and alcohol laws and policies covering enforcement, treatment, education, prevention, intervention, employment, housing, and community issues.

Since 1996, the Commission's non-profit successor — the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws — has been conducting state model law workshops. These workshops brought together hundreds of diverse participants on the state level who recommended more than a hundred pieces of drug and alcohol legislation, programming, funding, and coordination initiatives. With these recommendations, state and local leaders have adopted new statutes, formed more effective multi-disciplinary partnerships, and streamlined legislative and programmatic applications.

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^* The MET program helps local authorities attack violent drug organizations by: 1) identifying major drug-traffickers who commit homicide and other violent crimes; 2) collecting, analyzing, and sharing intelligence with state and local counterparts; 3) conducting investigations against violent drug offenders and gangs; 4) arresting drug traffickers and assisting in the arrest of violent offenders; 5) seizing the assets of violent drug-offenders; 6) supporting state and local prosecutors.