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THERE'S NOTHING FLASHY about the pea-green warehouse on East 17th Street, no taut crime tape, no spent rifle shells, no bloodstains, nothing to mark this unremarkable metal building for the biggest cocaine bust in Arizona history. Today, there's just a snub-nosed MAC cargo truck parked in the drive, a few plastic crates scattered about, and plenty of silence. Despite two "Beware of Dog" signs wired to a tall chainlink fence, even rattling the gate doesn't raise a stir. But such serenity, in this quiet southside neighborhood flanked by drab industrial parks and overhead highways, fails to tell the story that unfolded here nearly two years ago, a tale with tendrils reaching from Virginia and New York all the way to the nation's capitol.
The effectiveness of that blueprint depends upon whom you ask, given rising levels of drug smuggling and drug use. At the same time, devoted soldiers as they may be, it raises just as many troubling questions about the power this struggle has bestowed on our keepers. Still, one thing's certain: When it comes to the War on Drugs, southern Arizona is geographically perched in the battle zone--with the astounding level of federal involvement and funding that designation implies. Even in an acronym-saturated culture, our region's counter-drug forces ring dramatic: MANTIS, SMART, HIDTA, BAG. And the list goes on, as the amorphous law enforcement web and its intelligence capabilities continues to grow. This year the federal government will allocate $16 billion to fight drugs. Tracking just how much of that funding arrives in Arizona, and specifically southern Arizona, is an arduous journey down bureaucratic pathways muddied by overlap and subterfuge. Most agencies do their best to supply the numbers. Others, like the FBI, outright refuse. However, the lion's share of federal funding accessible to state and local police comes from two sources. Named after a gunned-down New York cop, the long-winded Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Enforcement Assistance Formula Grant Program provided $8.4 million to Arizona agencies this year. The state kicks in another 25 percent of that total, raising the current figure to $11.2 million. Of that, about $3 million was allocated to Pima County. The other primary source of funding is the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, operated through the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the nation's drug czar, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey. In Arizona, $8.7 million in HIDTA money was designated for the current fiscal year. Of that, about $2.8 million was allocated to various Pima County agencies and organizations. That's roughly $4.7 million just from those two funds, and just for one county. Though many other budgetary totals are nearly impossible to obtain with any accuracy, they do grow astronomically when drug-fighting resources from all state, local and federal agencies are added in. THOSE FIGURES ALSO reveal an ironic truth: Despite the law enforcement riches flowing into Arizona, officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency down to beat cops will tell you they still fall short, that they'll never have enough to really win what's become a battle against our own appetites. They just may be right. With a $2.7 million budget and staff of 51, including officers from all area police agencies, the Metropolitan Area Narcotic Trafficking Interdiction Squads (MANTIS) is the local intelligence umbrella for anti-drug efforts. And it was MANTIS that received that fateful anonymous call on Monday, Dec. 2, 1996, alerting them to the warehouse stash. Quickly, a detail was dispatched to the otherwise lonely building on 17th Street. By 4 p.m. Tuesday, the warehouse had been thoroughly cased, the quarry was in sight. Police got a search warrant later that day, and a S.W.A.T. team stormed in, arresting a woman and two men. Inside, they found piles of foam bedding and a makeshift kitchen with a Coleman stove. They also found a stunning six tons of cocaine, with an estimated street value of more than $120 million. "In Arizona, if it's not the biggest (seizure), it's close to it," Daniel Knauss, U.S. Attorney in Tucson, told reporters at the time. "I think there have been larger busts in Los Angeles, but this is very big." Headlines glared for a few days. Then the moment faded locally, with the detainees proving simply to be unlucky grunts in the drug smuggling brigade. But in the big picture, that was hardly the end. Immediately after the raid, MANTIS officials called the Serious-Incident Multi-Agency Response Team, or SMART. And with that contact, a hometown triumph had suddenly turned into a full-blown, nationwide investigation. SMART was created in 1996 by the Tucson Police Department, with help from Janet Napolitano, the former U.S. attorney for Arizona. Operating with $72,000 in seed money from HIDTA, it's housed at the police department, which also contributes one sergeant and a pair of detectives. Additional manpower and funding is provided by the federal government. Also consisting of members from the Border Patrol, the FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs, the group carries incidents like the warehouse bust into the national arena, with each member agency adding its own expertise. According to TPD Lt. Bill Richards, SMART has the enviable ability to track its prey across endless jurisdictions. "For example, a lot of people get killed because of drug debts," he says. "Now we can not only find the shooter, but we can get ourselves inside that particular drug organization, based on the leads that occur because of a homicide. "So when violence occurs in relation to drug trafficking, SMART takes over, and they don't necessarily solve that homicide, but they take that information and work it back." Such partnerships have become the drug-fighting norm, he says. "For example, let's say an ATF agent creates a lead here. We'll develop it, and then it's passed to ATF in San Bernadino or Oklahoma or Missoula, Montana. Because the law enforcement is nationwide, the natural progression is just to move the case to where it needs to go." Concerning the warehouse raid, "If we didn't have SMART, we would have just seized six tons of coke, maybe made an additional arrest or two, and that's where it would have ended," Richards says. "But those six tons of coke sure weren't going to be distributed on the streets of Tucson. We were just a depot. "Once SMART was involved, the lead took them to several parts of the country. From that, more arrests were made, seizures happened, and people were put in jail. What was precipitated by a local event wound up being a case that landed in a number of different locations around the country."
DESPITE THE ROUSING victory, that bust is only one example of the drug war's new, multi-faceted look. Another is HIDTA, an acronym that's almost become a police mantra. Besides being a funding source, HIDTA is also a physical entity, a national force comprised of federal, state and local law enforcement agents numbering up to 300. Their main task is targeting major drug dealers and organizations, and their methodology entails everything from installing wiretaps to infiltrating street gangs. Operating through the Office of National Drug Control Policy under Gen. McCaffrey, HIDTA has a center in Phoenix and Tucson. It has been on the local scene for about three years, and is headquartered in Tucson's southside, though the exact location is kept secret. Like SMART, HIDTA is an intelligence clearinghouse, only taken one step further. "Because of drug trafficking, we said, 'You know, we need the (federal Drug Enforcement Agency) to talk to Customs, to talk to ATF, to talk to the Tucson police, to talk the county sheriff,'" Richards explains. "'We don't need to be duplicating each other's work, and we do need to know we're sharing information to get us farther towards our mission.'" HIDTA was the government's response. Despite the secrecy of its headquarters, Richard's stresses that "it's not a black-bag operation, or anything like that. It's funded through the Department of Justice, and the U.S. attorney for Arizona." The Pima County Sheriff's Department disperses HIDTA funds throughout southern Arizona's counties, where it's likewise divided between various agencies. This year $618,355 went to Cochise County. Yuma County received $567,200, and Santa Cruz County netted $909,003. By turn, each county divvies up the money for their multi-agency work. In Santa Cruz County, that means involvement with the Metro Task Force. For example, $140,560 goes to the Nogales Police Department, $147,263 goes to the County Attorney's Office, $125,000 goes to the Border Patrol, Customs gets $44,000, and another $242,525 goes to the Sheriff's Department. In addition, the county also currently receives $328,459 in Byrne funds for officers and support staff. Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada calls the cash crucial to pay his five deputies assigned to the task force. "We have so many drugs coming through," he says. "It's like the floodgates opened up. We have to continue being a very evident presence to have any effect. I can say, at this point, we're at least a hindrance to that activity." The federal assistance also means both Estrada's department and the Nogales Police Department are able to turn all drug investigations over to the task force, "freeing up my deputies for their other duties," the Sheriff says. Those agencies also get help from the Border Patrol, the DEA, the FBI, and nearly every other federal department with the slightest law enforcement role. Even the Forest Service received $10,000 in HIDTA money this year for drug interdiction in Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz derives another benefit from its large federal presence: Unlike other counties such as Cochise, arrests the feds make here are handled by federal prosecutors instead of the County Attorney's Office, in what apparently amounts to a philosophical choice. County Attorney Martha Chase says the HIDTA money pays for eight prosecutors handling only drug cases generated by the NPD and the Sheriff's Department. She says responding to the endless stream of drug busts by the Border Patrol, Customs or the INS would be downright impossible. "There are a little over 50,000 drug and violent criminal arrests a year here," she says. "Our county would have a real problem funding that."
Annually, that stance costs his office about $600,000. "And in the last nine years or so, our operation has grown and expanded," he says. "But for us, the federal grants are actually shrinking. Being a border county significantly enhances the problem, but we don't get enough support to pay for what's occurring here." He blames part of the snafu on politics. "The bulk of the money flows to Pima and Maricopa counties," he says. "Out of 20 people on the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (a governor-appointed panel overseeing HIDTA allocations), two-thirds of the members are from those two counties. That's where the power is. After all, we don't have any big corporate headquarters or anything like that here." WHAT POLLEY DOES have, however, is a slew of cops in his midst. In fact, southern Arizona comes about as close to being a police state as anywhere in America. Since 1993, for example, the number of Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector, which includes Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties, has shot from 476 to 900, with a budget of roughly $52 million. While Customs has seen similar increases, spokesman Roger Maier said "it probably wouldn't be possible" to tally his agency's budget for southern Arizona. John Brynfonski, acting assistant special agent in the DEA's Tucson District office, calls his agency's funding a "sensitive subject." He notes that with a $1.2 billion national budget, and regional outposts in Nogales, Sierra Vista, Phoenix, Tucson and Mexico, "We don't discuss where our capabilities are. We don't get into the nitty-gritty specifics." The Department of Defense plugged another $21 million into Arizona counter-drug efforts this year, besides providing $1.7 million in excess equipment to federal, state and local agencies. Of that, $8.9 million went to the Arizona National Guard, $6.3 million paid for border radar balloons, and another $5 million was earmarked for assisting investigation and prosecutorial tasks throughout the state. Meanwhile, though other officials describe the National Guard's anti-narcotics efforts as significant, Col. Alex Mahon, director of the Guard's Joint Counter-Narcotics Task Force in Arizona, refuses to detail his agency's work. "We play a support role," he says. "On the border we assist Customs with cargo inspections, provide transportation for them, mundane things like that." The National Guard doesn't make arrests, he says, nor do they conduct monitoring activities. However, the truth may differ slightly: According to Rob Daniels, chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, guardsmen do monitor surveillance cameras and radio rooms at the border. "They help us put together pieces of the puzzle," he says. Other pieces are deciphered by the FBI, which currently has 72 agents in southern Arizona as part of its Joint Drug Intelligence Group. The group operates from offices in Tucson and Sierra Vista. "We've significantly increased our resources here," says Assistant Special Agent Steve McCraw. But unlike other agencies, "We don't look at interdiction" of drug traffickers, he says. "We look at the John Gottis, at the key and command control of the organizations. Ultimately, our goal is to disrupt and dismantle entire operations." That means lots of collaboration with other agencies, from the local cops to the DPS, DEA, Border Patrol and Customs. Much of that work focuses specifically on Tucson, which McCraw calls a "stash capitol" for drugs heading to other parts of the country. "And it's been that way for a couple of years," he says. "It hasn't receded." But the cost of FBI operations in southern Arizona remains a mystery. For budget numbers, McCraw referred a Tucson Weekly reporter to the Phoenix Field Office, which oversees FBI functions throughout the state. But the Phoenix office likewise referred the same reporter to Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C., where one official dished up only double-talk. "I've come to the conclusion that it's really difficult to get a hold on those numbers," FBI spokeswoman Debra Weirman said at first. Then she described the budget figures as "unattainable." Finally, "the bottom line is that it's an internal procedure," she said. "We don't make divisions' (budgets) available" to the taxpaying public. Closer to home, the DPS also plays a major role in the drug war. In Pima County, the agency devotes two officers to MANTIS, "The mission of DPS is support and assist all the other state and local agencies," says Lt. David Denlinger, narcotics commander for southern Arizona, covering Cochise, Santa Cruz and Pima Counties. In Tucson, that means one sergeant and two officers assigned to MANTIS, and paid for in part by $73,000 in HIDTA funds. HIDTA also pays $58,000 for three DPS officers working with the Metro Task Force in Santa Cruz County, and $34,000 for five officers assigned to Cochise County's Border Alliance Group. Those DPS cops handle all kinds of narcotics cases, Denlinger says, "from street-level undercover to larger conspiracies to determine where the drugs came from. We have the advantage of being a statewide law enforcement agency. And if a case cuts across other jurisdictional boundaries, we may work with federal agencies like the DEA or Customs. But essentially, we're the state police." IT'S TOUGH TO ignore the cold, gray stare of a cocked Glock pistol. Particularly hard when it leads a band of crouched men wearing very stern expressions and the latest paramilitary accouterments. Add to that a smashed door, a riot shield, the powerful crack of small explosives and a shotgun's business end, and you just might find yourself suddenly incontinent. That's exactly the point of the Pima County Sheriff's S.W.A.T. team, says Sgt. Don Kester, training director of the Arizona HIDTA Regional Training Center. Today Kester's boys are going through their paces, re-enacting tactics they use when they show up uninvited. "This isn't like what you see on TV," Kester says. "Even as they enter the door, they're constantly assessing the threat." He's right: These men stalk deliberately, like animated chess pieces, through the make-believe townhouse in a fabricated village. And they cover themselves thoroughly every step of the way. "The idea is to move smoothly as a team," he says. "If they see something, there's a guy behind them backing them up. These S.W.A.T. guys depend upon each other." Increasingly, local police departments also depend on them to take a building whenever there's the slightest threat of violence, he says. "The whole idea is to keep anyone from getting hurt." In the War on Drugs, this is ground zero, a 29-acre, $1.2 million, state-of-the-art facility southeast of Tucson where all budgetary abstractions come home to roost. Every year more than 8,000 cops from around the state, and from as far away as Canada and Great Britain, come to use the center's rifle ranges, obstacle courses, fake storefronts and faux apartments. And the sheriff's department acts as landlord. Such a place brings the battle up close and personal. Still, it's not without a dark chuckle or two: A meticulous white sign reads "Welcome to Survival City, USA." Streets are named "Calle Glock" and "Camino de las Colt." Storefronts are painted with "HIDTA Burger," and "Last National Bank." For authenticity, there's even a pseudo Circle K. Still, the mission here is no laughing matter. "These teams are really the elite of the department," says S.W.A.T. Supervisor Sgt. Byron Gwaltney. "They're highly trained professionals. They aren't cowboys." The intense level of training is essential, Kester says, and accents the work done by MANTIS and other agencies. MANTIS sticks simply to investigations, he says. When an entry is required, however, these guys spring to action. "By that point, MANTIS has already laid the groundwork," he says. "We just do the entry." Capt. Kermit Miller of TPD heads the MANTIS program. "MANTIS used to do its own raids," he says. "But we found we were devoting so much training to just doing raids that we weren't doing our normal duties. But not devoting that training time would put the public at risk, put our officers at risk, and put the suspects at risk. That's when we decided that all raids would be conducted by trained S.W.A.T. teams." Others say such training, and the enormous resources backing it from every level of government, may be symbolic of a criminal justice system that's become a crusading army--at the risk of squashing civil liberties. Indeed, Sgt. Kester says S.W.A.T. tactics evolved from military techniques brought into law enforcement by returning Vietnam vets. But he denies those skills present a threat to the law-abiding. "After all, we don't go into normal people's homes," he says. Sam Vagenas isn't so sure. He was a prime mover behind Arizona's Proposition 200, which legalized prescribing marijuana for medical purposes, and he says too much effort is spent busting heads. "I think we've been hearing blatant lies about the war on drugs." Vagenas labels the explosion in anti-narcotics funding--and the difficulty tracing it--a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse. "It's murky stuff," he says. "You've got forfeiture stuff going on, you have border funds, a little of everything in there. "But in the wake of Proposition 200, we're at least starting to hear a different sort of rhetoric," he says. "At least (officials) are starting to talk the talk. For example, the drug czar, when he was Tucson, declared that the drug war metaphor was an utter failure." (In 1995, before assuming his current post, Gen. McCaffrey also told lawmakers, "As long as there is domestic demand, some entrepreneur will find a way to meet it.") Dennis Burke, director of Arizona Common Cause, a government watchdog group, likewise charges lawmakers with shortsightedness. "The same politicians who beat the broken drum for stricter drug enforcement also blame most community problems on dysfunctional families," he says, even as they spend billions on get-tough policies that disrupt communities. He calls it an obvious choice. "We can hide the report cards by arresting everyone coming out of these communities," he says, "or we can direct our resources towards better results." Great idea, says Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall. But she says that doesn't mean the carrot should overshadow the stick. "What you'll hear from police and prosecutors is that there's never going to be enough money to put a stop to drug trafficking. But does that mean we just allow drugs to flourish in our communities? Do we allow drug traffickers to bring in as much cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine as they want? "It seems to me that we're making a statement to our communities that drugs are intolerable, that they're criminal. We are not going to put up with it, and we'll use whatever means are necessary to attack it." At the same time, she says there's plenty of room for reform. "We do need to beef up the resources available for treatment," she says. "It's criminal that we're warehousing people in prison, and don't give them drug-treatment programs from the time they come in until the time they leave." On the stick end, LaWall's office currently gets more than $470,000 in federal funds for additional prosecutors and related services. Like other officials, she says the money is crucial. "Without it, we wouldn't be able to maintain the staff we've got. We're talking about almost $500,000 to support drug prosecution and anti-narcotics efforts in Pima County. Without that federal money, we'd be asking the Board of Supervisors for it. Well, they're not going to come up with a half-million dollars for us." Beyond that, federal involvement means "there's an incredible effort in terms of sharing intelligence resources and efforts," she says. "People always used to be protecting their turf, and that's disappearing. It's very apparent to all the agency heads that there needs to be total cooperation back and forth."
"I don't understand what peoples' fears are, because the FBI, the state narcotics officers, the police, have way too much to do just investigating criminal activities," she says. "They're not out there surveilling people who aren't involved in crime, and people whose activities don't lead them to believe there's criminal activity behind them." For his part, sitting at a broad table in TPD's daunting downtown headquarters, Lt. Richards pauses to ponder the issue. "Do we have to much police power?" he asks slowly. "Well, we operate within the framework of the law. We don't make policy, we enforce it. If people think we have too much power, then through their elected officials they have to check that." Still, such critics are "speaking from a certain perspective," he says. "They've never done this work. They've never had to stand over a kid that's convulsing because of an overdose, or the dead body of someone who's given themselves a hotshot. When you live outside what police officers experience on a daily basis, you just don't have that perspective." Col. Alex Mahon, director of the Guard's Joint Counter-Narcotics Task Force in Arizona, refuses to detail his agency's work.
S.W.A.T. tactics evolved from military techniques brought into
law enforcement by returning Vietnam vets.
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It's an epic involving billions of federal dollars, a mushrooming
network of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies,
and an anti-narcotics strategy President Bill Clinton has called
a "bipartisan, enduring commitment to reduce drug use and
its destructive consequences."
In Bisbee, Cochise County Attorney Alan Polley takes a different
tact--and says it costs him dearly. "We handle all drug prosecutions
here under state law," he says. "If a case involves
less than 50 kilos, the feds won't prosecute it. But under state
law, people can be prosecuted for ounces, grams. If we weren't
doing what we do, we'd be ignoring a huge number of cases on the
border."
As to whether that growing network could make for a nervous citizenry,
"Who's worrying?" LaWall says. "The criminals?
