LITTLE ROCK — The three investigations that led to scores of arrests and hundreds of federal drug charges in three Arkansas cities this month required years of long hours, undercover work and a lot of money.
Local authorities said the unrelated investigations could not have happened without federal funding.
“While the FBI had the financial resources to bring to the table, the local agencies had the familiarity and the intelligence they had spent hours gathering,” said Fran Flener, Arkansas’ drug director. “These kinds of cooperative efforts are ideal for everyone involved.”
Expenses included wiretaps, surveillance devices, helicopters and cash used to purchase drugs, as well as hours of overtime pay, authorities from various agencies involved in the investigations said.
In the Helena-West Helena investigation, which includes police officers accused of taking bribes and tipping off drug dealers, the FBI was crucial because wiretaps and specific undercover techniques were needed to uncover the conspiracy, authorities said.
In the El Dorado and Texarkana investigations, police and sheriff’s deputies had already laid the groundwork, but federal money, personnel and equipment allowed them to push forward despite tight budgets.
“The majority of the in- vestigative legwork came from the narcotics task force,” said Texarkana police Capt. Mark Lewis, referring to the 23-year-old Bi-State Narcotics Taskforce, which consists of eight officers from various departments.
“The FBI was more financial in their contribution, and they helped us in terms of putting together the conspiracy charges and serving as a conduit to introduce these cases into the federal court,” Lewis said.
The prospect of charging defendants in federal court, where sentences are more stringent and some conspiracy charges carry life sentences, was also attractive to local authorities who were continually dealing with repeat offenders, said FBI spokesman Steve Frazier.
Federal agents were needed in the Helena-West Helena investigation because they were unfamiliar faces, he said.
“Whether you’re investigating a public corruption matter or a street gang ... there are times that you need outside help because the insiders know each other,” he said.
In interviews last week, authorities offered more details on how the unrelated investigations wrapped up, including the types of equipment, personnel and techniques that were used.
HELENA-WEST HELENA
The FBI conducted the majority of the investigation into widespread drug-trafficking organizations in Helena-West Helena largely because of the need for wiretaps. Phone taps are authorized under federal law but not under state law, Frazier said.
Over the course of the two-year investigation called Operation Delta Blues, wiretaps allowed agents to document a complex hierarchy of drug dealers, suppliers and runners.
In the indictments unsealed this month, more than 120 recorded phone calls documented dealers lining up ways to transport crack cocaine, arrange sales, and organize police protection and escorts.
The taps recorded one officer, Winston Dean Jackson, “discussing payment by defense attorneys for failing to perform law enforcement responsibilities,” according to the indictment, which directly quotes the conversation about the “good old boy system” in the area.
Each tap recording is numbered. The numbering noted in the indictment suggests that federal agents recorded tens of thousands of phone calls from listening devices planted in the accused drugtraffickers’ and police officers’ cell phones.
The taps and other undercover work led to various accusations against four other officers. Those accusations include taking bribes to make paperwork “disappear,” tipping off drug traffickers to police searches and escorting drug runners.
Maj. Cleve Barfield, the head of the Arkansas State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, said the wiretaps strengthen this case.
“There’s nothing like having the suspect out of his own mouth give you some incriminating evidence,” Barfield said. “A lot of times these rural areas, like the Helena-West Helena area, where they know most of the people that they’re dealing with ... a wiretap is very helpful.”
Barfield said the decision to use wiretaps depends on the investigation because “they’re expensive to do. Even if we had the law, we don’t have the money.”
Barfield, whose agents also played a big role in the Helena-West Helena investigation, said each step of the investigation took careful planning and months of groundwork to coordinate the simultaneous arrest of the 71 people indicted.
“The Arkansas State Police has had a long history over the past five or six years of a number of active investigations in Phillips County, and some of those investigations touched on the periphery of what ultimately led to Operation Delta Blues,” state police spokesman Bill Sadler said.
“When you bring one or two agencies together, they can more quickly connect the dots,” he said.
Barfield agreed.
“Each agency will know or have informants that gives you a little piece of it, but you’d be surprised when you sit around a table and collaborate, everyone will know another little facet,” Barfield said. “In east Arkansas and in southwest Arkansas, that’s what all came together.”
TEXARKANA AND EL DORADO
Cooperation among agencies kept local police and sheriffs offices from running into budgetary problems, said authorities involved in the Texarkana and El Dorado investigations.
Bill Hickman, Union County chief deputy sheriff, said his office contributed about $25,000 for the El Dorado investigation called Operation Street Sweeper.
The investigation resulted in state and federal charges against 54 people in connection with “illegal drug-trafficking, violence and gangrelated crime in Southern Arkansas,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Arkansas.
Hickman said Ouachita, Ashley and Columbia County sheriff’s offices as well as El Dorado police and the other agencies also kicked in funding and resources.
In Texarkana, the Bi-State Narcotics Taskforce officers turned to the FBI because of funding and the stiffer sentences that federal conspiracy charges carry, local authorities said.
Many of the 74 people arrested or being sought in Operation State Line Sweep “were under investigation for state charges and then when they started seeing it’s a group, they realized the federal government can help us here ... then we make it even bigger,” Frazier said.
This investigation didn’t require wiretaps. In Texarkana, the indictments were mostly based on surveillance and undercover officers making street-level drug purchases, often near schools, housing projects and a playground.
Sgt. Nick Elrod, a task force supervisor, said federal and state money and assistance offset many of the local costs of the investigation that resulted in the 190-count federal indictment.
“Even though we have the people, our financial resources are stretched, so we appreciated the financial assistance from the FBI,” he said.
Frazier and Barfield said their agencies were able to help local agencies with the money needed to purchase drugs that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.
In certain types of investigations, the FBI can also pay a portion of a local department’s personnel costs, bring in expensive equipment, lease space and vehicles, and “all the things that it takes to physically operate an investigation,” Frazier said.
Frazier, who declined to say how much the FBI spent on drug purchases in three investigations, said the “methods that we use are primarily determined by the effectiveness of that method and the safety to the personnel using it, with cost being a minor factor.”
FUNDING
Costs, though, are becoming more of a concern, police say, as federal grant programs for local law enforcement have begun drying up in the past few years.
For example, the amounts of federal grants that fund local drug task forces fluctuate yearly but overall have taken a 40 percent cut since 2004. And federal and state agencies are preparing for another possible cut of 18 percent in those grants.
Some grants fund more than drug task forces. They can be used to clean up methamphetamine labs, for example. Federal officials said those grants may disappear this year.
Funding for the 19 drug task forces that are tied to the state’s judicial districts has declined since 2004.
According to Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration records, the amount of money from Justice Assistance Grants, which fund local and state agencies’ requests on an application basis, has fluctuated greatly from year to year.
The number peaked in fiscal 2004 at $4.9 million and dropped to $2.9 million for fiscal 2011.
According to U.S. Department of Justice numbers, other grant programs designed to help local law enforcement officials deal with budget cuts are expected to come under the federal budget knife. The amount of funding to the Community Oriented Policing Services grants program is expected to drop by about 15 percent, or more than $119 million.
The department’s budget request summary proposes decreasing the discretionary portion of the Justice Assistance Grants by $185.3 million and the portion of those grants that must be applied for by $15 million.
Jurisdictions that form task forces are required to provide 25 percent of their funding. But as the federal funding decreases, those jurisdictions that can afford to end up paying a bigger share, said Flener, the state drug director.
Some jurisdictions “have had to reduce personnel, and they maybe have one, two or three officers handling an entire judicial district,” she said.
Diana Wilson, the grant administrator for the state finance department, said the agency has been able to use federal Recovery Act money to supplement some of the grant funding requests that are now being turned down, but that money may be gone after the current round of applications.
Hickman of the Union County sheriff’s office said that in the drug investigations cooperation among federal, state and local agencies was the best option in handling a potential funding crisis. He and authorities from other local agencies said they’d like to see more cooperative efforts, like the three recent investigations, as budgets get tighter.
“All of the work force, the pooling of surveillance and resources, the money from everyone, it gave us a lot more ability to make this happen in such a successful way,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to shoulder the burden if you only have to shoulder a portion.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/23/2011