If you have issues viewing or accessing this file, please contact us at NCJRS.gov. %.=== l N App ro ~ . n dA P ti Police Antidrug Tactics: New Approaches and Applications by Deborah Lamm Weisel Police Executive Research Forum This publication was supported under award 91-DD-CX-0045 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessar- ily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice or the Police Executive Research Forum. Police Executive Research Forum, Washington,D.C. 20036 © 1996 by Police Executive Research Forum All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-67353 ISBN 1-878734-43-1 Cover by Marnie Deacon Contents Acknowledgments I. Introduction II. The Evolution of Drug Enforcement Traditional Enforcement Limitations of Enforcement Broadened Approaches to Antidrug Activities Local Nature of Antidrug Activities III. Research Objectives and Methods 9 Survey Construction and Administration 9 Who Responded to the Survey 11 Strengths and Limitations of the Study 11 IV. How Police Use Antidrug Tactics 13 A Wide Variety of Approaches 14 Distinctions Between Patrol and Investigations Units 20 Innovative Approaches 22 Links and Substitution of Tactics 25 Effective Approaches 27 V. Classification Scheme 31 Analysis of the Classification Scheme 32 A New Taxonomy 33 VI. Policy Implications and Directions for Future Research 39 VII. Descriptions of Innovative or Effective Approaches 41 Airport Profiling 44 Applying Federal Sanctions 46 Asset Identification, Seizure and Forfeiture 47 Asset Profiling 50 Automated Intelligence Database 53 Caller ID 54 Canine Searches 57 Child Protection Laws 59 Citizens Academies 61 Clone Pagers 63 Crime Analysis and Tracking of Drug Offenders 66 iii Drug Demand Reduction in the Workplace and Residences 68 Drug-Free Zones 71 Drug Incentive Awards Program 73 Drug Tax 74 Evictions and Property-Related Sanctions 77 Hotel and Motel Interdiction 81 Interagency Exchange of Undercover Officers 83 "Loitering for the Purpose of Drug Dealing" Ordinance 86 Mail-In Drug Reporting Coupon 88 Multiagency Task Forces 9O Nuisance Abatement or Padlock Laws 95 Officer Rotation Plan 98 Pharmaceutical Diversion 100 Post-Seizure Analysis 102 Targeting Mail Delivery Services 104 Targeting Probationers 109 Targeting Taxicab Drivers 110 Thermal Imagery 113 Tracking Citizen Complaints 115 Voice Mail Interception 117 References 119 About the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) 123 Appendixes 125 iv Acknowledgments An advisory committee was convened to provide direction and guidance to the development of the research study presented in this report. The committee included Steve Bertucelli, former commander of the Metro Dade Police Department's narcotics unit, in Miami; Timothy S. Bynum, criminal justice professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.; Capt. Theresa Chambers, Prince George's County, Md., Police Department; and Maj. Sherry Szebulek, New Castle County, Del., Police Department. PERF gratefully acknowledges their participation. Almost 400 police departments responded to the survey of antidrug tactics described in this study. Their responses provide the foundation for our findings. Each agency's participation is gratefully acknowledged. vi I. Introduction Over 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide are engaged in drug enforcement activities. Agen- cies in each state are constrained by varying judicial rulings, state laws or local ordinances that may limit the application of certain tactics. An agency's choice of tactics is also limited by personnel and other resource con- straints, variations in the populations served and the nature of local drug problems, and the differentiated diffusion of knowledge about effective approaches to drug problems inherent in the nation's decentralized approach to crime. Despite these constraints and limitations, from the 1980s to the present, many police agencies have focused signif- icant resources on addressing local drug problems. What approaches have these agencies used, and how effective have these approaches been? What are the characteristics of promising or innovative approaches to drug problems? To date, there has been little research on what tactics police agencies are using, with what frequency, how these tac- tics are applied, and how effective they are. These questions are particularly interesting because of an apparent increase in uniformed patrol officers' involvement in carrying out antidrug efforts. Has their involvement formed an underpinning for the development of new and more promising approaches to drug problems? Which tactics do police agencies rate as the most effective? These basic questions encouraged the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), with funding from the National Institute of Justice, to explore and document the nature of current drug enforcement efforts across the nation. Based on findings from a mail survey of large law enforcement agencies, PERF has developed a comprehensive under- standing of various drug enforcement tactics being used. Almost 160 different and relatively discrete tactics have been identified as being used by police agencies in antidrug activities. Given the changing nature of antidrug activities and the broadened scope of current police efforts, the focus of this report is to identify the scope and characteristics of current antidrug tactics, particularly those that are innovative or reveal some promise of effectiveness. Section II of this report provides an overview of the evolution of drug enforcement and the broadened perspective toward police activity relating to drug problems. Section III discusses the approach to research used in this study. Section IV describes the findings from the mail survey PERF conducted. Section V suggests an alternative way to classify antidrug tactics, while Section VI discusses some policy implications related to this study. Section VII pro- vides more in-depth descriptions of 31 antidrug tactics police rated as effective or innovative approaches to drug problems. These Id~C;bl,..ll[..ll.lVltb,a .... :_,- ........ ~,,~pa~eu a by police .....~lOtwduOll~ltO "'; .... anu,4 w..,.,,,,~;m;.~l jUod~; ,o,'~ ......~Al_,V~.o, ~ ...... 1a ...... ;A,~ .;,-h,*~** de).;1.~. ~.hout the varying approaches. Police Antidrug Tactics II. The Evolution of Drug Enforcement Public interest in the nation's drug problem has waned in recent years, falling from a high of 53 percent of the public identifying drugs as the nation's most important problem to the current single-digit percentages (Morin 1994). Drug arrests by state and local police officers have fallen, from a high of 1,361,700 in 1989 to 1,010,000 in 1991 (U.S. De- partment of Justice 1993). And drug use has declined, with cocaine use among college students in 1992 falling to 3.6 percent from a high of 17.3 percent in 1985 (U.S. Department of Justice 1993: 26). Nonetheless, drug-related emergencies increased 8 percent from 1990 to 1991, and drug abuse-related deaths in- creased 13 percent from 1990 to 1991 (U.S. Department of Justice 1993: 27). And the drug problem on the nation's streets has continued for many police agencies, subsuming large amounts of resources and prompting calls for addi- tional resources, such as the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department's 1993 request for assistance from the National Guard. According to a Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey, fully 96 percent of large municipal police agencies and 65 percent of state police agencies have a special unit of per- sonnel dedicated to drug enforcement activities (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1992: xiii). Thus, although public perceptions and some statistical indicators support amelioration of the "drug crisis," police agencies continue to ad- dress drug problems. TRADITIONAL ENFORCEMENT Until the mid-1980s, much of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies' traditional narcotics enforcement fo- cused on wholesale drug activity. This focus dominated to the near exclusion of addressing street sales. In local police agencies, this enforcement primarily involved narcotics unit undercover officers' buying drugs from mid- and upper-level dealers and then making an arrest. Surveillance, informants and hand-to-hand buys were the most com- mon tactics used. The goal of narcotics enforcement during this period was to bust "Mr. Big," a wholesale distributor of heroin, cocaine or other illegal narcotics (Kleiman 1992). Specialized narcotics units came into being to more closely monitor police officers for corruption. Drug-related police corruption had become a national concern following a major police scandal in New York City in the early 1970s (Zimmer 1987). As a result, in many cities, street-level dealers operated with near impunity from the law throughout the 1970s and early 1980s (Hayeslip and Weisel 1992; Johnson et al. 1990). The introduction of a new, cheaply priced product into the street drug pharmacopeia changed the picture for law enforcement. The crack cocaine epidemic, occurring around 1985, forced local police agencies to respond more di- rectly to street-level sales. Local police agencies responded by beefing up patrol resources, while narcotics units continued to focus on un- dercover operations. By 1984, note Johnson et al. (1990), large amounts of police resources were focused on breaking up visible