The San Luis Obispo County Narcotics Task Force (SLONTF) as we know it is no more.
Despite an effort by the California Department of Justice to salvage as many of its regional anti-drug and gang task forces as possible, the department announced it would disband two-thirds of its forces. The department is facing a budget gap of more than $70 million in January.
Funding for the SLONTF is scheduled to be canceled Dec. 31.
Back in July, California Attorney General Kamala Harris warned the general fund cuts would essentially gut the department’s division of law enforcement budget, eliminating two investigative bureaus: the Bureau of Investigations and Intelligence, and the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.
Over the last few months, regional task forces across the state have been trying to come up with enough funding to continue their operations at the local level.
“We’ve been fighting very hard to preserve some of these agencies,” Harris’ press secretary, Lynda Gledhill, said. “The attorney general simply had no choice.”
Gledhill added that the Attorney General’s Office will continue to lobby for flexibility in the upcoming budget cycles.
“This is an ever-changing situation,” she said.
Regional units such as the SLONTF are a special kind of law-enforcement entity, which officials say play a crucial role in battling drug trafficking by allowing investigations to reach beyond county boundaries. SLO County’s task force has received state funding, uninterrupted, since 1976.
The task forces are a consortium of local police departments and state law enforcement agencies, which—up until now—received special funding from the state. They are headed by a local board of governors comprised of chiefs from each participating police department, as well as regional heads of state agencies, all under the supervision of a Department of Justice regional commander.
Current participants in the SLONTF include the San Luis Obispo, Atascadero, Paso Robles, Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach, and Pismo Beach police departments; the Cal Poly University Police Department; the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department; the District Attorney’s Office; the Probation Department, the California Highway Patrol; and California State Parole.
Pismo Beach Chief of Police Jeff Norton, who chairs the NTF’s board of governors, told the Sun he received word about the defunding from Division of Law Enforcement Chief Larry Wallace right about the time Wallace told the Associated Press the division would only be able to afford 18 of its 52 task forces.
Wallace told the AP that those 18 will be saved only by money the state receives from the federal government. The rest may live on in some fashion through efforts mounted by local organizations, he said.
Currently, each of SLO County’s seven police departments contributes to the NTF, either in people or with funding, with the exception of the Morro Bay Police Department.
Because of the elimination of the Department of Justice’s two investigative bureaus, the SLONTF’s regional commander position will be terminated, as will money for the lease on the San Luis Obispo office, Gledhill said.
In 2010, the NTF operated on a budget of approximately $370,000, not including contributions made by participating local police departments. Norton said roughly $70,000 of those funds covered the lease on an office in SLO, and the majority of the remainder covered salary and benefit expenses for the NTF commander.
According to Norton, in the same year, the NTF was involved in 205 “major activities,” which include investigation activities and providing support or otherwise contributing to neighboring task forces’ operations. He said it conducted 94 investigations of its own, which resulted in 75 arrests.
That’s a cost of about $4,930 per arrest; a spokesman for the SLO County District Attorney’s Office couldn’t be reached to confirm how many of those arrests resulted in convictions.
Though the task force costs money to operate, it also brings in money. Figures for 2010 haven’t yet been published, but 2009 NTF investigations netted approximately $331,800 in seized asset awards through civil asset forfeiture cases. The money gets distributed throughout the county and state—roughly $78,000 to the county’s general fund, $32,200 to the D.A.’s Office, and $98,500 for its own operations. In addition, 15 percent of that total pays for anti-drug education and rehabilitation services in the county.
But the de-funding of the state-run task force doesn’t necessarily mean local law enforcement agencies will lose their means to coordinate complicated inter-agency narcotics investigations that bring in money.
SLO County Sheriff Ian Parkinson told the Sun he agreed at the NTF’s board of governors meeting last week to “take the lead” in incorporating the long-allied resources and officers into some form of an expanded local narcotics unit—this time under the direction of the Sheriff’s Department.
He said he wants to expand the department’s existing narcotics unit, which maintains a staff size similar to the NTF, and merge it with the department’s gang task force.
He added that the formation of the new task force would only work if it could be done at no additional cost to the departments involved. However, Parkinson said an audit of the NTF’s budget and perhaps pending NTF-inspired civil forfeiture cases could allow for a little flexibility in the transition.
“Certainly, combining your resources makes agencies much more effective in working toward your goals,” Parkinson said about narcotics investigations. “I don’t think it could be effectively done any other way.”
This article appears in Nov 17-24, 2011.