Paul Iverson/Caller-Times Rey Escamilla, deputy with the Jim Wells County Sheriff's Department, leads the nation in money seizures on highways. Here is standing in front of his Sheriff's Dept. truck, just outside of Alice. More Photos »

Drug funds build jails

Area officials: Money is mixed blessing

By Jeremy Schwartz

Sgt. Ray Escamilla Jrcq. makes sure the Jim Wells County Sheriff's Department gets its cut of action from the South Texas drug pipeline that passes through the county on U.S. Highway 281.

Escamilla - who has seized more than $3 million in cash over the past four years - does so by stopping southbound traffic. Escamilla knows that while the drugs flow north, the cash goes south. And that cash has been a boon to his department.

"Stuff that we can't get in the budget, we can get with this," said the mustachioed lawman who has printed his own trading card. Escamilla's cash seizures, along with seized vehicles that are later auctioned, have allowed the Jim Wells sheriff's department to buy patrol cars, guns, holsters, SWAT team gear, specialized training, a bomb dog and three drug-sniffing dogs, said Capt. Richard Miller.

Drug profits

But the Jim Wells County Sheriff's Department is not the only law enforcement agency in the Coastal Bend to profit from the flow of drugs and money.

For some counties, drug seizure money has proven a spectacular benefit that has allowed them to build new jails. The drug seizure money, which comes from the sale of auctioned vehicles as well as seized currency, also has become a divisive force in some communities, as entities struggle over control of it.

Most recently, Brooks County, home to the country's most productive Border Patrol checkpoint, completed construction on a new 40-bed jail in March. Not a cent came from county tax coffers: A private detention firm paid $500,000 for the rights to a federal detention center adjacent to the jail. Drug seizure funds covered the remaining $350,000.

In Brooks County, the drug seizure fund is generated largely through the sale of vehicles seized at the checkpoint south of Falfurrias.

Brooks County Judge Homer Mora said, though, that any monetary boon from the seizure fund is offset by the cost of fighting drugs and prosecuting drug cases. "We get money from the seizures, but we, as a county, have to foot the bill," he said.

Free jail, police station

Refugio County is perhaps the area's biggest beneficiary of drug seizure money. In April, Refugio opened a $140,000 police station paid for entirely out of the police department's drug seizure fund.

And in 1996, the county built a $2.8 million jail with drug money, thought to be the first time in the country a county has built a jail from scratch with drug seizure money. That year, the county's drug seizure fund equaled about 89 percent of Refugio County's 1996 budget.

A major chunk of the county's seizure fund was built in 1994, when sheriff's deputies found $4.3 million cash in a tractor-trailer headed south on U.S. Highway 77. A shotgun-toting deputy guarded the money at the sheriff's department overnight until eight bank employees spent eight hours counting it.

Cash clashes

Drug seizure funds also have caused divisions between law enforcement agencies and the city councils and county commissioners that oversee them. In Kleberg County, which receives income from vehicle seizures at the Sarita checkpoint, disputes over control of the seizure fund almost caused the commissioners court to sue Sheriff Tony Gonzalez.

The inter-county lawsuit was averted when Gonzalez agreed to put $100,000 in a fund overseen by the county.

"It is not my intent to withhold the drug money," Gonzalez said at the time. In Premont, control of the police department's drug seizure fund helped cause deep rifts that polarized and paralyzed the City Council for much of 2000.

In June 2000, Police Chief Joe Hinojosacq quit because he said he was unable to get along with the City Council. Mayor Norma Tulloscq said Hinojosa came under fire because he refused to provide an accounting for drug seizure funds.

Asset sharing

The South Texas Specialized Crimes and Narcotics Task Force, a multi-county agency that patrols area highways for drugs and drug money, also has been the subject of tugs of war between area counties looking for a greater chunk of the task force's plentiful seizures.

The task force was hours from possibly being disbanded in January when divisions between Kleberg County Sheriff Gonzalez and the city of Kingsville threatened to allow the deadline for a grant application to pass. The disagreement between Gonzalez and City Manager Hector Hinojosacq involved Gonzalez's demand that Kleberg County receive a share of the task force's assets, which he estimated at about $1 million.

After weeks of wrangling, the agreement gave Kleberg and other counties in the task force a portion of the assets seized during operations in which they participate.

Most law enforcement agencies also have agreements with local district attorney's offices, giving them a share of the proceeds.

Checks and balances

According to Nueces County Attorney Laura Garza Jimenezcq, state law gives control of the funds to individual law enforcement bosses. While the chief or sheriff decides how the money is spent (it can only be used for law enforcement purposes), purchases must go before the city council or commissioners' court if they are over a certain amount.

"The law enforcement agency decides what the law enforcement purpose is," Jimenez said. "(The council or court) decides who gets the contract." Law enforcement agencies must send annual reports to the state comptroller and the Department of Justice, where officials review expenditures.

"It's kind of like a check and balance to make sure we're making proper purchases and not sending the chief to Tahiti or anything," said Steve Zastrowcq, legal advisor adviser to the Corpus Christi Police Department.

Addicted: Financial 'addiction'

But while some praise law enforcement's ability to buy equipment and jails with the bad guys' money, others say it signals a dangerous dependence.

"It's just unbelievable that we have vested interest both by drug lords and law enforcement to perpetuate the status quo," says Judge Jim Gray, a Republican Superior Court Judge in Orange County, Calif. who has written a book, "Why the War on Drugs Failed and What We Can Do About It."

Law enforcement agencies - from federal ones like U.S. Customs to small town police departments - "are addicted to drug money," he said. "Particularly when they get into asset forfeiture. They're addicted to that as well."

Contact Jeremy Schwartz at 886-3618 or schwartzj@caller.com

November 21, 2001