COQUILLE — After 25 years of battling crime, the area’s multi-agency anti-drug task force could run out of money in a little more than a year.
Running out would force the South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team to depend on already cash-strapped local governments.
Cal Mitts, SCINT’s director, said the team has enough grant money to continue operations for approximately 14 months.
The team, which borrows detectives from local police agencies, leads anti-drug investigations by its member agencies. It relies on federal and community grants to pay its staff.
“We’re 100 percent grant-funded,” Mitts said.
The problem? Grants have dried up. And the financial crunch is coming at a time when use of both methamphetamine and heroin is rebounding in the area.
“They’re both up considerably,” Mitts said.
Combating meth has been one of SCINT’s primary missions throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. One of the most noteworthy victories came in 2005, when SCINT and other agencies arrested 15 people in the Barview area in a project named Operation: Black Ice.
The number of meth labs in the area shrank after state legislators moved a key precursor chemical behind pharmacy counters. Starting in 2006, any psuedoephedrine purchase required a prescription.
But shutting down the labs didn’t stop meth. Mitts said criminal drug trafficking organizations in Mexico have filled the gap.
In May, a task force of state and federal law enforcement agencies arrested more than 30 people in Klamath County suspected of operating a meth-trafficking ring.
The Oregon Department of Justice said it had found links between the traffickers and Mexican cartels.
“I would comfortably say 90 percent — basically all of our drugs — are coming from south of the border,” Mitts said.
While methamphetamine is seeing a resurgence in the area, its nothing like what’s being experienced with heroin.
Despite popular perceptions, Mitts said heroin has a long history in the area.
“In the ’80s and ’90s, there was a lot more of it,” he said. “It was black tar as opposed to powdered — or ‘gunpowder.’”
Still, Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier — who once served as a special prosecutor for the team — said arrests for the drug were relatively uncommon.
“In the seven years I was there, I could probably count on both hands and my toes the whole number of heroin cases we had,” Frasier said.
But the epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse that hit the nation in the past decade brought with it a new generation of heroin users.
“With the safeguards that have been put in place since that rise, the people who cannot obtain the pain pills that they could in the past are looking on the street,” Frasier said.
Both Mitts and Frasier said heroin is now cheaper on the South Coast’s black market than prescription opiate-based painkillers.
“It’s alarming to see the age demographics,” Mitts said. “They keep getting younger.”
The veteran officer said he’d be hard-pressed to name anyone the team had arrested recently over the age of 30.
Over the past decade, the team has relied heavily on community and federal grants to pay its salaries.
Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said that from 2003 through 2010 — the year before the House Republican leadership banned all earmarks — he managed to secure more than $1 million to fund the team. The last earmark was the biggest — about $600,000 — and SCINT has lived on it ever since.
“Unfortunately, the Republican ban on earmarks remains in effect, to the detriment of programs like SCINT, but I will continue to fight to fund it in any way I can,” DeFazio said.
Mitts said the team supplements federal money with smaller community grants, including one from the Coquille Indian Tribe.
Mitts said if the agency can’t secure more outside funding, its only option will be to turn to the county and its partner city governments for help.
“What we’re going to have to see is the different municipalities stepping up,” he said.
But Coos County Sheriff Craig Zanni said his agency is already exceeding its commitment to SCINT.
“We already house the team and fund it by providing staff out of the department,” Zanni said.
More money?
“Unless the commissioners hit the Powerball jackpot, I doubt it,” he said.
In its heyday, SCINT had four detectives, an administrative aide, an intelligence analyst, a director and a special prosecutor. Mitts said he’s currently operating with two full-time detectives.
A few years ago, the team hit its lowest point: a director and one detective. It could return to that level if the grants aren’t renewed within 14 months or so, Frasier said.
In the meantime, SCINT continues to pursue its mission with the resources it has on hand. Mitts said a recent operation targeting a low-income housing development in Empire netted a number of heroin arrests.
The veteran officer said for investigations like that to be successful, the public has to provide information — and then testify in court.
“We can only do so much with anonymous information,” Mitts said.
What about asset forfeiture?
While SCINT today relies on grants for its survival, it wasn’t always that way.
Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier, who formerly served as a special prosecutor for the team, said that in SCINT’s early days, the team subsisted primarily on asset forfeitures from drug arrests.
In those days, drug task forces nationwide commonly supported themselves by selling cars, homes and other property seized in raids.
Marijuana not methamphetamine, was SCINT’s cash cow.
“The meth cases generally did not generate a lot of forfeitures,” Frasier said. Chemical contamination makes former meth labs unappealing to potential buyers.
In the late 1990s, Oregon voters passed two ballot measures that would inhibit the team’s ability to profit from asset forfeitures.
The first was Measure 67 in 1998, better known as the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. Because so many marijuana growing operations are being conducted under the auspices of the act, prosecutions and subsequent seizures prove difficult, Frasier said.
Then, in 2000, Oregon voters passed Measure 3, which prevented law enforcement from retaining the proceeds from forfeited assets.
“With the lack of funds being available for SCINT to operate, it basically went into a shutdown mode,” Frasier said.
The Legislature loosened the law in 2008, allowing police to keep as much as 63 percent of forfeiture proceeds. But Frasier said the continued difficulty in prosecuting marijuana growers means the process remains relatively unprofitable.
Lack of options for treating opiate addiction
Increasing opiate addiction on the South Coast is straining the resources of treatment providers.
The area badly needs residential services and increased access to Suboxone for detox purposes, said Diedrie Lindsey, director of ADAPT Counseling and Treatment Services. ADAPT provides drug and alcohol treatment services to people on parole and probation through Coos County Community Corrections.
“With opiate addiction, people get three days into the seizure and they’ll hurt so bad they’ll go out and use,” she said.
Suboxone is a drug containing the semi-synthetic opiate buprenorphine and a chemical called nalaxone, which blocks opiate receptors in the central nervous system. Lindsey said the drug is one of the most effective ways to help patients detox, but he knows of only one provider in the area.
Lindsey said ADAPT sees 16-20 people on parole and probation as part of its contract with Coos County, and about 260 people total.
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