Police Crime Lab Making Cocaine for Drug Busts : Narcotics: Santa Ana police defend the practice, citing safeguards that are in place. Others question the ethics.

SANTA ANA — Orange County authorities have been secretly manufacturing rock cocaine for Santa Ana Police Department undercover operations targeting neighborhood drug buyers, including those in an area near a middle school.

Defense attorneys mounted a legal challenge Thursday to halt the practice, which many law enforcement officials consider extremely risky, including police in Los Angeles and San Diego.

For 18 months, Santa Ana police have sought special court orders to make hundreds of sales, Police Chief Paul M. Walters said.

“We’re not playing games here,” the chief said. “We’re trying to give the streets back to the residents and we’re making progress.”

Walters said the department resorted to so-called reverse sting operations--where officers act as drug dealers--because they were not making a dent in trafficking by posing as buyers.

Powder cocaine seized in Santa Ana drug busts is taken to the Orange County Crime Laboratory, where it is cooked into rocks, also known as crack cocaine. It is sold in $10 and $20 pieces.

Since the operation started, officers have arrested about 350 people--about 100 of them within a few blocks of Willard Intermediate School in Santa Ana, Capt. Bruce Carlson said.

At least two of those arrested have been minors, said Dean Allen, head of the public defender’s Juvenile Court office.

“If they want to keep kids away from drugs, I think there are probably a lot of better ways to do it than just to sell them drugs,” Allen said.

Orange County Public Defender Ronald Y. Butler said his office is preparing to challenge the legality of having government agencies manufacture drugs for use in undercover investigations.

“I’m aware that the reverse stings have been upheld (in court),” Butler said. “But I think this raises the goofiness of that rule to a higher level. It’s shocking, really.”

Citing serious potential liabilities involved with distributing narcotics, the Los Angeles and San Diego police departments say they do not employ the technique used in Santa Ana.

“You have got to ask yourself if it is worth doing,” said Lt. Sergio Diaz of the Los Angeles Police Department, who supervises street narcotics investigations on the Westside. “What happens when a suspect makes off with the dope or they put it in their mouths? You have just introduced a drug into the community that wouldn’t have been there.”

Gerald Arenberg, executive director of the National Assn. of Police Chiefs in Washington, said the technique is dangerous.

“I’d hate to be the department that permits this to happen, and it turns out that somebody overdoses or has a heart attack,” Arenberg said.

Prosecutor Carl Armbrust said no other Orange County police departments are doing reverse stings with real narcotics, and he was unaware of any other department processing its own crack at the county crime lab.

But Armbrust said he would encourage other departments to conduct similar operations.

“If they abide by the guidelines and the district attorney (approves), I’d say that’s great,” said Armbrust, who supervises the district attorney’s Narcotics Enforcement Team.

Authorities familiar with regulations governing crime laboratories said the Orange County lab is licensed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to manufacture drugs used by officers in undercover investigations.

Walters acknowledged that reintroducing drugs to the streets is somewhat unorthodox, but he said no one--neither police officers nor buyers--has been injured. Police said some buyers have ingested the rocks before they could be arrested, but Walters said there have been no reports of buyers suffering ill-effects from swallowing the drugs. And he said undercover officers have tried to avoid sales to juveniles.

During processing at the crime lab, the individual rocks are coated with a special dye that causes any part of the body touched by the drug to glow when illuminated under a black light. That helps police identify suspects who swallow the drugs or try to drop them.

Since sales have been made in such small quantities, Carlson said, harmful quantities of the drug are not being put on the streets.

“The only reason we are doing this is because there is drug activity occurring in these neighborhoods,” Carlson said. “We’re trying to do what works. “

Reverse sting operations are common in the drug wars in which investigators flash large amounts of narcotics to net big dealers. But the tactic of selling small amounts of drugs to capture small-time drug users is controversial.

Two years ago, a Florida appeals court put a stop to a similar operation, ruling that the Broward County sheriff acted illegally in manufacturing crack cocaine for undercover investigations.

The state Supreme Court in Florida upheld the ruling, resulting in the reversal of hundreds of cases. “It is incredible that law enforcement’s manufacture of an inherently dangerous controlled substance, like crack cocaine, can ever be for the public safety,” the court said. Defendants arrested in the Florida cases have filed a federal class-action lawsuit asking for more than $1 million in assets that were seized after the arrests.

Santa Ana officials emphasize that the operation has passed California legal tests, and scrutiny by the Santa Ana city attorney’s office and the Orange County district attorney’s office. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the county crime lab, declined to comment.

For the last decade, the Orange County district attorney’s office has had a policy requiring a five-kilogram minimum for major reverse sting operations in drug cases. Prosecutors approved Santa Ana’s request for the street sales program when the Police Department agreed to follow strict safety guidelines, Armbrust said.

“Once we got our guidelines established, we didn’t consider it extreme,” Armbrust said.

Carlson said the department chose not to use rock cocaine confiscated off the streets because it could contain harmful impurities. “Processing it through the crime lab ensures that it’s pure cocaine that we use,” he said.

Only one police officer is granted access to the county lab to retrieve the drugs, police said. Carlson said the drug buys are videotaped, and a supervisor is always on the scene. He acknowledged, however, that the drugs are not always recovered.

An additional security measure requires police to obtain court orders for each batch of rock cocaine released. Police say they have obtained as many as five court orders authorizing the reverse stings.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Brenner’s signature appears on the court orders, but the judge said this week that he did not recall the requests. But Brenner said he does recall approving larger quantities in the “multi-kilo range” for use in larger police investigations.

Manufacturing the drug for use in sting operations “does have an unseemly side to it, doesn’t it?” Brenner said.

Attorneys with the public defender’s office said they have encountered hundreds of the Santa Ana reverse sting cases.

“In my opinion, it’s sort of an easy way to make a lot of felony arrests for drugs and show statistically that you’re making busts,” said Bob Knox, a deputy public defender.