Local Drug Task Forces threatened by federal cuts

Photo courtesy of MSHP - Ingredients used in the manufacture of meth are displayed following a recent bust of a lab in Southeast Missouri by the SEMO Drug Task Force. Task Forces across the country are facing budget cuts that will threaten their existence by 2010.

In spite of laws regulating and restricting the sale of ingredients used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, the problem remains a constant issue within the ranks of local and neighboring Drug Task Forces.

And yet, armed with the above figures and inundated with data supporting the work of the Drug Task Force, the federal budget which feeds the lifeline of the organizations across the nation, has been dramatically slashed.

"We've been cut to the bone in this year's approved budget," Glaser reports, " to the tune of a 60 to 70 percent funding cut and there is quite simply no way that our department can survive that kind of deficit in funding. No business that I know of could remain in operation with a cut like this."

"Missouri operates on an annual budget," says Glaser, "of just over $5 million, and for the past several years, our budget has been cut from 10 to 20 percent each year."

There are 26 Drug Task Forces in the state of Missouri and of those, nine are Highway Patrol governed. They are not, however, funded by the Highway Patrol.

"We've cut back and diminished our forces to accommodate these cuts, but with this slash in the operating funds of the Task Force, we will fold after a year of operation."

Task Forces across the country have annually been funded through money from the Byrne/JAG Grant.

Byrne/Jag came into existence in November of 2004 when Congress consolidated two long-standing local law enforcement grant programs, establishing one grant through which federal authorities may support federal, state and local efforts to fight crime and in many instances, specifically drug-related crime.

In a letter to law enforcement personnel involved in the war against drugs across Missouri, Jason J. Grellner, president of the state's Narcotic Officers Association, told officers, "The effects of this cut will be felt by all task forces on July 1, 2009. I know that this (budget cut) would mean the end to numerous task forces throughout the state. At a time when we are seeing some real progress in the fight against drugs, such as cocaine and methamphetamine, this is truly disheartening."

No one knows better locally just how disheartening the news of the cuts can be than Kevin Glaser. He has been a member of the Highway Patrol since 1983 and has headed up the SEMO Task Force since its inception in 1990. He has witnessed firsthand the successful work of his officers and has watched them daily put their lives on the line in order to keep drugs off the street and out of the hands of Southeast Missouri's youth.

"What is really disheartening in all of this is to realize that while cutting the funding some 60-70 percent for drug task forces," he says, "money is being granted internationally to police activities in places from Mexico to the West Bank."

Indeed, according to Senior Manager for Government Affairs Elizabeth Pyke, the same federal budget that slashes U.S. funding for Drug Task Forces, grants over one billion dollars internationally. Specifically, $603 million has been allocated for the Iraqi police (for wartime training), $350 million for the Mexican police, another $10 million for the Sudanese and up to $50 million to the West Bank police. An additional $100 million, says Pyke, will be issued to the countries of Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic."

While the monies allocated to the foreign police does not derive from the Bryne/JAG Grant, the decision to fund those efforts and yet slash what Pyke refers to as, "the cornerstone crime fighting program" within the U.S. is, at best, disappointing, Glaser reiterates.

Now, in an effort to sustain the work of Task Forces across the state, law enforcement agencies are urging state government to consider picking up the slack that the federal budget has left

"Narcotics crimes impact all other crimes and there is no doubt that if the Drug Task Force as we know it dissolves," Glaser says, "we will be witnessing an influx of drug activity within our communities."

Local law enforcement agencies would, Glaser explains, be forced to take over the duties of fighting drug crime.

"While their efforts are noble ones, " he says, "they do not have the manpower, the equipment or the education within the field, to do the work at the level this the state's Task Forces are now performing."

"Illegal drug overdoses kill 30,000 American each year," National Narcotic Officers' Associations' Coalition (NNOAC) Robert E. Brooks, said an address to the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives in Washigton, D.C. in late May of this year. "Some government officials work on the theory that they have needed to shift funding to protect the homeland and terrorist activities. Of course, it is important to fund preparedness and response capacity, but that shift has come at the expense of the drug enforcement mission."

The fate of the SEMO Task Force, along with such agencies across Missouri and the country, is not entirely sealed as yet, Glaser cautiously states.

"If Missouri can obtain adequate backing from the state level," he says, "then we can remain in operation from July1, 2009 through June of 2010. After that time, it's our hope that funding will once again pick up from the federal level. If not, the Drug Task Forces as we know them, will cease to exist."

And that, says, Sgt. Kevin Glaser, would be a crime.