Pubdate: Tue, 18 Jul 2000
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The Dallas Morning News
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Author: Todd Bensman, The Dallas Morning News

STUDY TAKES LOOK AT N. TEXAS DRUG SCENE

Mexican drug organizations now control nearly
all illicit narcotics traffic in North Texas. Crack cocaine use in the
region appears to be on the rise after years of decline. And drugs
continue to fuel violent crimes, particularly those committed with
guns.

Those are a few of the conclusions of a new federal study that offers
an unusually detailed, if unscientific, snapshot of which illegal
drugs are on the rise or decline in North Texas, who controls the
local drug markets and the region's role in national drug shipment
networks. The 64-page study was conducted by the year-old North Texas
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, a collaboration of 40
local, state and federal agencies set up to combat illegal drugs in 10
counties in North Texas and Smith County in East Texas. The study was
intended as an initial "threat assessment" that officials would use as
a strategy blueprint. Dave Israelson, director of the North Texas
HIDTA, cautioned that the study was not a scientific analysis but
rather a broad compilation of data from more than 100 area police
departments, drug treatment programs and classified federal
intelligence.

Together, the information provides a rare composite look at drug use
and trafficking trends, he said.

"What you get back has to be sort of filtered and refined before it
means much," he said. "All law enforcement does crime analysis work.
But ... HIDTA tries to pull it all together into what we call a
snapshot of the drug problem in this region."

That picture is not very pretty, according to a partially censored
copy of the report that will soon be sent to members of the region's
congressional delegation, who will vote on funding for the North Texas
HIDTA. According to the report, Mexican drug rings control most of the
local market, with more than 50 organizations identified. The
organizations have eclipsed Colombian and Jamaican gangs that
dominated North Texas in the early 1990s.

The report also concluded that North Texas, with its confluence of
major highways, trucking industry and one of the world's busiest
airports, "is a prime region for the transportation of narcotics."

"With the passing of NAFTA, Interstate 35 has seen an increase in
international truck traffic and a decrease in the percent of customs
inspections," the report states.

Mr. Israelson said the local HIDTA is using the report to formulate
its crime-fighting strategy 96 and a bigger budget request 96 for
next year. Although he declined to describe the strategy, the former
FBI agent said that about 11 special task forces within HIDTA are
being formed to take on the Mexican cartels, money launderers and
trafficking issues. Jack Riley, director of the criminal justice
program for the nonprofit group RAND in Santa Monica, Calif., said
such assessments are a good way to form law-enforcement strategies.

Mr. Riley said it's too soon to know if the HIDTA program will be
effective in carrying out its strategies. Federal authorities,
including U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins, declined to release internal
reports on whether the North Texas task force met its goals for the
first year of operations. "HIDTAs are still kind of the black box in
an evaluation sense," Mr. Riley said. "There really is not much of a
research foundation there to really assess their effectiveness. I
haven't seen persuasive evidence that the HIDTA is paying off, which
is not to say that it isn't. We just don't have the evidence in."

Mr. Israelson said he expects the threat assessment reports, which
will be updated quarterly, to become a gauge of drug activity. Stan
Furce, director of the Houston-area HIDTA, one of the first five
established in 1990, said his group's report has become a consistent
and reliable barometer of drug crime there.

"Certainly, prior to HIDTA, nobody got together as a community and did
one," Mr. Furce said. "This is kind of unique in itself."
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