Public Defender to Fight O.C. Lab’s Drug Making : Law enforcement: He vows challenge to secret practice. Most local officials surprised but support police effort.

SANTA ANA — The Orange County public defender’s office announced Thursday that it will mount a legal challenge to stop local authorities from continuing to manufacture rock cocaine for Santa Ana police use in undercover narcotics investigations.

Public Defender Ronald Y. Butler said he was shocked to learn that the Orange County Crime Laboratory had been secretly converting powder cocaine to rock nuggets sold for $10 to $20 apiece on the street.

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

Butler was not the only local official surprised by the police activities. But Santa Ana City Council members, local police chiefs and county officials generally offered support Thursday for the secret operation. So did the principal of the Santa Ana middle school just two blocks from one neighborhood where more than 100 people were arrested for buying county-made crack cocaine.

“I stand 100% behind the Police Department,” said Mayor Daniel H. Young, who had been made aware of the investigation only Thursday. “I think they’re approaching this thing innovatively, and they’re taking a risk because society’s at risk. We could certainly use the old and tired methods of fighting drug sales, but they have failed.”

The public defender’s office has represented hundreds of suspects in cases arising from the Santa Ana investigations, which have targeted addicts and small-time drug buyers during the past 18 months. Police used reverse stings, where undercover officers posed as drug dealers to arrest buyers.

But Butler said he did not know until this week that the drugs used in the Santa Ana cases were being processed at the crime laboratory run by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. And he said he only recently became aware of successful legal objections raised to a similar operation in Broward County, Fla.

Two years ago, hundreds of convictions obtained from reverse sting operations were overturned when a Florida appeals court found that the Broward County sheriff acted illegally in manufacturing crack or rock cocaine for undercover drug investigations.

Butler said the business of using county-made crack could raise serious questions in the cases his attorneys are defending, and that his staff is drawing up legal papers to challenge the practice.

“Personally, I was not aware until this morning that we had cases in which the crack cocaine was produced by the county crime lab,” Butler said Thursday. “I think it takes the sting operations to a new level that legally, I think, is going too far.”

Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates was out of town Thursday and other department officials did not respond to repeated requests this week for comment.

*

Authorities familiar with county crime lab operations said the Orange County lab has a license from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to engage in the production of drugs for use in undercover probes.

And while such reverse sting operations are considered risky by some law enforcement agencies, Santa Ana police and Orange County prosecutors defended the tactic, contending that it is proving successful in ridding the streets of addicts and other drug users who travel to Santa Ana for the single purpose of buying drugs.

“You don’t know how good it feels to have people come up to officers on the street to say, ‘Thank you for cleaning up the area,’ ” Santa Ana Police Capt. Bruce Carlson said.

No other Orange County police department is conducting similar operations or using the county crime lab to convert powder cocaine to rock, said Carl Armbrust, the county prosecutor in charge of the Narcotics Enforcement Team.

Armbrust said that processing crack from powder cocaine ensures that the resulting nuggets do not contain other harmful chemicals that can be present in untreated drugs seized from the streets.

The prosecutor said he would encourage other departments to conduct similar operations.

“If they abide by the guidelines and the district attorney would approve it, I’d say that’s great. The more the better,” he said. “I think that an effort like this is worthwhile and I believe it does help the community.”

Since the Santa Ana operation started, police have made about 350 arrests--about 100 of them within several blocks of Willard Intermediate School, police said. Most of the others were arrested in a neighborhood targeted by the federally funded anti-crime program known as Weed and Seed.

Nonetheless, some city and county officials were taken aback by disclosures that the county lab was manufacturing drugs for police to sell on the street. But despite their initial shock, most of those interviewed by The Times, including four of the seven Santa Ana City Council members, said they supported the practice.

“It’s news to me,” County Supervisor William G. Steiner said. “It’s one of the more extreme lengths I’ve ever heard of in drug investigations. But if the bottom line is to get people off the street who are dealing or using drugs, I am supportive of that.”

Mayor Young said he thought authorities were being careful and that the police tactics would withstand legal challenges.

“I don’t feel bad about it at all,” the mayor said. “We’re taking drug sales seriously, and it ain’t a game. This isn’t 10 days in the county jail.”

Said Councilman Ted R. Moreno: “I approve of it. Let’s tell the (buyers) they’re not welcome in Santa Ana.”

Willard Principal Robert L. Butcher said he became aware of the police activities only recently but supported them without reservation, even though police have acknowledged making sales within two blocks of the school.

“I’ll approve of whatever it takes to get users and dealers off the streets,” Butcher said. “We need to clean up our area. I am not opposed to what they are doing.”

Although Santa Ana police say they try to avoid selling drugs to juveniles, at least two youths have been busted in recent months, said Deputy Public Defender Dean Allen.

Police officials say that no one has ever been harmed in the busts.

Deputy Public Defender Laureen Gray said one 16-year-old client netted in the sting and prosecuted within the past six months tried to swallow the rock cocaine he purchased from police and was bruised by officers in a scuffle.

“When they went to arrest him, he panicked and tried to swallow it,” Gray said. “They had to gag him and choke him to try to get him to spit it up.”

Other agencies, including the Los Angeles and San Diego police departments, say they abstain from using such small amounts of drugs in reverse stings because of the potential liability in having buyers ingest the drug or make off with the rocks before they can be arrested.

In Orange County, several police agencies said they had similar liability concerns or did not have the level of drug trafficking that warranted such investigations.

For at least a decade, the Orange County district attorney’s office also had a policy requiring a five-kilogram minimum for use in reverse sting investigations. But they opted to approve Santa Ana’s request on the condition that the department follow strict safety guidelines, Armbrust said.

“Once we got our guidelines established, we didn’t consider it extreme,” Armbrust said. “We hoped we had thrown up every roadblock to prevent anything from going wrong. And we haven’t had anything go wrong.”

Those guidelines include selling drugs for cash only and not exchanging the drugs for property that might be stolen. The special rules also prohibit car chases and discourage sales to minors.

Release of the drugs for street sales also required special court orders.

“This is a different type of a program, so we made an exception to our major reverse sting program for the purpose of trying to clean up communities where street drug sales are prevalent,” Armbrust said.

Cocaine Conversion

Rock cocaine, or crack, is perhaps the most dangerous and addictive form of the illegal drug, medical experts say. Some facts about the product and the process:

Takes fewer than 10 seconds to produce a high.

Leaves a craving for more than is nearly insatiable.

Gives a far more intense high than the more common powder.

Made by heating the powder to remove hydrochloride, producing the rock form.

Process takes a matter of hours.

Source: Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, UCLA psychopharmacologist; Margaret Kuo, assistant director of the Orange County crime laboratory