http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.d ... /703010317

Border agents reporting spike in cocaine seizures
Marijuana, meth levels appear to be holding steady


Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun
Border Patrol Agent R. Friend searches a vehicle at the Highway 86 checkpoint near the Salton Sea on Monday. Agents seized about 30 pounds of marijuana at the checkpoint.
Nelsy Rodriguez
The Desert Sun
March 1, 2007

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COACHELLA VALLEY - The drug best known for fueling the "boogie nights" of the 1970s and 1980s is back.
Seizures of cocaine at area border check points are on the rise. U.S. Border Patrol agents confiscated 524 pounds of the drug from Oct. 1, 2006, through January 2007, which is 35 percent more than what was grabbed during the entire previous fiscal year.

A possible explanation: an increased number of agents dispatched to the border since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, who are catching more of the contraband.

Experts also say foreign drug cartels could be pushing cocaine through the Coachella Valley, which is known as a staging ground for trafficking throughout the United States.

"Lately, it looks like the smuggling has really picked up," Supervisory Border Patrol Agent David Kim said as agents and drug-sniffing dogs patrolled two check points near the Salton Sea Monday. "We're already well over what we seized last year."

Agents have caught 136 pounds more during the first four months of this fiscal year beginning in October than in all of fiscal 2005-06. It's a step in the gradual climb from 75 pounds in fiscal 2002-03 to the current 524 pounds.

Those agents search vehicles, semis and locomotives for illegal cargo, including humans and drugs. But drugs, Kim said, seem to be the big catch lately.

The most recent cocaine bust at the Highway 111 checkpoint occurred last Thursday. Agents seized 68 pounds of the white powder, valued at more than $2.1 million, or $30,882 per pound, stashed under the rear seat of a 1989 Toyota.

And on Monday, agents at the Highway 86 checkpoint found six bricks of marijuana in the spare tire of a family car carrying a mother, father and their two teenage children.


"As creative as you can get, they're doing it," Kim said. "What the dogs do for us is priceless."
The marijuana seizure helps demonstrate the idea that pot and methamphetamine use is remaining constant, law enforcement officials said. Both are less expensive and give the user a longer lasting experience.

Increasingly, however, some agents say meth is manufactured domestically in desolate areas of the desert instead of being transported across the U.S.-Mexican border as often as it had been.

"Why go through the extra step of scrutiny when you can go out and make it" without crossing checkpoints, Kim asked. "There's so much open area that no one can patrol."

The border is monitored by an estimated 750 border patrol agents. The number of agents has increased by approximately 150 in the past seven years, Kim said.

Some say the apparent increase in cocaine supplies is already making a mark on the valley.

Steve Harmon, administrator of the Oasis Rehabilitation Center, said he has seen a 15-percent increase in patients testing positive for cocaine in the year the Indio inpatient facility has been open.

"We have a lot of people test positive for drugs," he said. "That's always been the case. But we've seen the increase of cocaine, while meth has probably stayed the same level and same thing with marijuana."

Mike Smith, case manager at The Ranch Recovery Centers Inc. in Desert Hot Springs, agreed that cocaine is leaving its tell-tale trial.

"When something floods the market everybody's got a lot of it," Smith said.

And students are telling Smith, who gives talks on substance abuse and recovery to area youth, that cocaine is surfacing in schools.

"Everybody's passing it around," Smith said. "You don't know how long it's going to last so you try to get as much of it as you possibly can."

"We saw it kind of in spurts," Commander Fred Fierro of the Coachella Valley Narcotics Task Force said of local drug seizures. "But when we thought it was meth, it turned out to be coke. Further up the food chain somebody made that decision."