Drug War Goes North : DEA Agents Target Upscale Areas, Where Kingpins Are Congregating

Federal narcotics agents are taking their drug war into San Diego’s suburbs, setting up a satellite office in Carlsbad to put heat on drug kingpins who authorities say are based in North County’s upscale neighborhoods.

“The ones we’re concerned about are living up there, in Fairbanks Ranch, Rancho Santa Fe, Carlsbad and those neighborhoods. They hold their (drug-trafficking) meetings up there,” even if the drugs aren’t being produced or stored there, said Ron D’Ulisse, a special agent and spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

“These major drug traffickers eventually want to surface as respectable, legitimate people,” D’Ulisse said. “They want to walk the streets and be on boards and active in homeowners’ associations. They want to be respected members of the community, and not hang around sleaze. They want to hang around with doctors and lawyers and put themselves in that environment.”

For those and related logistical and strategic reasons, an unspecified number of DEA agents normally based in National City are setting up shop at an undisclosed Carlsbad site, establishing one of the few “suburban” drug enforcement offices in the nation.

In addition to the DEA move into Carlsbad, the Narcotics Task Force, a multi-agency drug enforcement team, is doubling its existing, undisclosed contingent of agents in North County, for somewhat different reasons.

Unlike the DEA, which focuses primarily on national and international drug traffickers who deal to large wholesalers of illicit drugs, the NTF focuses more on mid-level drug wholesalers and retailers who deal primarily in San Diego County, even though their operations may reach out of state. North County, NTF officials say, is rife with such drug traffic.

“Over the past two or three months, we’ve become aware of how overwhelmed we are in North County,” said Ron Garibotto, a DEA agent who is coordinator of the countywide NTF, whose member agencies include the Sheriff’s Department and various municipal police departments.

A relatively new member of the NTF is the U.S. Border Patrol, which joined the team because of the increasing number of undocumented aliens connected with the growing of marijuana and the manufacture of the synthetic, illicit drug methamphetamine in North County, Garibotto said.

Last year, the NTF discovered and shut down 160 methamphetamine laboratories--one third of all such seizures in the entire nation, Garibotto said. He blamed the high concentration of meth labs locally on the historically high availability in San Diego County of precursor chemicals necessary for the manufacture of methamphetamine. While the availability of such ingredients is drying up, most meth labs already are well-entrenched in the area and continue to do business here.

Adding to the problem, agents have noticed an increase in the use of undocumented aliens in the meth labs, either as lookout guards or as actual cooks of the drug.

Besides the methamphetamine seizures, NTF agents so far this fiscal year--which ends Oct. 1--have confiscated 20,000 marijuana plants in the county, compared to 8,500 marijuana plants seized during all of the previous year. Most of the seizures occurred in North County, including two major busts in recent weeks of cultivated marijuana fields in Pauma Valley.

The NTF and DEA work hand-in-hand on local investigations; NTF agents are in fact deputized DEA agents and are allowed to follow their local leads to anywhere in the nation, with the same authority as a federal drug agent.

More typically, however, investigations into the highest level of drug trafficking--usually involving cocaine and marijuana--are handled by the DEA, and agents with that agency believe their move into Carlsbad will make a difference.

“We go where the drug business is,” D’Ulisse said. “If drug-trafficking organizations weren’t up in North County, there wouldn’t be a need for us up there. But there is.”

The kingpins, he said, have “lots of money, so they need to blend in, not stick out. They want to drive their Mercedeses without being noticed. They want to build their million-dollar houses in Rancho Santa Fe, where it’s just another million-dollar house.”

While the presence of drug traffickers in the county’s northern reaches “is not a brand-new discovery,” D’Ulisse said, agents have “found over the past three or four years that major organizations are locating or relocating to the North County area.”

Indeed, a full half of the DEA’s private-property seizures last year--cars, boats and aircraft used in drug trafficking, along with cash and other assets--came from North County. In addition, two homes--one each in Fairbanks Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe--were seized by DEA agents last year because they were purchased with drug money.

The DEA has 89 agents assigned to its San Diego region, and, until now, all were based in National City. But a growing number of investigations and surveillance operations have taken agents to North County, eating three or more hours of each agent’s day in commuting time alone, D’Ulisse said.

So the DEA has decided to put agents closer to the action. “The more commute time we can cut out, the more time we can spend on investigations,” he said.

One of the DEA’s more sensational cases occurred in May, 1987, with the confiscation of 6 tons of marijuana in storage in Julian--a bust that led to the discovery of 3 more tons of marijuana in Fallbrook. The investigation took agents to Florida, Michigan and British Columbia and resulted in the arrest of a U.S. Customs Service agent and a Canadian customs inspector, the seizure of more than $17 million in cash and property, and the crippling of a drug-smuggling network believed responsible for bringing more than 100 tons of marijuana into the United States in a single year.

The Julian tip-off came from the investigation into the kidnaping and torture death of DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in Mexico in 1985.

Specific targets for investigation by the DEA, D’Ulisse said, “are persons involved in the interstate and international trafficking of drugs . . . who travel from here to Miami or New York and back frequently.”

They’re drawn to northern San Diego County not because of the area’s proximity to Mexico and South America--in fact, they may be importing their drugs through Miami, Los Angeles or other ports. Instead, they locate here because of the region’s ambiance, especially along the coast from Del Mar to Carlsbad, D’Ulisse said.

“Our proximity to Mexico has impact more in terms of our local street (drug) traffic”--an area of more pressing concern to the NTF than the DEA, D’Ulisse said.

“There are a thousand little guys, each bringing back a little bit of drugs from across the border. It’s like an invasion of an army of ants, and we can’t go after them, even though, in an accumulative sense, they’re responsible for a lot of drugs in San Diego County.”

In North County, “we’re looking more at the bigger guys who are either using the area to store large amounts of marijuana for shipment outside the area, or who are making their deals on paper but are not personally trafficking the drugs themselves,” D’Ulisse said.

“These are the people who are coordinating the importation and distribution of drugs. They’re hiring the people to go to South America. They’re disbursing the money and laundering the money. But these people aren’t necessarily the delivery boys.”