By RAELYNN RICARTE
News staff writer
July 11, 2007

Hood River County’s law enforcement agencies have turned their attention toward jumpstarting undercover drug operations.

District Attorney John Sewell believes the county should consider pulling out of the Mid-Columbia Interagency Narcotics Task Force if something doesn’t change soon.

He said it has now been almost five months since a new MINT case crossed his desk.

“I am extremely dissatisfied with the lack of performance by the MINT team in this county,” said Sewell.

“The MINT team concept worked here very well for more a decade, but if it can’t do any better than it’s done in the last five months then perhaps Hood River County needs to try another approach.”

Sheriff Joe Wampler does not want to see the county withdraw from MINT. He believes detectives specializing in “time-consuming” narcotics investigations are essential to public safety.

However, he agrees with Sewell that the five undercover detectives involved in MINT need to make up for lost time spent in the county.

“The City of Hood River has been off-line for a few months now and that has really hurt us,” said Wampler. “Until the city gets a detective up and running we are a man down and that’s going to affect our work.”

Sewell said Hood River Police Chief Bruce Ludwig’s decision to replace a seasoned detective over a minor accounting error contributed largely to the crisis. He said that challenge was compounded when Ludwig’s new choice for the job was removed for off-duty misconduct.

He questions why MINT hasn’t stepped up to cover the city’s loss of manpower by assisting Wampler’s chosen detective. According to Sewell, that individual has been forced to work solo in developing cases, which has proven difficult.

“The citizens of this community deserve a lot more for their money than what they’ve been getting. Leaving one detective to basically work here alone is inexcusable,” he said.

Oregon State Police Lt. Pat Ashmore, who oversees MINT, said Sewell and Wampler have expressed “legitimate concerns that will be dealt with.” He said the narcotics team usually works where drug trafficking is most active and that has been in Wasco County this spring. However, he said the lack of arrests for Hood River County during recent months has highlighted a teamwork problem that needs to be addressed.

“This county deserves to have a drug team that operates at 100 percent,” said Ashmore. “But MINT’s been broken for awhile now and we’re making adjustments.”

He is unapologetic about initiating the investigation into an accounting error that started a chain reaction of events in Hood River.

Ashmore, who has spent almost 17 years in narcotics enforcement, said $600 of evidence receipts appeared to be missing when two local detectives looked for them in February. He said the Department of Justice was then asked to scrutinize their ledgers.

“We all make mistakes but in this case there was some terrible bookwork that would have been a defense attorney’s dream,” said Ashmore.

He was pleased DOJ reported only $17.34 of receipts missing during a two-year period, and that the two detectives from Hood River County were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Ashmore said new standards for recordkeeping have been instituted. He said MINT members now keep better track of the money used to initiate drug deals. Without the proper receipts, he said informants could claim to not have gotten any cash.

“Hopefully we won’t run into this problem again and MINT’s integrity will remain unchanged,” said Ashmore.

He said Ludwig was solely responsible for the decision to suspend — and later replace — the city’s detective when the problem surfaced. Ashmore said his supervision of MINT detectives extends only to field operations.

He said MINT members are now required to reach outside their territorial boundaries. He wants the detectives to show Hood River County government leaders and citizens what they can accomplish with better teamwork.

“We are only as strong as our strongest link and as weak as our weakest,” said Ashmore. “Everybody has a job to do here and all of our jobs together are supposed to be about getting bad guys and putting them in jail.”

Wampler said local communities should not worry that drug activity will run rampant as MINT regroups. He said the team, in spite of manpower challenges, seized almost 10,000 marijuana plants in the Gorge during that past month. And small arrests — and sometimes major ones — are made every day by patrol deputies.

“Ninety-five percent of our calls have some relationship to drug and alcohol abuse,” said Wampler. “We are always working in this agency to eliminate drug activity.”