BLEAK ASSESSMENT OF WAR ON DRUGS; Torricelli Issues Report

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, April 5, 1992

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | A34

Although winnable, the war on drugs is now being lost, at least on the international front.

That was the conclusion of Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, D-Englewood, in a status report he gave to Bergen County law enforcement officials in Hackensack on Friday. In a 30-minute briefing that had little good news, he offered a bleak assessment of the struggle.

“The battle against the growers is largely lost,” said Torricelli, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs. “While we’ve dramatically increased federal spending, the actual coca production rate has increased 400 percent.”

The U.S. government has spent almost $12 billion since 1982 to fight drugs, he said.

However, much of that ended up in the pockets of narcotics traffickers, who then used the money to buy protection from Andean nations law enforcement agencies charged with halting their illegal trade, Torricelli added.

He called for a renewed effort against drugs on the home front, in “our families, schools, and communities, and not in the jungle of Peru.”

“We’ve lost battles, but there is no reason not win the war,” he said.

Fort Lee Police Chief John Orso, one of about 70 police chiefs, narcotics officers, and county officials present, cited the success of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in the borough’s public schools. He said that effort should be intensified as a way to cut down on the demand for drugs.

Paramus Police Chief Joseph Delaney recalled testifying before a U.S. Senate committee in 1975, when the war on drugs was focused on the heroin trade in Turkey. The problem then, as now, was that communities and local law enforcement agencies were starved of resources to wage a credible war.

Echoing the sentiment of many in the audience, Delaney asked Torricelli what he had to offer them in terms of additional resources.

A crime bill passed recently by the House of Representatives and now being considered by the Senate contains $3 billion for local programs, Torricelli said. However, he said, it contains a provision calling for a seven-day waiting period to purchase guns.

President Bush has promised to veto legislation containing gun-control measures, he said.

Englewood Police Capt. C. Kenneth Tinsley asked Torricelli about incentives to encourage law enforcement officers and other public employees to live in the communities in which they work. City neighborhoods could be stabilized by the presence of these officers, he said.

One of the reasons many give for not living in the community is the high cost of housing, Tinsley added. Bergen County Executive William “Pat” Schuber answered that the county Housing Authority is considering a proposal to aid public employees, especially law enforcement workers, with low-interest loans and mortgages.

Caption: PHOTO – Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, D-Englewood, speaking Friday in Hackensack at a briefing on the war on drugs. AL PAGLIONE / THE RECORD –

FEDERAL LIMIT ON INMATES ASSAILED; Del Tufo Weighs Legal Challenge

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, April 1, 1992

The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | B01

New Jersey Attorney General Robert J. Del Tufo said Tuesday that he is considering challenging federal court orders that limit the number of state prisoners in some county jails.

“I would prefer not to have a federal judge telling the state what it can and cannot do,” he said.

Del Tufo said he talked Monday with U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr about a new U.S. Justice Department policy to provide legal help to states that are trying to lift court-ordered limits on prison populations.

He said he wants to review the current consent decrees restricting the number of state inmates in the Essex, Atlantic, Burlington, Monmouth, and Union county jails, with an eye toward challenging those limits.

Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune said lifting the cap on state inmates at other jails might help the Bergen County Jail because some state prisoners could be removed, but that the problem would remain with the state.

“If the state realizes it has an overcrowding problem, then it must address it at the state level, not at the expense of the county jail system,” Terhune said.

The new Justice Department policy was first put forth by Barr in a Jan. 14 speech in which he said the ability of states in recent years to manage their own prisons has been hampered by lower federal court rulings that came out of lawsuits filed by inmates.

“Many courts went far beyond what the Constitution requires in remedying purported Eighth Amendment violations,” Barr said in the speech. “Caps, in particular, have wrought havoc with the states efforts to get criminals off the street.”

But on Jan. 15, the day after Barr’s speech, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that undercut his position, said Elizabeth Alexander, deputy director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ruling, in a case originating in Boston, made reopening consent decrees easier, but put limits on how much they could be rewritten, Alexander said.

“I’m really surprised that Barr is continuing to make this argument,” she said. “In the face of the decision, I would have thought that he would stop, because it was so soundly rejected by the Supreme Court.”

The Bergen County Jail operates at an average of 235 percent of its rated capacity of 423 inmates, with its population hovering around 1,000 during the week and exceeding that on weekends. The county and state are co-defendants in a 1988 lawsuit filed by inmates who charged that their constitutional rights were being violated by conditions at the jail.

James Stabile, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said the state prison system currently runs at 135 percent capacity. Although the department removed 1,559 inmates from county jails in February, the caps in the five counties prevented the state from spreading that number out, he said.

For instance, the department removed 348 prisoners from the Essex County Jail, one of the jails under consent decrees, but only 72 inmates from Bergen County. The number could have been divided more evenly among the counties if the state could be flexible with the cap, Stabile said.

BERGEN FIRM HIT IN $13M DRUG BUST

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, April 20, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Edition: All Editions | NEWS | Page A01

Federal drug agents have arrested the president of an Englewood Cliffs trucking firm, seized 1,087 pounds of cocaine found in a company truck, and confiscated the company’s assets, officials said.
Agents in New York, Los Angeles, and Tucson, Ariz., seized an additional 420 pounds of cocaine bringing the total value of the drug seizure to $13.3 million after the arrest of six individuals Wednesday in Queens, U.S. Customs Service Special Agent Martin Ficke said Friday. Three other people were arrested in Tucson, he said.
Jaime Quintero, president of Suffolk Overland Transport Inc. at 701 Palisades Ave., set up the deal for the truck to carry the drugs, Ficke said.
Ficke said about 12 trailers belonging to the company, which he said had been involved in “significant” drug trafficking since December 1989, were seized, along with other assets. The company’s 25 employees were effectively out of work, he said.
A man who answered Suffolk Overland Transport’s telephone in Englewood Cliffs on Friday declined to comment.
After the investigation began about two weeks ago in Tucson, agents followed a truck to Los Angeles, then to Newark, and finally to Queens, Ficke said.

Keywords: USA; DRUG; CRIME; ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS; BUSINESS; EXECUTIVE; MOTOR VEHICLE

SHOPPERS SIGN UP TO SUPPORT TROOPS

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, January 27, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A constant question in letters written home by American servicemen and women in the Middle East is how the public is reacting to their being over there.
If the more than 3,000 signatures collected on banners at two Paramus shopping malls Saturday are any measure, then support for the men and women if not for the war itself is overwhelming, said family members who organized the banner-signing.
“Every signature that goes on there is one more support for our men and women, and they will know how the public really feels, that they really care and have pride in them,” said one of the organizers, Joan Piazza of Paramus. Her 21-year-old son, Lance Cpl. Steven Piazza, is on the front line in Saudi Arabia with the U.S. Marine Corps 81st Platoon.
The Bergen County chapter of the American Red Cross Military Family Support Group, formed shortly after the first deployment of servicemen and women in August, set up tables inside Paramus Park mall and Garden State Plaza at 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The white nylon banners each had a yellow band with black lettering above and below reading “Support Our Troops, Come Home Soon. “
By mid-afternoon, people were searching for space in the cotton margins of the banners. Shopper after shopper walked up to the tables, many simply to sign their names, others to write such messages as “You are in our hearts and prayers. God Bless. “
Sandy Rosenberg, 54, of Paramus said she signed the banner because although she is against the war she wants the men and women serving in the Middle East to know that she supports them and wants them to come home safely.
Kevin Mendillo, 29, of Fort Lee commended the military family support group for its effort to boost the morale of the troops.
“These guys are putting their lives on the line, risking their lives to protect us,” Mendillo said.
The banners will hang atop the Bergen County Courthouse, Piazza said. When the war is over and the soldiers and sailors return, the banners will be presented to them at a “big party. “

Keywords: USA; IRAQ; KUWAIT; WARFARE; DEFENSE; SAUDI ARABIA; MIDDLE EAST; PARAMUS

Caption: COLOR – JOE GIARDELLI / THE RECORD – Nancy Monaco of Fort Lee signing a banner at Paramus Park mall. PHOTO – AL PAGLIONE / THE RECORD – Bergen County Executive William “Pat” Schuber, left, and Sheriff Jack Terhune at courthouse ceremony honoring U.S. troops.

DRUG CACHE USED TO LURE TRAFFICKING SUSPECTS

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, October 31, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Federal agents in Newark used a cache of 11 pounds of pure heroin seized recently from a Saudi courier at Newark International Airport the largest haul of heroin imported through the airport to track down and arrest five persons believed to be major drug traffickers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fernandez said the monthlong investigation, dubbed “Operation Desert Horse” because of its Lebanon distribution base, eventually yielded 9 more pounds of heroin and $162,000 in cash.

The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates the 20 pounds of heroin would be worth more than $10 million on the street after its purity was diluted.

“This is a tremendous, a staggering amount of heroin. This will have a noticeable impact on the availability of heroin on the street,” Fernandez said.
“The defendants here were at the very source of the stream. They were at the top of the pyramid because they were the ones receiving this very pure heroin from the courier.”

Facing charges of conspiracy to import and distribute heroin are Walid El-Homeidi of Saudi Arabia; Samir Tehfe, a Lebanese national who lives in Guttenberg; Mohammed Hamye, also a Lebanese national, of Long Island; Benny Rodriguez of North Bergen; and Carlos Solis Payano and Angel Payano, both citizens of the Dominican Republic and residents of New York City.

All the defendants, now being held in the Union County Jail, face maximum life sentences and $4 million fines, Fernandez said. U.S. District Judge H. Lee Sarokin on Monday ordered the men held without bail pending trial.

Josephine Chouberrian, 38, and her 26-year-old sister, Jacqueline Minassian, of Watertown, Mass., in whose home the additional nine pounds of heroin was seized, and Fouad Gharib, a Canadian citizen, are due to be transferred to New Jersey to face charges in connection with the case, Fernandez said.

U.S. Customs and DEA agents in Newark began investigating on Oct. 7, after inspectors noticed that the sides of a suitcase carried by El-Homeidi, 28, were unusually thick, said Robert Van Etten, Customs special agent in charge.

An examination of the suitcase uncovered about 11 pounds of packaged heroin secreted in its sides, Van Etten said.

After El-Homeidi’s arrest on Oct. 7, Customs and DEA agents lured Tehfe, 31, and Rodriquez, 52, to a hotel in Newark to pick up the heroin on Oct. 13, when they were arrested. Fernandez declined to say how officials were led to Hamye and the Payano brothers.

Caption: PHOTO – JOHN DECKER / THE RECORD – Customs agents, from left, Robert E. Van Etten, Mark Shanley, and Kathleen Haage at Newark International Airport with nearly $170,000 in cash and 11 pounds of heroin, the largest-ever drug seizure at the airport.

MAN ARRESTED IN BERGEN WANTED BY FEDS

MICHAEL O. ALLEN | Saturday, October 20, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A 30-year-old Israeli who was arrested in Cliffside Park on burglary charges is wanted by federal authorities for illegally reentering the United States, officials said. Eliyahu Shalom, being held Friday in the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack on $20,000 bail on the burglary and theft charges, was convicted of illegally entering the country in 1986 and was put on probation, on condition he keep immigration officials appraised of his whereabouts.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Rosato said Shalom moved from his known address in Brooklyn without notifying probation officials, and he was deported to Israel in 1987.

A woman arrived at her Cliffside Park home Thursday and found Shalom there, police said. Shalom fled and was arrested in Edgewater. He is to be delivered to the U.S. Marshals Service after his case is disposed of in Bergen County, Rosato said.