Narcotics Task Force

County auditors have finished a 16-month review of the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force's finances, county commissioners said yesterday.The commissioners have not reviewed the final, 36-page document, but Commissioner Elmer C. Lippy said a recent draft report he read showed no financial improprieties."

Westminster City Council members told Carroll State's Attorney Thomas E. Hickman last night that they need more information about how the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force will operate in the future before agreeing to continue to participate.Mr. Hickman said disagreements among the groups involved in the task force -- county commissioners, city officials and the state's attorney's office -- and a county audit of the force's books have been "a great distraction.""I hope you will do what you can to straighten things out," he said at the council meeting.

The future of the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force comes down to one thing.Money -- who is going to get it and who is going to control it.Last week, the city of Westminster threatened to pull its one police officer out of the group if the county commissioners make good on their promise to shut the city out of all proceeds from the sale of goods seized by the task force during drug investigations.The city, for more than four years, has taken half of those proceeds.The county commissioners and the state's attorney are eager to keep the city involved in the four-agency task force.

By zealously fighting to prevent any oversight of the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force, State's Attorney Thomas E. Hickman has jeopardized its very existence.Unless some workable agreement is crafted soon, Westminster's top elected officials are prepared to pull the city out of this cooperative undercover drug enforcement effort.Despite his attempt to portray himself as a victim of unscrupulous political machinations in the county, Mr. Hickman has only himself to blame for this unhappy state of affairs.

Reward offered in bank robberiesHarford County Crime Solvers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for the arrest and indictment of the person responsible for robbing the Maryland National Bank in the Constant Friendship Shopping Center on April 14 and May 16.Maryland State Police are searching for a man described as black, 25 to 35 years old, about 6 feet tall, with a thin to medium build and possibly a light mustache.A man quietly approached a teller April 14, displayed a handgun and demanded money.

The Westminster City Council may have violated Maryland's open meetings law Monday night by barring the public from a discussion of Mayor W. Benjamin Brown's proposal to create an oversight committee for the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force.Mr. Brown is proposing a policy review board, primarily of elected officials, that would oversee task force policy. He said yesterday that he got interested because of widespread criticism of the task force by local attorneys, judges and politicians.

There seems to be a great deal of confusion in the Carroll County State's Attorney's office over the policy of notifying confidential informants of their right to be represented by a lawyer. Despite the confusion, the pattern is clear -- prosecutors routinely ignore the rights of Carroll citizens who volunteer to become informants.Barton F. Walker III, an assistant state's attorney who works on the county's Narcotics Task Force, testified in court that "it is not my position to advise [an informant]

Carroll County's Narcotics Task Force should pay special attention to the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision curtailing the use of excessive forfeitures in drug cases. The decision, handed down on the court's last day of the session, calls into question a number of the aggressive forfeiture practices Carroll's task force regularly uses.The case before the Supreme Court involved a South Dakota man who had his car-repair business and trailer home seized after he sold two ounces of cocaine to an undercover officer.

The audit of the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force is long overdue. This police group has been operating for more than four years without publicly disclosing the value of the assets it has seized or obtained through its "buy back" program. Nor has it said how that money was spent.The County Commissioners assert there is only one reason for the audit -- to see whether $10,000 of secure radio equipment could be purchased using funds from the task force's seized assets. After they heard rumors that the task force had a $50,000 "slush fund," the commissioners asked for a cursory accounting.

The following editorials appeared in other zoned editions of The Baltimore Sun last week.Carroll County* While the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force may not have $50,000 stashed in a secret fund, as some county employees contended, no one outside the drug task force seems to know much about the finances of this law enforcement group. That is unfortunate. This group must start accounting for the tens of thousands of dollars it has confiscated and allegedly spent since its inception in the late 1980s.