Agencies Booming : Firms Hire Detectives to Stem Drug Abuse

OCEANSIDE — Persistent rumors of mail room employees using and selling drugs prompted Oceanside publisher Tom Missett to call a meeting of his department supervisors. He wanted to know if the rumors were true and, if so, how the problem could be handled.

The supervisors assured Missett that they could deal with the situation at South Coast Newspapers, which publishes the daily Blade Tribune and several other San Diego County community newspapers. Signs were posted throughout the building warning employees not to use drugs or alcohol during working hours.

The counter-measures didn’t work. Stories continued to reach Missett. Strangers were reportedly entering the building at night to buy drugs.

Most chilling to Missett were reports that some of the same supervisors who told him they would handle the problem were actually involved in drug dealing.

Frustrated, he went to the police. “I wouldn’t have guessed it was such a big problem,” Missett recalled. “When we learned they were selling to other people on the job, we realized we just didn’t have the resources to handle it.”

Gaining Popularity

Representatives of the Oceanside Police Department told Missett what law enforcement agencies usually tell business owners with similar problems: The department didn’t have the manpower or the time to launch an investigation.

Oceanside Police Commander Bruce Dunne, then head of the Oceanside department’s Special Forces Bureau, told Missett there was an alternative. The company could hire a private detective agency to place an undercover operative in the mail-room to become friendly with and observe his employees.

Such internal covert operations are more and more becoming the alternative of choice for companies of all sizes. Such investigations are not new. But with drugs a growing problem in the workplace undercover investigations are becoming almost commonplace.

Drug-related arrests at the Union-Tribune Publishing Co. and the departure of 17 employees from Xscribe Corp. are just two recent examples in the San Diego area of the results of private undercover investigations. Most don’t receive much publicity.

“Business is booming,” said Cal Flores, partner in Kennedy Consulting Investigations, Inc., a San Diego-based company which conducted “10 to 20” covert investigations for San Diego companies in the last year, usually for drug problems, although they also investigate alcohol and theft problems.

“Local businesses are developing an awareness for the first time of how bad the (drug) problem is in the workplace.”

Business Is Good

Kennedy Consulting is not the only private detective agency flourishing.

Confidential Management Services Inc., with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, conducted the investigation at Xscribe. President Peyton Schur said business is so good that his company will open a San Diego office by the end of the year.

“We used to spend half our time hustling business,” Schur said. “Now it’s almost to the point we’re beating them off with a stick.”

Business may get better as the problems of drugs in the workplace continue to grow and attract more attention. Former Drug Enforcement Administration official John Windham, president of the San Diego-based Tough on Drugs Inc., believes that statistics estimating “23% of the work force is impaired by drug or alcohol abuse” are accurate, if not conservative.

“And that’s up from estimates of only 10% just a few years ago,” Windham said.

Confronted with a drug problem straight out of last week’s headDRUGS,lines, a company executive doesn’t always know where to turn.

“I call myself naive in these areas,” said Burt Mawhinney, chairman of Xscribe, which manufactures computerized transcription devices. An investigation earlier this year into a theft problem in the Sorrento Valley company uncovered the first indications of drug use among low-level Xscribe employees.

“I wouldn’t even know how to go about (dealing with a drug problem),” he said. “I don’t think most business people do, either.”

The investigations raise certain civil rights issues, however. The American Civil Liberties Union is “increasingly concerned” about this movement of undercover operations toward standard operating procedure status, according to San Diego ACLU legal counsel Greg Marshall. Private investigations do not necessarily have to follow the search and seizure and right-to-privacy guidelines imposed on law enforcement agencies by the courts, according to Marshall.

“How much of a person is sold to an employer?” he asked. “I think in the next 25 years that the workplace may be the primary civil liberty battleground.”

The ACLU representative said the motivations for covert anti-drug sting operations may be praiseworthy. But the power of employers to investigate their employees is too easily abused. “Once people get in a position of power, they find it almost irresistible to use and accumulate it.”

Drug Use Often Found

For South Coast Newspapers’ Missett, last year’s decision to hire an investigator was an easy one. “It’s not a difficult decision when you’ve already asked the people in charge to help, and then you find out they are the problem,” he said.

In many ways the South Coast operation was typical of covert drug investigations. Drug use is often found in 24-hour operations, such as newspapers. “If you put an undercover person in the press rooms of a hundred newspapers, you’d find a narcotics problem in 99 of them,” said Cliff Petrovsky, president of the private investigating agency hired by Missett.

Dunne of the Oceanside Police Department referred Missett to Petrovsky of the Oceanside-based Investigative Network. “We just didn’t have the manpower to go deep cover,” said Dunne, currently Oceanside’s acting chief of police.

The 8-year old Investigative Network primarily investigates fraud and white collar crimes for clients, said Petrovsky, whose background is in business, not law enforcement, although he said he employs ex-FBI and law enforcement agents.

Petrovsky said his company conducts undercover operations for several San Diego corporations, including “large fast-food chains,” usually charging approximately $40 to $60 an hour, with a two-week minimum recommended for an undercover investigation.

As undercover operatives, he usually employs college students or young people with an interest or background in law enforcement who physically fit the role they must play.

Petrovsky said his operatives must follow strict guidelines. First and foremost, they are not to take any drugs, nor are they to search a person’s desk or personal belongings.

“We want them to be observers,” he said.

The police also impose restrictions. Dunne said the agents must be willing to testify in court and that all drug purchases must be controlled and logged in by the police department.

Agent Worked in Mail Room

Sgt. Dennis Sesma of the San Diego Police Department’s Narcotics Street Team said the SDPD also has strict guidelines for dealing with undercover private investigators.

“Under no circumstances are they to make narcotics purchases without the presence of police officers. It has to be controlled by us,” Sesma said.

One of Petrovsky’s agents worked in South Coast’s mail-room and socialized with employees for about a month. Representatives of the agency met with Oceanside police a dozen times during the period. Oceanside Police detectives were called in whenever narcotics, usually methamphetamine (a.k.a “crystal meth” or simply “crystal”), were purchased. All drugs were immediately turned over to the police and logged in as evidence.

Eventually the undercover operative was wired by the police with a microphone when he went to an Oceanside house to purchase crystal methamphetamine, in order to obtain concrete evidence for a court order to raid the house.

The South Coast operation led to the arrest of “three or four” area drug dealers, according to Dunne.

Ironically, most of the South Coast employees involved had either quit or been arrested on unrelated charges by the time the investigation went public with a memo to employees from Missett.

Most employees were surprised to learn of the drug problem and the undercover operation.

“I kind of felt, here we are in the age of Big Brother,” said one former South Coast employee, who asked to remain anonymous. “I had read about these types of things happening in big companies. But I was surprised it came down to the level of a small company such as South Coast.”

Only one South Coast employee was terminated directly due to the investigation. The employee was confronted with the evidence against him and asked to write a statement admitting his involvement with drugs.

The signed statements are a standard procedure, Petrovsky said, a backup in case of any liability problems. “Employers are concerned. They can be sued so easily,” he said.

Half Involve Police

The focus of the investigation is not always a police matter, as it was with South Coast. Xscribe’s Mawhinney purposely didn’t want to involve the police. “Publicity can hurt people and we didn’t want that,” he said.

Flores of Kennedy Consulting said police involvement is only necessary if drug dealing or major thefts are taking taking place. He estimated 50% of his company’s investigations ultimately involve law enforcement agencies.

Even if the police are not involved, Flores emphasized, private detectives must be scrupulous in their evidence gathering. “Clients must be able to be sure that they have a case that will stand up in a termination hearing,” said the 21-year veteran of the San Diego Police Department, with the San Diego County Narcotics Task Force.

Flores joined the firm started by 31-year SDPD veteran John Kennedy last year. Since leaving the force two years ago, Flores has worked as a lecturer and consultant to businesses interested in learning how to deal with the costly problems of drug use by employees.

He often advises companies that when drugs are discovered, termination or police involvement is the last step, not the first. Such high-profile alternatives as camera surveillance, drug testing, lie detector tests, even drug-sniffing dogs can help scare employees out of using drugs at work, Flores said. He also offers seminars to train supervisors to notice and deal with drug problems.

“Awareness is the single objective,” said Flores. “We don’t want to make (the supervisors) narcs or paranoid.

“The goal is not to arrest individuals. The goal is to rehabilitate the user so the company can retain the individual, if he has some use to the company.”

Flores said it is up to the company to dictate the tone of an investigation. Undercover investigations by Kennedy Consulting can cost as much as $3,000 a month. If an employee is noticed slipping drugs into his desk, for example, it is up to the company to decide how to proceed.

Right Agency Needed

Hiring a private detective is “in the same category as bringing in a consultant in any other area,” Mawhinney said. “A lot of times an outside person can take a fresh view. These people are experts, they come in without any preconceived ideas.”

Experts agree it is essential that a company choose the right detective agency, preferably one experienced in the nuances of narcotics traffic. “It’s ironic,” said Schur of Consolidated Management, “that the main problem is often the people they hire to investigate poorly trained and poorly supervised employees are often poorly trained and poorly supervised.”

Schur said that too often investigators go in looking for a “body count,” equating firings with a successful investigation. His company often recommends rehabilitation and preventive measures before terminating employees, Schur said.

Sesma of the SDPD’s Narcotics Street Team said his department will only deal with “reputable” agencies with narcotics experience.

“They (companies) should always feel free to check with us,” he said. “A lot of times going in, the magnitude of the problem is unknown (to company executives).”

Police representatives often recommend, though, that companies first attempt to deal with the problem without taking the extreme step of a covert investigation. NASSCO, for example, regularly conducts drug sweeps, often using dogs. “And everyone knows we’re going to do it and that their work station might be searched,” said NASSCO’s vice president of finance and corporate relations, Fred Hallett.

“(Companies) have to have a posture about drugs in the workplace,” said Dunne of the Oceanside Police Department. “They have to be strong about it, and willing to do something about it.”

Flores of Kennedy Consulting agreed. He noted that undercover operations are the costliest option, best used when the problem is clearly extreme.

“When a guy smokes a joint at lunch, or a crane operator is doing speed, or a vice president has a three martini lunch, it’s no different,” Flores said. “It’s substance abuse. You have to deal with the policy at all levels.”