1st-Time Drug Offenders Rarely Get Jail : Law and order: Officials say penalties should be stiffened but they stop short of endorsing L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates’ statement that casual users should be shot.

Casual drug users--the people Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates says should be shot--rarely receive jail sentences on their first offense in Ventura County despite the county’s tough law and order image.

Possession of a gram of cocaine on first offense, a felony that carries a possible one-year jail term, probably will land the casual drug user in the county probation department’s diversion program, prosecutors said this week.

The rules there: Obey all laws for two years, attend drug education classes and pass about two urine tests during that time. If all conditions are met, the charge is purged from the user’s record.

According to law enforcement officials, first-time felony possession convictions for heroin, PCP, LSD or methamphetamines also usually go to diversion instead of jail. If the offenders behave, their slates are wiped clean.

And in Ventura County, as throughout California, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is a misdemeanor that costs little more than most speeding tickets; it carries a $100 fine.

Was Gates right to suggest shooting casual drug users?

“It was, at first blush . . . an irresponsible statement,” said Sheriff John V. Gillespie, whose own preference is to jail them instead in a proposed “tent city” that he would like to see built on the Seabee base at Port Hueneme.

But while Gillespie excused Gates as trying to shock lawmakers into focusing on America’s drug addiction, he also advocated the firing squad for smugglers, “who bring in tons and tons of cocaine and . . . see that it gets peddled on junior high school campuses, and the people behind the assassination of more than 200 judges in Colombia.”

Ventura Police Chief Richard Thomas said: “Casual drug users are in large part responsible for the predicament that this country’s in with drugs today. And I think that they ought to be dealt with as severely as we can deal with them, but I would stop short of shooting them.” The answer, Thomas said, is “severe jail sentences.”

And Simi Valley Police Chief Lindsey (Paul) Miller said, “I don’t really believe that he as an individual or as a police chief would advocate the execution of anybody for casual drug use.”

But the casual drug user’s money is feeding the traffickers, and that must be stopped, Miller said.

While Ventura County law enforcement officials drew the line this week at endorsing Gates’ firing squad solution, many said jail is more appropriate for casual drug users than the second chance they now receive on first offenses.

In fact, the current diversion program has about a 45% failure rate--measured by dropouts and continued drug use--and is widely referred to as a joke by law enforcement officials.

Officials find the program so unsuccessful that the Municipal Court and the offices of the public defender and district attorney are working to help the county Corrections Services Agency, the official name of the probation department, to revise it.

In a June 29 letter, Presiding Municipal Judge Lee E. Cooper Jr. wrote the department:

“A program that does not do anything particularly worthwhile is a waste of money. For courts to place people into such a program is a fraud on them and the public we serve. . . . If we do not see a substantial improvement in the program immediately, we will seek an alternative provider for a program of substance.”

The problem, according to diversion program Director Calvin Remington, is that the courts are feeding mostly hard-core cocaine addicts into a program that was designed 15 years ago for casual users of drugs ranging from marijuana to heroin.

“Sometimes they don’t report in, they move, they leave the area,” Remington said Friday. “I have to assume, if they’re leading a nice, productive life, they would tend to report in and take care of business, so I think the 45% that fail are continuing to use drugs.”

Deputy Public Defender Jean L. Farley said recent budget cuts have forced the probation department to focus its dwindling resources on hard-core addicts, which means less attention is paid to casual drug users--who she said fall off diversion more frequently as a result.

Remington said about 70 to 75 people per month go into the diversion program. The majority of people sent into diversion last year--625 or 85%--were arrested for drug intoxication, while the remaining 110 or 15% were arrested for simple possession charges, he said.

And about 2,160 people were arraigned on possession charges alone, court officials said.

Of the 900 to 1,000 drug users now in diversion, 80% were arrested for cocaine charges, 10% for amphetamines, 5% for heroin and 5% for marijuana, Remington said. Seventy-five percent are employed. Eighty percent are males earning an average of $18,000 a year, while 20% are females earning an average of $9,000 a year, he said.

Remington said probation officials hope to get a revised diversion program in place within 60 days. They also hope it will reduce the number of people who “fall off” diversion and are rearrested on drug charges, he said.

The new plan would have two levels: the first for casual drug users who are not found to be addicted and the second for more hard-core addicts, Remington said.

The first level would replace the current minimum 5 1/2-hour drug education program with a minimum 26 1/2 hours of counseling and education, and would subject participants to drug tests at least once a month, he said.

“If the person tests dirty, they may be prosecuted, or they may get a chance from the court to go to Level 2,” Remington said. “Level 2 hasn’t been designed yet, but it’s going to be a very lengthy program, somewhere between nine and 12 months” of education, counseling and treatment, plus frequent and random drug tests.

The increased attention for drug users could be subsidized by fees levied against people who opt for diversion instead of jail, he said.

Also, the probation department is working with the RAND Corp. of Santa Monica to experiment with more accurate drug tests which could make it more difficult for someone’s drug use to escape detection, Remington said.

Cocaine shows up in tests for only seven to 10 days after it is used, and the user often has some advance warning of when he or she will be tested, Remington said.

But while Remington says the people on diversion get “a very good deal from the system” if they follow the rules, prosecutors say casual drug users will be hit hard if they “fall off” diversion and are rearrested.

Diversion participants who “fall off” are prosecuted for the original charge and any additional charges for which they were arrested.

Second offenses for possessing carry a maximum penalty of up to three years in jail, and convicts in Ventura County often serve a sentence of 60 to 120 days, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward F. Brodie.

And reoffending on intoxication charges will land the casual user in jail for a mandatory minimum of 90 days, he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald C. Janes said he supports diversion for first-time offenders so they can get treatment. But he added, “The second time, we should come down on them like a ton of bricks.”

However, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said, “Diversion is the worst thing that’s happened to the war on drugs.” Diversion “basically immunizes” first-time offenders for whom their arrest “is clearly not the first time” they have used drugs, Bradbury said.

Bradbury and Gillespie have drafted an extensive--and expensive--plan for dealing with casual drug users. If the U.S. Department of Justice and federal drug czar William Bennett approve the $7-million proposal, the county would get federal aid to increase drug treatment and education, hire more prosecutors, boost staff in the sheriff’s crime lab to test more urine and blood samples, and build a tent jail to house so-called “recreational users” who are convicted.

But while all the police chiefs of Ventura County have signed off on the drug plan and support jail time for second offenders, they have varied ideas on how to treat first-time offenders.

Oxnard Police Chief Robert Owens proposes stiff fines and formal probation for first-time offenders.

Ventura’s Chief Thomas advocates mandatory jail terms.

And Santa Paula Police Chief Robert Adair supports Bradbury’s and Gillespie’s drug strategy, adding: “If I had my druthers, the programs would be adequately funded, and there would be sufficient rehabilitation programs out there. But unfortunately there are not.”

But some officials have questioned the soundness of the plan provisions that would increase prosecution and punishment for casual drug users.

Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman conceded that “casual cocaine use is very serious. . . . But I do not feel that taking those casual users and pumping them into an overcrowded court system and making criminals out of them is going to do anything.”

Instead, he endorses the plan to improve the diversion program and favors putting drug users who fall off of it into the county’s work-furlough program so they could sleep in barracks at night and work at their regular jobs by day.

Farley said of the tent jail plan, “Studies have shown that, if you put somebody in jail who is a first-time drug user and you sentence them to six months in hard labor, when they come out, they’re not going to have anything different than they had when they went in. . . . They’re going to be introduced back into the same social situation they have been in before.”

And Judge Cooper said, “I don’t have a lot of problem with that tent idea, but what they were trying to do is to get to the casual drug user. And I put to them, ‘If you’re not getting to them now, how are you going to get to them with this program in place?’ ”