NACOGDOCHES – Nacogdoches county officials were notified in late September that the Deep East Texas Regional Narcotics Task Force would lose funding in six months. But until just a few weeks ago, the county had not really been working on shutting down operations and figuring out what to do with 13 forfeited vehicles, 30 seized vehicles and 19 fleet vehicles.

 

Representatives of some of the participating agencies were in Nacogdoches Monday to find out why Nacogdoches County hasn't been trying to plan ahead for what is going to be a major closeout operation.

 

"Up until this point, we have been trying to salvage our task force operations," Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss said. "We've been lobbying to keep it going, but now it doesn't look like that will be a possibility."

 

Since Kerss is the statutory head of the Task Force, it ultimately falls on his shoulders to formulate a plan for either storing or destroying evidence and figuring out how to handle seized property and cars.

 

Kerss said he's hoping that his office will be able to "destroy" most of the 18 years of evidence stored at the task force, but some area prosecutors may want to keep the physical evidence.

 

"I'm not looking forward to taking all of that evidence and figuring out where I'm going to put it at our sheriff's office," he said.

 

If he is granted permission to destroy the older material, Kerss said he will most likely have to hire an independent secure shredding company, or hire clerical staff to destroy the evidence.

 

"Because the paperwork will contain agents' names and informant names, these are not the kind of files that I could allow our inmates to help dispose of," he said.

To date, Kerss said the Task Force had about $24,000 left in the budget – and that is supposed to cover any ongoing operations and closeout costs through the end of March. While that figure does not cover any money that may come from the sale of task force vehicles, Kerss said even if they are allowed to give remaining funds back to member agencies, there won't be a lot of money to go around.

 

At one time, the task force had a fairly sizable bank balance from seized properties and goods, but according to Kerss, those surplus funds were spent during last summer when the task force had to operate independently for three months. And currently, the this year's budget is being funded with 50-percent internal funding.

 

While the news was not all good for participating member agencies Monday, some of them were just happy to receive any news at all.

Kent Havard, with the Diboll Police Department, said his department hasn't been informed about anything that's going on.

 

"We haven't either," Kerss replied. "We're in the dark about a lot of things, and we've had to scratch and claw to get what little bit of information we're getting."

Kerss said state officials are either not entirely sure what's going on themselves or are really good about withholding information.

 

Havard wanted to know what happens next, because his department relies heavily on the task force presence to help control a drug problem.

 

"We share your frustration," Nacogdoches County Judge Sue Kennedy said. "We have questions about where we're going to go or what we're going to do for narcotics enforcement. You are not alone."

 

Johnny Johnson's e-mail address is jjohnson@coxnews.com.