Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Louisville police regularly go to the FBI for help with cases ranging from murder to bank robberies.
The FBI’s help was critical in the capture last month of John T. Boston in Dallas, who was extradited to Kentucky on rape charges, said Capt. Steve Thompson, who heads the department’s criminal investigations unit.
“They’ve always been there when we needed them,” he said. But now, police will have to adjust, Thompson said, as the FBI focuses on preventing terrorism.
Changes may force some Kentucky police agencies to shoulder a heavier burden in the fight against drugs and violent crime, officials said Tuesday.
The Kentucky FBI isn’t abandoning its crime-solving mission, but it will become more selective in taking on bank robberies, drug cases and white-collar crime under a federal initiative that makes preventing terrorism the agency’s highest priority.
Law enforcement officials will get less help from an agency that brings expertise, national intelligence, financial support, high-tech tools, federal wire-tap abilities and help getting prosecutors to apply federal charges with stiffer penalties.
“It’s a sea change for what we do,” said J. Stephen Tidwell, special agent in charge of Kentucky, who started work in the position last month. “We’ll have to direct resources to make that happen.”
Details are still being ironed out, but the FBI’s thresholds for taking cases will likely be raised - in the past, when the FBI might have helped tackle two groups running 50 kilos of drugs a day, Tidwell said, they will now target only one. And bank robberies or wire-fraud cases will require higher dollar amounts to trigger investigations.
The cases will likely fall to a number of local, state and federal agencies, said Steve Pence, U.S. attorney for Western Kentucky.
The Kentucky FBI has fewer than 100 agents, but officials won’t get specific about how many may be shifting from crime to terrorism duties. Tidwell expects to know within a month how many new agents or how much additional funding the Kentucky’s FBI operation could receive when Congress approves bureau director Robert Mueller’s plan to focus more agents on terrorism.
In eastern Kentucky, the FBI devoted much of its time to fighting drugs. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center at Syracuse University, 42 percent of the 145 FBI-led cases that resulted in convictions in 1998 were drug-related.
The Kentucky State Police have already seen eastern Kentucky drug caseloads increase in part because the FBI was already beginning to refocus on terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks, said Lt. Lisa Rudzinski, a state police spokeswoman.
Some smaller Kentucky police departments say the FBI’s help can be important.
The change in focus by the FBI “probably will have some impact,” said Lee County Sheriff Harvey Pelfrey, adding that other agencies - such as the state police or Drug Enforcement Administration - may be able to fill any void.
DEA officials have pledged to help fill gaps in drug investigations. Investigators in the Louisville office could not be reached.
Another possible effect of the reforms: As more cases are handled by local authorities, a greater number could wind up before local or state prosecutors - instead of being shepherded by the FBI to federal prosecutors who can apply charges that can carry stiffer penalties.
Local police and prosecutors can ask the U.S. attorney’s office to take cases. But Thompson, the Louisville police captain, said working with the FBI often can give such requests more sway.
But Pence doesn’t think the change will lead to a falling caseload or a drop in cases involving guns or drugs. Instead, he predicted that they would simply spread out among a wider array of state and federal investigative agencies.
“The FBI is a key player in law enforcement, but there are other key players,” he said.