Yolo County’s longtime regional drug-enforcement team has morphed into a task force focusing on major crimes, a move that law-enforcement leaders say reflects statewide efforts in recent years to reform drug use and possession regulations.
“We’re looking at this as an evolution with society’s times,” said Deputy Chief Paul Doroshov of the Davis Police Department, one of seven law-enforcement agencies that comprise what’s now known as the Yolo County Crime Task Force.
“The premise behind it is to use special investigative techniques to address major crimes,” Doroshov added. “We’re getting away from the drug war.”
Other participating agencies include the Woodland, Winters, and West Sacramento police departments; the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office; Yolo County District Attorney’s Office and Yolo County Probation Department.
It’s governed by the Yolo County Law Enforcement Administrators’ Coordinating Council, comprising the department heads from each of the seven agencies.
A memorandum of understanding establishing the task force, signed by LEACC members in August and September, identifies its mission as “to effectively and cooperatively enforce laws relating to: the possession, manufacturing or sales of illegal weapons; criminal organizations; burglary/theft and the buying or selling of stolen property and/or contraband; illegal controlled substances; and human trafficking.”
Its members also may be assigned to individual agencies that require additional assistance for major cases, such as homicide investigations.
The task force replaces the decades-old Yolo County Narcotics Enforcement Team, formed to “significantly diminish the availability and use of illegal drugs in the city and county boundaries designated by each participating agency’s involvement and apprehend the responsible offenders, thereby increasing public safety,” according to its mission statement.
But then came the passage of California criminal-justice reform measures such as Proposition 47, which in 2014 reclassified drug-possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Two years later, voters approved Proposition 64, legalizing the adult use of marijuana.
Meanwhile, many courts began to shift their stance on illicit drug use and possession, placing an emphasis on treatment and recovery over punishment and incarceration for habitual users whose crimes stem from their addictions.
“They’re looking at drugs in a different way, and we’re embracing that,” Doroshov said. “It’s not efficient for us to have these in-depth operations in order to enforce a misdemeanor law.”
Doroshov said while the task force still will investigate some drug-related crimes — which oftentimes go hand-in-hand with other offenses — “we’re not just focused on people that are conducting (drug) sales. We’re trying to prioritize and go after cases that will reduce crime overall.”
Some of its major operations to date have included assisting the Sheriff’s Office in recovering more than $50,000 worth of stolen agricultural equipment in Woodland and rural Yolo County; and the arrests of two suspected methamphetamine and heroin traffickers in Woodland, where officers also recovered a stolen shotgun.
“Firearms is one of our main priorities” in terms of confiscating illegal weapons, as well as those in the hands of people prohibited from having them, Doroshov said.
The deputy chief noted that there has been some public speculation that the task force will serve as a marijuana-focused operation, which he said is not the case.
“This task force is actually staying away from that,” Doroshov said. “It’s at a much lower level than it used to be, when it was considered an illegal drug.”
In Davis, marijuana enforcement has largely shifted to the business side of the industry, with the Davis Police Department creating the position of cannabis regulation officer to monitor the city’s dispensaries, delivery-only businesses, and manufacturing and testing companies.
At the county level, where an ordinance regulates the cultivation of medical marijuana, the Yolo County Cannabis Task Force investigates illegal marijuana activities, such as grows conducted without a county permit, and monitors the compliance of permitted growers and distributors.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene