Drug Money

Established in 1988 to honor a fallen New York City police officer, the Edward Byrne Memorial Fund, in just the past five years, has distributed approximately $2.5 billion in grants to drug task forces nationally, with $160 million of it going to Texas, where it is divvied up among the almost 50 tasks forces operating in the state. Those task forces are as addicted to the federal cash injections as the junkies are to their dope. And according to critics, they're more concerned with making as many busts as possible to keep their arrest numbers up and their funding high than they are on concentrating on time-consuming investigations that might net large-scale dealers.

The Texas Narcotics Control Program, the division of the governor's office that distributes Byrne Fund money to state task forces, has come under heat itself. In June the Austin American-Statesman reported that Robert J. "Duke" Bodisch, the head of the program, was reassigned when an audit revealed that he borrowed three cars from one of the task forces. The report also showed that for five years the TNCP had used Byrne funds to buy awards, gifts, alcoholic beverages and entertainment -- spending that appeared to fall outside the guidelines governing the use of the Byrne money. The Press contacted Bodisch about task forces in general before his reassignment, but he declined to be interviewed.

This is not the first instance of alleged abuses of task force money. In June 1998 then-governor George W. Bush's office stopped funding for the Permian Basin Drug Task Force amid allegations of falsified meal tickets, doctored quarterly reports on confiscations, and other irregularities. The task force was abolished that summer.

"Some of them are run well. Some are not run well. It's very political," says former task force officer Barbara Markham. "And it's definitely not money well spent."

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With her skinny frame, sleepy eyes and cigarette voice, 41-year-old Markham comes off like a doper. It's a good look to have if you happen to be an undercover narcotics officer -- which she used to be.

Markham got her start in law enforcement in 1983. At the time, she was 23 years old, living in Frisco, north of Dallas, going to college and working for Arco Oil & Gas -- and making more money than she ever would as a police officer. But Markham found herself scrambling to find work when the oil boom went bust. So she got herself certified as a peace officer and then hired on as a reserve officer in Frisco, at that time a quiet burg of about 3,000 people. At first it seemed like there was nothing to it.

"Back then we were dealing with things like cattle in the roadway," says Markham.

Markham's cushy new job didn't last long. Shortly after she hired on, Markham's chief approached her about doing some undercover work. Thinking the assignment would be for only a couple of hours or so, Markham agreed, unaware that what the chief had in mind would turn her life upside down forever.

"What they wanted was to put an undercover officer in a high school," says Markham. "They had searched high and low throughout the county looking for somebody who was young enough." Or someone who looked young enough. And although she was 23, Markham could easily pass for a 17-year-old.

After a crash course in narcotics law enforcement and armed with fake transcripts from Wichita Falls High School, Markham slipped unnoticed into Wylie, in Collin County. She enrolled in summer school and began hanging out with the kids -- throwing Frisbees and riding skateboards. Little by little they took her in.

"My goal was not to bust the kids, but to bust who was selling to them," says Markham. "That's the way I ran my operation." When Markham was pulled out of the school six weeks later, 20 suspects were arrested on charges of delivery of a controlled substance. All but two were adults.

After Wylie, Markham was assigned to Princeton High School, east of McKinney. There, things did not go so well, as news of her arrival preceded her among the students. For the next few years Markham continued to infiltrate student bodies in North Texas in search of drug dealing. But now she was pushing 30, and she'd had enough.

"I was almost old enough to be their mom," says Markham.

From high school, Markham went to working the bar scene in small towns around Dallas before settling into a patrol job with the Colony Police Department in 1988. When The Colony decided to join an antidrug task force that was forming in the area, Markham was selected as the department's representative, and she was happy to be working drug cases again. But after she'd spent a few months with the task force, department officials decided Markham had been working narcotics for too long. They reassigned her to patrol in 1997. In retrospect, Markham admits that she should have done exactly what she was told. Instead, she signed on with the now-defunct Northeast Area Drug Interdiction Task Force based in Rockwall, something she calls "the worst mistake I ever made in my law enforcement career."