NCJ Number
125830
Date Published
1990
Length
18 pages
Annotation
A review of the relationship between the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in drug trafficking investigations indicates that both agencies carry out their drug law enforcement responsibilities independently of each other.
Abstract
To obtain data, interviews were conducted with DEA and FBI officials and documents were reviewed. Field visits were made to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Miami, as well as to the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas. It was found that both agencies develop their own investigative strategies and priorities, operate separate intelligence systems, and use different systems for reporting and measuring performance. Although officials said a DEA/FBI merger is not likely at the present time, they cited several advantages of such a merger: provide uniformity in policies, guidelines, and programs; create a single national drug investigative strategy; eliminate redundancies in management, intelligence data bases, physical facilities, communications equipment, training, and research; and eliminate having two different systems for measuring drug investigation performance and accomplishments. Additional information on DEA and FBI coordination efforts is appended.