Last July, five members of the sheriff's department in Campbell County, Tennessee, entered the home of Eugene Siler and maliciously beat him for more than two hours during a police drug raid. If it hadn't been for the tape recorder that Siler’s wife secretly turned on, Siler’s story—one of many—might never have been heard.

This incident is just another example of the increasingly rampant abuses of power by Byrne grant-funded drug task forces. The Byrne grant program was created in 1988 to provide federal funds to help states fight violent crime and drugs. The largest proportion of Byrne grant funding is used for regional narcotics task forces in which federal, state, and local drug law enforcement agencies and prosecutors coordinate their drug-fighting efforts. There is little federal oversight of Byrne Program grants, and lack of federal supervision has been blamed for recent scandals involving regional narcotics task forces.

Siler's case exemplifies a pattern of controversial and corrupt practices by drug task forces across the country in the name of drug law enforcement.  The lack of oversight of these drug task forces not only enables abuse but also creates a lack of financial accountability. Campbell County's Chief Deputy, Charlie Scott, recently admitted that former Deputy, David Webber, the county’s primary narcotics officer and one of the officers involved in the Siler incident, failed to account for $4,000 of the department's drug fund money in 2004, which he received for "undercover drug investigations."

During that same month, Webber helped to organize the biggest drug bust in Campbell County’s history, during which 144 suspects were arrested.  Since being hired in 1997, Webber has helped the Campbell County Sheriff's Department become nationally recognized for its zealous "war on drugs" and almost-daily arrests of drug offenders, despite criticism of the Byrne grant criteria, which bases their funding on the number of arrests made.

The Bush administration recently proposed to reduce funding for the Byrne grant program, but more work needs to be done to curb the power abuses of drug task forces - for Eugene Siler, whose quick-thinking wife was able to expose the torture he endured, and for others who may not have been so lucky.