What was once described as the largest single seizure of drug profits in U.S. history is helping to finance what local officials tout as the nation's finest police and fire training operation.

Boca Raton's International Center for Leadership and Development is scheduled to open in the spring after the $9 million renovation of a 118,000-square-foot building at 6500 Congress Ave., once a Sony Corp. manufacturing plant.

"It will be kind of cool to be training law-enforcement officers with bad-guy dollars," said John J. Sullivan Jr., director of training and professional development for the Boca Raton Police Services Department.

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The Florida National Guard has asked the National Guard Bureau and U.S. Department of Defense to find jobs for former employees of a disbanded South Florida drug interdiction program, including several soldiers who received their pink slips while on active duty in Iraq.

Unable to find work, at least two of 39 Florida Guardsmen who became unemployed when Operation Guardian lost funding have volunteered to return to war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan. Others say they are considering a similar move.

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MIAMI--The mystery of Darryl Strawberry's whereabouts was solved Monday night when he was arrested at a Tampa, Fla., hospital, ending another bizarre episode in the former major leaguer's life.

The troubled star was taken into custody at St. Joseph's Hospital on a violation of probation warrant, said Debbie Carter, a spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department.

Strawberry, 39, had been missing since Thursday, when he failed to return to his apartment in a Tampa drug treatment center. The eight-time National League all-star had been under house arrest after being charged with cocaine possession and solicitation of prostitution two years ago.

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5 Cut Down Last Month -- 12 Killed Since August

To be young, male and standing on an inner-city street corner here has recently become a prescription for death.

In what police say is a vicious turf war between rival drug gangs, five men with links to the cocaine and marijuana trade have been gunned down this month, 12 since August.

In the latest outbreak, police said, a would-be assassin driving through the streets of Miami's Overtown neighborhood Tuesday morning was so eager to fire at his street-corner targets that he did not bother to roll down the window of his own car before unleashing a volley from a high-powered assault weapon. Three people were wounded, including an 18-year-old reported yesterday in critical condition.

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With Eye on Courts, School System OKs Student Drug Tests

MIAMIAlthough drug abuse among U.S. teenagers remains a major concern, few big city school systems have dared flirt with the idea of random drug testing. Among the obvious obstacles are the cost, the constitutional issue of privacy and concerns over the rightful role of the public schools. But in a move as divisive as it was unprecedented, the Dade County school board recently voted to begin a $200,000 pilot program under which about 5,000 of the county's 82,000 high school students would be subjected to urinalysis for marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs. "This is about parental empowerment," said Renier Diaz de la Portilla, at 26 the youngest member of the nineperson school board and chief sponsor of the measure. "This is the first program of its kind in the U.S. We have an opportunity to set a national example." Other school systems are expected to monitor what happens here in the fourthlargest U.S. school district, which takes in Miami, Hialeah and more than 25 other municipalities. With more than 340,000 students, the Dade County system is exceeded in size only by those in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

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Exiled Haitian police chief indicted in drug case He allegedly helped smuggle 33 tons of heroin, cocaine By Mike Clary Los Angeles Times Miami PortauPrince's exiled police chief, a shadowy, ruthless figure believed to have engineered the 1991 coup which ousted President JeanBertrand Aristide and pitched Haiti into three years of bloody turmiol, has been charged with helping to smuggle more than 33 tons of Colombian cocaine and heroin into the United States. According to an indictment unsealed here yesterday in U.S. District Court, Lt. Col. Joseph Michel Francois met facetoface with the leaders of three Colombian cartels to arrange for drug shipments to pass through Haiti via a private airstrip he helped build and protect. The 50page indictment naming 13 people was unsealed after Francois, 39, was arrested in Honduras, where he has been living under a grant of political asylum since last April. He is expected to be flown to Miami today to face formal arraignment. "It's been a major, major case," said Wilfredo Fernandez, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office. The indictment charges Francois took part in a "conspiracy to establish a cocaine and heroin distribution network through Haiti, employing in large part the political and military institutions of that county." All but three of those named in the indictment have been arrested. One of those in custody is a security worker at Miami International Airport who is accused of escorting drug couriers off flights from Haiti. Fernandez said Francois long has been the target of an investigation into drug trafficking involving former Haitian police and military leaders. He added that the Honduran government has been "extremely helpful and cooperative in arranging for the extradition." Francois fled to Honduras after he and Franck Romain, the former mayor of PortauPrince, were arrested in the Dominiacan Republic and charged with conspiring against the government of President Rene Preval. The pair had been in the Dominican Republic since October 1994, two weeks after U.S.troops escorted Aristide back to the Haitian capital. Last September Francois was convicted in absentia in Haiti and sentenced to life at hard labor for the 1993 killing of a Haitian businessman who was a major financial backer of Aristide. But long before that, Francois was wellknown to both Haitains on the street and U.S. officials in Washington as a behindthescenes power broker given to secrecy and control through a national police force that many compared to a death squad. A 1993 U.S. General Accounting Office report alleged that Francois and army chief Raoul Cedras, then heading the government, protected the annual passage of 50 tons of Colombian cocaine through Haiti. The indictment alleges that he met personally with Medellin kingpin Pablo Escobar and others to discuss U.S.bound drug shipments.

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