Sheriff’s Drug Raid Nets Only Hard Feelings

At the time, there seemed little reason for sheriff’s narcotics detectives to question the veracity of their informant. His tips had often resulted in arrests and, more important, he was willing to testify before a judge.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 8, the informant accompanied Deputy Rickey Ross to a four-unit apartment complex in the 1300 block of Lake Avenue in Pasadena. He confidently pointed out two apartments where, he said, he had purchased cocaine from a Latino male and female and witnessed several other drug transactions.

Acting quickly on the tip, Ross secured a search warrant at 1:42 a.m. Eight hours later, a team of officers carrying rifles and battering rams burst into the two apartments. What they found surprised even the most experienced among them.

Instead of a rock house with two drug dealers in their 30s and 40s, they found one apartment empty because its 69-year-old tenant was in the hospital, and in the other they found a startled 63-year-old woman.

The Officers Apologized

They were told there were no Latinos living or visiting anywhere in the four-unit complex. Dumbfounded, the officers apologized and retreated quietly.

But in the weeks since, the building’s residents and landlord have raised a number of questions about the raid. They wonder how sheriff’s investigators could have made such a mistake and why surveillance was not done to determine that only elderly women, none of them Latinos, lived in the four small apartments.

“It was a terrible mistake,” said Barbara Reynolds, whose 69-year-old mother, Evelyn Dykeman, lives in one of the apartments identified by the informant as a rock house. “But we’re still waiting for some answers.”

Sheriff’s Department investigators acknowledged that the raid was unusual because of the contrasts between what they expected to find and what they actually discovered. They said they had second thoughts about the accuracy of the tip, but those were dispelled when they met after the raid with the informant and his attorney.

“We were surprised. . . . It was obvious once we were inside that this didn’t look like a typical dope house and that senior citizens were living there,” said Deputy Ken Duffey, Ross’ partner. “But that doesn’t mean that during the nighttime hours, our informant couldn’t have gone in there and dealt with Latinos and bought drugs.”

Since the raid, investigators have surmised that the Latinos they sought may have been friends of Dykeman’s 37-year-old son, who the family said has a history of drug and alcohol problems. Investigators said, however, that the son is not a suspect.

In the past year, local police and sheriff’s deputies have arrested dozens of suspects and seized millions of dollars in cocaine in the San Gabriel Valley. Ross and Duffey characterized local cocaine sales as having reached “epidemic proportions.” They said raids are the best tool in breaking up large rings; trusted informants are essential to police success.

Just hours before officers raided the Lake Avenue apartments on Jan. 8, the same informant had led them to two other locations in the county, where they arrested four suspects and recovered several small bags of cocaine, deputies said.

Ross described the informant as a longtime source whose tips had led to dozens of arrests over the past year. He said the informant had never given police wrong information.

“We had no reason to doubt a totally reliable informant,” Ross said. “The informant was certain that drugs were also being dealt from the Lake Avenue apartments.”

The search warrant to raid the Pasadena apartments did not name the two suspects, describing each only as having black hair, brown eyes and a medium build. It was signed by Superior Court Judge Eric Younger. (Younger was out of the country and unavailable for comment.)

As a professional courtesy, Ross then contacted Pasadena police who agreed to accompany a sheriff’s raid team. The nine officers who descended on the two apartments in a coordinated raid wore special jackets and bulletproof vests and carried rifles and two hand-held battering rams.

“They knocked on the doors and said ‘Police. We have a warrant,” said Tim Vargo, who saw the raid from the rear of his Lake Avenue health food store next door. “They waited maybe 5 or 10 seconds and then they busted down the doors.”

But once inside, the officers found none of the drugs or narcotics paraphernalia described by the informant or listed in the search warrant.

In the upstairs apartment, Betty Wampler was organizing the belongings of her 83-year-old aunt, Mary Chafe, who had died a week earlier. Wampler, 63, who had traveled from Cleveland to bury Chafe, said in an interview that she kept telling police officers that there were no Latinos in the complex. They then gave the apartment a cursory search.

“I said my aunt had died and it was just me upstairs and a woman downstairs who was in the hospital,” Wampler said. “They said their information was always true. They said their informant had never let them down before.”

Apartment Was Empty

The downstairs apartment was empty. Evelyn Dykeman, Barbara Reynold’s mother, lives there but had been hospitalized for four days with heart palpitations.

“If my mother had been home, I’m afraid she might have had a heart attack,” Reynolds said. “As it was, they tore her apartment completely apart.”

Since leaving the hospital a day after the raid, Dykeman has stayed with her daughter. She said she is unable to return home because the deputies failed to secure the front and back doors properly, and she is frightened by the prospect of another raid.

“It looked like a hurricane had hit the place. My mail was all over the floor, all my drawers were opened and my clothes, my underwear and all my belongings were just tossed around. I had a record cabinet where I kept my camera and belongings and they broke that. They peeled the wallpaper from the wall.”

Dead Son’s Burial Flag

Dykeman said officers even broke open an Air Force box inscribed with her dead son’s name. The box contained his burial flag. A veteran, he is buried at Riverside National Cemetery.

“It was something that was very special to me,” she said. “I kept it next to my bed.”

Sheriff’s investigators denied that they left Dykeman’s apartment a shambles. They said they did not spend a great deal of time securing the apartment because a neighbor had told them he would fix the doors. Dykeman has since filed a claim with the county for repairs.

Dykeman said that what makes the raid so difficult to understand is that Pasadena police officers had been to her apartment more than a dozen times in recent weeks to detain and later arrest her 37-year-old son, who had been causing trouble for her by coming in drunk and being verbally abusive. She said officers needed only to search the files at Pasadena headquarters to determine that her home was not a rock house.

Installed a Dead Bolt

A week before the raid, Dykeman said, Pasadena crime prevention officers placed a dead bolt on her front door to keep her son out.

“They broke their own lock,” she said.

Pasadena police officials have refused to comment on the raid, saying their involvement was only peripheral. They referred all questions to the Sheriff’s Department substation in Altadena, where narcotics investigators Ross and Duffey work.

Reynolds said numerous inquiries to sheriff’s officials on behalf of her mother have been met with evasions and arrogance.

“From day one, Altadena sheriffs have been nasty and rude,” Reynolds, 29, said. “I called Deputy Ross and he screamed at me. He said, ‘Don’t call me. You’re not supposed to call me. I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to.’

“They’re the ones responsible for breaking into my mother’s home by mistake. You’d think they’d be willing to help us fix the doors or at least answer a few questions,” she said.

‘A Big Deal’

“We’ve been extremely polite to her,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Ron Black, who oversees the Altadena substation. “The officers were not rude to her. I’m just rather perturbed that she’s making such a big deal out of all this.”

Sgt. Jim Jennings, who heads the narcotics division, said he also is miffed. He said Ross and Duffey are veteran investigators with excellent reputations.

“I don’t know what her (Reynolds’) motives are, whether she has some narcotics background,” he said.

Reynolds said Jennings’ intimation typified the attitude of sheriff’s officials toward her. She said she has never used drugs and resented such a suggestion.

Investigators Theorize

Although Reynolds, Dykeman and Dykeman’s son are not suspects in the case, investigators said, they theorize that the two Latinos described by their informant may have visited the son at Dykeman’s apartment. The son stayed periodically with his mother until his arrest for public intoxication the day before the raid.

“We think the son’s friends--Latinos--were dealing cocaine out of the apartment unknown to the mother,” said Ross, who said an investigation is continuing.

But Dykeman, her neighbors and landlord are adamant that no one fitting the suspects’ description ever set foot in any of the apartments.

“I just can’t understand why it happened,” said Lillian Walmsley, the building’s landlord. “These people have been there for years and I’ve never had any trouble at all. They’re old people.”

Ross and Duffey said the fact that Pasadena police had been to the Dykeman apartment on numerous occasions did not preclude the possibility of drug sales there. And they discounted the option of surveillance, saying the investigation was “too fast moving” for that.

“I’ve been working narcotics seven years and this is the first time something like this happened,” Duffey said. “Your biggest fear is that you will do a wrong pad. You do everything beforehand to prevent that. I still believe we had the right place. We just timed it wrong.”