Officer Arrested in Alleged Theft of Court Files

A police officer was accused of conspiring to obstruct justice after he allegedly fell into a trap investigators set to detect the theft of court records in drunk-driving cases, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said Tuesday.

Edward Romero, 44, a 20-year veteran, was arrested Monday in his office in the Municipal Court Traffic Division downtown. When he was taken into custody, Romero allegedly had in his possession illegally obtained arrest reports, notes and copies of court documents for three drunk-driving cases, Gates said at a press conference in Parker Center.

Investigators had set up “monitoring points where someone might improperly access the files,” after police heard rumors that “you can buy your way out of a 502 (driving under the influence of alcohol)” charge, Cmdr. William Booth said after the press conference.

If police had not recovered the files they reportedly found when Romero was arrested, it is “highly probable” that the three cases would not have gone to trial, Booth said. With so much paper work involved in arrest reports, it would have been very easy to overlook three cases if the files were “misplaced,” he said.

“It would be like they just disappeared,” he added.

Booth said investigators are trying to determine whether other files have been stolen.

But at the press conference, Gates suggested that no other police officers were implicated. It is “quite likely he (Romero) was the only one,” Gates said.

Access to Files

Gates said the records police recovered Monday had already been processed by the Police Department and had been turned over to the city attorney’s office. He said Romero had access to the city attorney’s files.

The investigation involved detectives from the department’s Bunco-Forgery and Internal Affairs divisions and the district attorney’s office.

New warrants have been issued for the arrests of the three drunk-driving suspects named in the stolen files. Booth said they will be asked if they had arranged to have the files tampered with.

Romero was released on $5,000 bail. The maximum sentence on a charge of conspiring to obstruct justice is three years.