Drug Tip That Backfired on the Informer : Former Neighbors Win Award in Eavesdropping

Phill Coleman insists that he does not--and never did--spy on his neighbors.

The tape recorder police saw in his apartment was used, he says, for dictating notes on his as-yet-unpublished book on Vietnam. He concedes that he is obsessed with the subject and, over the years, has collected what may be the most extensive private computer file of facts and figures about the war, in which he served as a radio operator.

But on Thursday, Coleman found himself facing an $8,000 judgment for “eavesdropping” on a couple who lived in his apartment building in Torrance. Superior Court Judge Harvey A. Schneider noted in a four-page decision that there was some indication that Coleman was “involved in electronic surveillance” while he served in Vietnam.

Coleman said Thursday that he believes that his association with Vietnam and a misunderstanding about his role in the war are, at least in part, responsible for his predicament.

“I was a radio operator,” Coleman said. “Any veteran can tell you there just weren’t enough telephones in Vietnam worth tapping.”

Did he ever tap a phone?

“Never in my apartment building and never in my entire life,” Coleman said.

The judgment Thursday brings to an end, at least for the moment, one facet of a bitter and complex legal battle that began four years ago when Coleman called the Torrance Police Department to report what he believed was an illegal drug laboratory in the apartment beneath his. His neighbors, David D. and Elizabeth C. Blanco, as well as their teen-age son, were arrested, but the charges were ultimately thrown out in a legal argument over search warrants.

The Blancos then sued Coleman, alleging that he illegally wiretapped their phones and eavesdropped on their conversations, leading to their arrests.

But Coleman contends that there is a simpler explanation for the events of Sept. 4, 1985.

The walls in his apartment building are thin, Coleman said, with virtually no insulation. He said if a person sticks his head out the window on the courtyard side, he can hear everything the neighbors say, “almost like they’re sitting in your living room.”

That, Coleman said, is why it was no trick to hear the man downstairs with the German accent that afternoon.

“He said, ‘This is the best ---- I’ve ever seen. We’re gonna make a lot of ---- on this,’ ” Coleman recalled.

So, with the odor of ether heavy in the air, Coleman called the police to report his suspicions.

But when a police officer showed up at the building on Paseo de la Concha, Coleman quietly took him aside, identified himself as the caller and invited the officer into his apartment. The officer noticed the tape recorder, according to court documents, and later made note of it in a police report. Coleman also told the officer that he had made a recording of what he had heard in the apartment downstairs.

“That was the stupidest thing I ever said,” Coleman said.

What he meant, Coleman said, was that he repeated what he heard into the tape recorder as a way of taking notes, but the police officer apparently thought he meant that he had recorded a telephone conversation that occurred in the Blancos’ apartment.

Police raided the Blancos’ apartment and found about 30 grams of cocaine, “a quantity of methamphetamine,” over $7,000 in cash and 700 ounces of pure silver, according to Sgt. Ron Traber of the Torrance Police Department. The Blancos were not at home at the time but were arrested later that afternoon.

“I am not a drug dealer, and I never made any money from dealing drugs,” David Blanco said Thursday.

He said he was “set up” by an “acquaintance.”

“I met an individual who told me he was a biologist,” Blanco said. “He slept in our apartment a couple of days. He and his girlfriend allegedly just flew in from Germany. . . . Everything he told me was untrue. He was there to set me up.”

Blanco said he was not certain why he was being set up but speculated that it could have been related to a problem he had encountered with the Food and Drug Administration over the importation of a coca leaf tea that turned out to contain traces of cocaine.

At the time of his arrest, Blanco said, he was “in the vitamin business.” If Coleman overheard him talking about cocaine, it was in relation to the coca leaf tea controversy, Blanco said.

“Whatever was going on in my apartment, my wife and I were not there,” he added. “I was in the vitamin business, and they (the police) walked in an found lots of nutrients.

“Mr. Coleman violated our privacy,” Blanco said, adding that he is convinced Coleman wiretapped the apartment, from which the Blancos have since moved.

The Blancos’ suit alleged that Coleman had engaged in both wiretapping and eavesdropping. However, Judge Schneider, in setting the $8,000 judgment for eavesdropping, said there was no proof of wiretapping. But Blanco said he will press the wiretapping issue in a separate suit that he has filed against the city of Torrance, its Police Department and various others involved in the 1985 arrest.

Both Blanco and Coleman have acted as their own attorneys in the litigation, Blanco because he says he does not trust lawyers and Coleman because he says he could not afford one.

Coleman said Thursday that “stupidity” characterized his handling of the litigation and he has now found an attorney who will represent him in an attempt to win a new trial.

When it became clear to Coleman last week that he was in imminent danger of losing the suit, he began looking around for a buyer for his Vietnam collection. He hoped to sell it for the $15,000 to $20,000 it would cost to pay a lawyer, but there seems to be little market for the information.

Called the Vietnam Data Resource and Electronic Library, Coleman operates the computer system out of a cramped nook in the back of his clothing store. He has entered hundreds of government documents into the system, many of then obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The information is free to anyone who wants it and has a computer that can communicate over normal telephone lines. Students and screenwriters are frequent users of the system, Coleman said.

Coleman’s newly hired lawyer, Barry Levin, is himself a Vietnam veteran and specializes in handling veterans’ cases. He said he agreed to take Coleman’s case at a reduced rate.

“It’s horribly unjust to begin with that an alleged drug dealer can obtain an award of monetary damages against the person who called the police,” Levin said.

Levin said a veteran’s Vietnam service is frequently used against him to create a prejudice in legal cases. Coleman is a victim of this phenomenon, he said.

“He was portrayed as a spy-like person or a person capable of eavesdropping,” Levin said. “All Mr. Coleman did in Vietnam was be a radio specialist.

“He was a dial manipulator. He turned the dial on a radio to see if he could hear anyone speaking Vietnamese. Then he called a translator. He wasn’t a spy.

“He was portrayed as some kind of secret spy, secret sleuth, and he was just a guy, a citizen who was trying to do the right thing when he came home and smelled ether in his house,” Levin said.