Sting of L.A. Deputies Stunned Brea Police

Police Chief Donald L. Forkus said he didn’t have a clue. His subordinate, Capt. Jim Oman, said he saw no evil, and neither did the crack drug investigators under Oman’s command.

Then a unit of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who had worked with Brea two to three days a week for a year on major drug cases failed to show up for an Aug. 31 stakeout. The deputies never called to say that they would not be there.

Oman said his department inquired to find out why and was stunned by the answer: Many of the deputies were targets of an enormous investigation into whether they had siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars in confiscated drug money.

Just as distressing, Oman said, was this: Federal agents had videotaped some of the deputies during an Aug. 30 sting operation, a day before the no-show stakeout. Brea police had been backup help on Aug. 30 for the deputies who were filmed.

“Most of our people were very shook up about how this (the alleged diversion of drug cash) could have happened literally under their noses,” Oman said. “We really had no clue what was going on. Had we known anything, we would have exposed it.”

High-ranking Brea police administrators said none of their officers appear to be involved in the alleged wrongdoing engulfing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in one of the worst corruption cases in its history.

Nevertheless, the widening Los Angeles investigation has affected Brea law enforcement operations. Shortly after learning about the inquiry, Forkus reined in his roving, four-man drug squad and restricted it to cases originating within city limits.

Brea too ended its cooperative arrangement with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which had provided the city with hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug forfeiture money--and the potential for a lot more.

“We’re back to doing pretty much local stuff,” Oman said. “We’re kind of catching our breath and seeing what’s going on.”

Brea police were among the first in Southern California to recognize the potential of the 1984 federal law that enabled local law enforcement agencies to claim up to 90% of the cash and other assets they confiscate in criminal investigations.

That year, the city formed a “special enforcement division,” and one of its officers began using a seized red Corvette to help him infiltrate drug rings throughout the region.

The team spent much of its time on tedious stakeouts and backup assignments for Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators. They were sent all over, from the San Fernando Valley to Las Vegas--and sometimes Florida.

It was a cooperative effort that became common as drug trafficking in the area broadened, with suspects stashing their drugs and money in several communities and frequently moving from state to state.

90% of Role Was Backup

“We had a couple of big cases (alone), but 90% of the stuff we were doing was backup,” Oman said.

Brea’s aid paid off. The city is waiting for its share of $2.5 million that the unit helped Los Angeles County deputies seize in a year. In all, Brea has received $4 million from confiscated assets. The money is used for officers’ salaries and equipment.

But the gravy train of drug forfeiture money from Los Angeles derailed on Sept. 1, when Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block announced that his elite drug squad was being disbanded in the aftermath of the Aug. 30 federal sting operation.

Federal agents, attorneys for deputies and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sources gave this account of the Aug. 30 operation:

While backup officers from Brea waited in a parking lot, an elite team of drug investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department smelled a sting.

As deputies secretly watched a suspected drug dealer at a hotel restaurant in Sherman Oaks, they thought it odd that he boldly flashed a wad of cash after his meal. In fact, little about the paunchy money-laundering suspect rang true.

Much Seemed Phony

Although the Internal Revenue Service had given officers the tip, the suspect’s name and address seemed phony, his penthouse room too flamboyant. His contact, wearing a ponytail and snakeskin boots with spurs, looked like a caricature of a Colombian drug dealer. The deputies thought that he might be a federal agent known as “snake.”

Their suspicions were confirmed when one of them recognized another federal agent, then found a government car, a telltale Volvo with tinted windows, in the hotel parking lot.

The deputies figured that--as sometimes happened in their undercover work for the Sheriff’s Department--they had tripped over a federal operation.

“This is a sting,” one commented.

He was right. The Aug. 30 stakeout at the Valley Hilton Hotel was a videotaped federal sting. However, the targets were not the bogus drug traffickers but the sheriff’s deputies themselves.

The videotape of the 12-hour stakeout has become a crucial piece of evidence in the local and federal inquiry into allegations that deputies have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars seized in drug raids.

Three $10,000 Bundles

Captured on the film is dramatic footage of one deputy in a suspect’s hotel suite hurriedly taking three $10,000 bundles of $100 bills from the man’s shoulder bag and putting them into his partner’s leather briefcase, according to suspended deputies, their attorneys and other sources who have seen the videotape.

The FBI had planted about $500,000 in cash at the Hilton, but thousands never made it to the evidence safe, deputies were told.

The videotape was convincing enough for the FBI, IRS and Block to announce the inquiry at a press conference and subsequently to investigate a flood of tips from drug dealers who accused deputies of stealing cash in drug raids.

Two days after the sting, nine Los Angeles County deputies--an entire elite crew of investigators that handled only major drug cases--were suspended from their jobs. Their homes were searched and their names were disclosed to the public.

Block, who began the inquiry one year ago, suspended nine more deputies Oct. 3, and the scandal now appears to be the worst in the history of the nation’s largest sheriff’s department.

Extent of Corruption

No charges have been filed yet. But the 18 suspensions have raised questions about how far the alleged corruption has spread.

Deputies in all four of the department’s now-disbanded “major violators” drug squads have been suspended, as has a drug investigator at Industry Station, department sources said.

Drug offices at stations in Industry, Lennox and Carson were temporarily padlocked during the second wave of suspensions and searches.

The homes of a retired deputy and a Los Angeles Police Department drug officer were also searched, as was the Central California home of a deputy’s mother.

In addition, documents served in the most recent round of searches sought information on 28 deputies, including five who were not members of the major drug units.

Attorneys for the suspended deputies have denied wrongdoing by their clients, saying that what was captured on videotape has been misconstrued as attempts to steal money.

Not in Position to See

“If all this happened, we didn’t see it,” Brea’s Capt. Oman said. “I don’t think our officers were ever in a position to see anything.”

In the aftermath, Oman said he and Chief Forkus questioned their detectives and were satisfied that they had been isolated from any wrongdoing. Police said none of the Brea officers have been questioned by federal or Los Angeles County authorities.

According to Brea police, backup officers usually guarded perimeters or waited in parking lots or locations away from the deputies and suspects. They did not confiscate drug money as evidence, and neither did surveillance officers.

In those cases where Brea officers helped to seize cash, Oman said, “it was our impression that the money was bagged up and given to the federal government. Now we learn that might not have been the case.”

Brea police said the seized assets that resulted from helping Los Angeles County deputies represented a large amount of money for a small police department. Officers said that although drug operations have been curtailed they are doing the best they can, and that other cooperative arrangements with Orange County law enforcement agencies are still in place.

Decision of Police Alone

Brea Mayor Gene A. Leyton said the decision to scale back Brea drug operations was made by the police alone.

He noted, however: “As a city, we’re not trying to become the narcotics enforcement against Southern California. We don’t want them working in San Diego or Santa Barbara unless it has some relativity to us.”

Oman said the reduction in operations is necessary but unfortunate.

“The trend on these cases, they seem to be getting bigger and bigger quantities of the drugs, and it takes some cooperation,” he said. “Something like this, suspicions of theft . . . this sets the whole thing back.”

Staff writers Daryl Kelley and Paul Lieberman contributed to this story.