Query Focuses on Sheriff’s Sergeant, Deputies He Led

An investigation into alleged money-skimming by Los Angeles County sheriff’s narcotics officers has focused primarily on suspended Sgt. Robert R. Sobel and 14 deputies who have worked for him on three different drug squads since 1985, The Times has learned.

Of the 18 sheriff’s officers suspended since the scandal broke Sept. 1, only four have not worked on crews headed by the hard-charging sergeant who frequently told his troops to “march or die” and who dubbed himself “El Diablo,” or “The Devil,” sources said.

The department has suspended all but one of the deputies who worked for Sobel as narcotics officers at the Lennox Station in 1985-86, on a special inner-city cocaine task force in 1987 or recently on his elite team that investigated major drug cases, the sources said.

The remaining deputy was taken out of the field last month and reassigned to desk work. The deputy agreed to a search of his home, but nothing incriminating was found, according to sources.

“The common denominator for all of us is Sobel,” said one suspended deputy. “He’s had three (narcotics) crews, and everybody who’s ever worked for him has been suspended except for one guy.”

Suspended officers interviewed by The Times spoke only on condition that they not be identified. They say they have been threatened with firing if they discuss the inquiry with reporters.

Sobel’s attorney, Mark Beck, said the sergeant, a 19-year veteran, “will not respond personally or through me” to any question about the money-skimming investigation. Sobel, through Beck, has maintained his innocence.

Sobel is described by close associates as a highly private family man who joined the department in 1970. Beck has characterized the sergeant as “an extremely bright, dedicated career deputy” who has “received a series of commendations over the years and was highly thought of.”

Sobel has long appeared to be a central target of investigators.

A 31-foot sailboat he purchased for $31,500 in cash and cashier’s checks in June was confiscated three months later by the government, which claims in federal warrants that the boat was purchased at least in part with stolen money.

Several suspended deputies said investigators have questioned them about Sobel. One officer said that when federal agents “searched my place, many of their questions . . . were directly related to investigations I conducted” while on a Sobel crew years ago.

Squad Suspended

Sheriff Sherman Block suspended Sobel’s entire nine-member major narcotics squad Sept. 1 after thousands of dollars turned up missing in an FBI sting operation two days earlier. Sobel was one of two officers responsible for booking $500,000 in planted cash as evidence.

Nine more narcotics officers were suspended Oct. 3, and five of them had worked for Sobel, sources said. Four were teamed with him on the Southwest Task Force, which was known originally as the Freeway Rick Task Force because it was formed in January, 1987, to build a case against alleged South-Central Los Angeles cocaine boss Ricky Donnell Ross, according to sources and court documents.

That special unit--initially comprised of four deputies, four Los Angeles Police Department officers and directed by Sobel--was accused by several witnesses of theft and brutality during investigations of Ross and other suspected cocaine traffickers, court documents show. Numerous complaints of wide-ranging misconduct were also filed in 1987 with the FBI and the sheriff’s internal affairs bureau, according to attorneys for clients who said they were abused.

Alan Fenster, the lawyer who forwarded the complaints of several of his clients, said investigators in the current money-skimming inquiry have asked him about the allegations and he has discussed the case with Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas Hagemann, who is coordinating the local and federal inquiry. Hagemann would not comment.

Drug trafficking charges against Ross were dismissed by Los Angeles Municipal Judge Alban I. Niles in mid-1987 because four officers allegedly destroyed Ross’ relationship with Fenster by maligning the lawyer in a lengthy, tape-recorded interview at Central Jail.

A forensic expert subsequently concluded that 11 erasures had been made on the tape, obliterating portions of the interview where the officers were critical of Fenster and where they discuss allegations that they had beaten Ross’ brother.

“It was bad,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John F. Urgo, who prosecuted Ross, said of the jailhouse interview. “Their attacks were on Fenster. The court ruled that (the officers) had destroyed that (attorney-client) relationship. You can’t fix the problem by just giving him another attorney.”

Complaints about Sobel’s crews went beyond the Ross case. His Lennox Station crew and the task force force raided dozens of homes in 1987, fostering complaints of beatings, theft of money and lies in search warrants, according to court documents.

A cocaine-trafficking case was undercut in 1987 because a Superior Court judge concluded that Sobel’s Lennox Station crew had administered “street justice” by beating suspect Derrick Leichman. The judge also concluded that the officers were not telling the truth about where they found cocaine during the raid.

Officers reported seizing $45,000 from the home of Leichman and co-defendant Jessie Harrod, but evidence records showed that only $15,000 was turned in, Fenster maintained in court.

Several witnesses, testifying about prior incidents involving Sobel and his deputies, alleged that money or property was stolen from them and that they were beaten.

No Response

There was no response to the allegations in the court record. Nor did prosecutors call deputies to the stand to answer the charges.

At the urging of Judge Bernard J. Kamins, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case against Harrod, while Leichman received three years’ probation instead of a possible five-year prison sentence.

The judge, in an interview, told The Times that he thought the defendants were “dead-bang guilty.”

“But here’s the rub,” Kamins said. “The officers said (Leichman) slipped and fell on the sidewalk, . . . but this guy was beaten to a pulp.”

The judge said prosecutors provided information about the officers in confidence that led to the light sentences. He would not elaborate, but added: “There was a pattern of people getting hurt when certain officers were involved. It was almost like they were taking justice into their own hands, and that’s a frightening concept.”

Most of the brutality complaints against Sobel’s crews involved then-Deputy Robert Tolmaire, who worked on the Lennox Station crew in 1985-86 then as a lead investigator on the Ricky Ross task force.

Judge Kamins likened Tolmaire, now a sergeant, to a “heavy-handed parent taking things into his own hands” on the street.

Another judge, Municipal Judge James F. Nelson, noted in the preliminary hearing for Leichman that Tolmaire had “an apparent end-may-justify-the-means approach” when dealing with suspected criminals. That assessment came after several witnesses testified that they were battered during raids in 1986 and 1987 by Lennox Station deputies.

Tolmaire could not be reached for comment, but a former member of the Ross task force said that in dozens of raids with Tolmaire he had never seen the short, stocky deputy strike a suspect without good cause.

“He’s not an intimidating-type person,” the officer said.

“What you’ve got to understand about these crooks is that they know the system,” the officer said. “You can have a rat who’s out destroying half the world, and the first thing he’ll do when he’s caught is offer information about ‘dirty cops.’ ”

Tolmaire, J. C. Miller and Roger Garcia, all Lennox Station deputies under Sobel, were relieved of duty during the second round of suspensions a month ago, according to government and sheriff’s sources.

Ross task force members Edward Jamison, John L. Edner and Terrell H. Amers were also suspended, according to sources.

The deputies could not be reached for comment. None of them, except Amers, has been identified by the Sheriff’s Department.

Members of Sobel’s last squad--the major-investigations unit--were identified by Sheriff Block when they were suspended two months ago after the FBI sting operation. They are Amers, James R. Bauder, Nancy A. Brown, Eufrasio G. Cortez, Ronald E. Daub, John C. Dickenson, Daniel M. Garner and Michael J. Kaliterna.

While Sobel and Brown were responsible for booking the $500,000 in planted cash, Bauder was caught on videotape transferring bundles of money into Garner’s satchel, sources have said. Garner’s attorney has said that the cash later was turned over to Brown for booking.

The one Sobel subordinate still on the job is a deputy who worked for him for only a few months on that last crew, sources said.

The only officer from another law enforcement agency to be implicated in the money-skimming scandal is a Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officer who worked for Sobel on the Ross task force in 1987. His home was searched under warrant last month, but nothing incriminating was found, his superiors said.

Together Sobel and the 13 suspended deputies who worked with him represent roughly 10% of the narcotics officers in the Sheriff’s Department. About 40 deputies worked on four crews that investigated major drug cases before they were disbanded in September because of the scandal. About 100 officers work on special task forces or routine street details out of sheriff’s stations throughout the county.

The 5-foot-9 Sobel left no doubt who was in charge of his crews, several deputies said.

“He’d stay out two or three days in the field,” said a suspended deputy. “He was a hard-charger. If he told you to be there at 7 in the morning, he’d be there at 6.”

Sobel began to call himself El Diablo while on the Ross task force, said another officer, and the nickname stuck when he went to the major-case crew in mid-1987.

“He kind of fancied himself as a tough guy,” the officer said. “Some guys, when they get a nickname, they say, ‘Don’t call me that.’ But he kind of liked that one.”

“March or die”--a motto of the French Foreign Legion in Algeria--was a phrase the sergeant would use when deputies would complain about long workdays or an assignment, deputies said. “In a nutshell that was his philosophy,” one added.

Several suspended deputies who have worked with Sobel said the current investigation has forced them to reassess the conduct of the intense Sobel. And some are pointing fingers at a man they say they once admired.

Deputies said Sobel, as field supervisor, almost always took seized money into custody during raids and sometimes the initial count of money in the field did not jibe with the final count.

“You just say, ‘Well, maybe (the count) was just off,’ and you just let it ride,” said one deputy.

Given the information about Sobel that has surfaced in the current probe, some suspended deputies now say the Sheriff’s Department should have taken more seriously the earlier complaints about Sobel’s crews.

Block recently criticized such second-guessing. He said he was sure that his department’s internal affairs bureau looked into the past allegations of theft and brutality.

“They were not proven to be founded,” Block said, adding that narcotics officers are often the target of false complaints. “People working on some assignments generate more complaints than others.”

BACKGROUND

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block on Sept. 1 suspended nine narcotics officers suspected of stealing money during drug raids. Nine more officers--mostly from elite squads that investigated major drug cases--were suspended Oct. 3. But no charges have yet been filed.