For Unindicted Deputies, the Cloud Won’t Go Away

He reads, he watches television, he tinkers with the family car. He talks on the telephone. At night, he tries to sleep, but the question is always on his mind: Will he be indicted?

“You’re awake all night,” he said, describing the pattern of his life for nearly five months. “There are times I watch TV all night. Just all-night movies.”

Like seven of his colleagues, the veteran sheriff’s deputy is still in limbo, living under a cloud. He was among the fortunate ones Thursday--those not named in indictments handed down by a federal grand jury. But he remains a suspect in the far-reaching money-skimming investigation, in which 10 Los Angeles County sheriff’s narcotics officers are now formally accused of stealing cash confiscated in drug raids.

“It’s been five months of waiting, listening to rumor,” said the deputy, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I know I haven’t done anything (wrong). But I feel confident they’re going to dig something up, even if they’re going to have to invent it.

“You don’t know what silly thing these people are going to do next.”

At a press conference Thursday, investigators offered few clues about the possible fate of the remaining eight suspects. But several officials, including Lawrence Lawler, FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, stressed that the probe is continuing. Lawler urged the public to help with additional information that might advance the case.

“Anyone who has knowledge . . . should come forth to the Sheriff’s Department, the Internal Revenue Service or the FBI so we can make sure the investigation is done thoroughly and that it’s over with as quickly as possible,” he said.

The scandal, one of the largest ever to rock the Sheriff’s Department, broke on Sept. 1, when an FBI sting operation implicated nine members of an elite drug-enforcement team headed by Sgt. Robert R. Sobel. Nine other deputies were suspended on Oct. 3 as the investigation broadened.

All eight deputies who escaped indictment were members of the group suspended in October. The unindicted officers are Deputies John Edner, Roger Garcia, Edward Jamison, J. C. Miller, Leo Michael Newman, Stephen Nichols and Sgts. Robert Tolmaire and Kenneth Allen.

“This does nothing for me; I’m still in limbo,” Jamison said after Thursday’s indictments.

Kevin McDermott, attorney for Newman, said: “His misfortune was having a business with one of the original nine (suspended deputies).” Newman was a partner of Deputy Daniel M. Garner in a classic car restoration shop in the city of Orange.

“After we released his business records, the investigators assured us he was no longer being scrutinized,” McDermott said. “The shop wasn’t the extravagant money-laundering operation they thought it was.”

Newman himself has refused to comment, saying he hopes to be reinstated in the department.

Nichols could not be reached. But his attorney, Brian A. Sun, said, “Our view is that we deny that he skimmed drug money and we expect him to be cleared.”

Nichols’ teen-age son, Ryan, said the family was relieved that Nichols was not indicted. “It’s been tough,” he added.

Other deputies reached by The Times declined to publicly discuss the case, expressing fears of being fired or facing other kinds of reprisals.

The one deputy who spoke anonymously complained about the way he has been treated. He said investigators found nothing when they searched his home, but the sheriff suspended him and ordered him to stay home.

“You’re confined to your home from 8:30 to 5,” he said. “What it boils down to is, you’re under house arrest.”

The deputy called the investigation “ludicrous,” saying he is sure of his own innocence as well as that of several colleagues. The suspicions will permanently blacken his reputation, even if he is later exonerated, he said.

The suspension has placed stress on his family, he said. Former friends now avoid him. Much of his moral support comes from the other deputies under the same cloud, whom he talks with regularly by telephone.

“It’s difficult to describe . . . the idleness, the embarrassment,” said the veteran narcotics officer. “It’s like you’re out there all by yourself.

“They’re grabbing at anything and destroying people’s lives,” he said. “What astounds me is the amount of money and time and manpower that have been spent (on the investigation). This money and manpower weren’t available to us to go out and put real criminals in jail.

Times staff writers Paul Lieberman and Tina Daunt contributed to this story.