Indicted Deputies Linked by a Hard-Driving Sergeant

All but one of the sheriff’s officers indicted Thursday had worked under a hard-charging narcotics sergeant who has been identified as both a principal suspect and an important prosecution witness.

Sgt. Robert R. Sobel, who dubbed himself “El Diablo,” or “the Devil,” was indicted along with the other eight members of his drug squad on charges of stealing a total of $1.4 million in drug money.

Before its members were suspended last Sept. 1, Sobel’s elite team of investigators was known for its aggressiveness and dedication in tackling major narcotics cases in Los Angeles County.

The nine officers who, with overtime, were each paid up to $70,000 a year, included a 1988 winner of the sheriff’s top award for bravery and the son of a retired narcotics lieutenant. Two had joined the unit only seven months before the suspensions. Another had been reassigned to the team only days before he was suspended.

Sobel, a 19-year veteran, was typical of the unit. An overachiever and strong family man, he was for years held up to other sergeants at squad meetings as the type of driven officer they should strive to become, colleagues say. He was the sort of leader who would tell his crew to “march or die,” then would put in the same long hours on stakeouts as his deputies did.

However, sources said Thursday that Sobel turned on his team shortly after its members were suspended.

By early October, after bouts of severe depression, the sergeant had moved his family from their two-story, stucco home on a quiet Westminster street to Northern California, where they were placed in the federal witness-protection program, the sources said.

Sobel’s attorney, Mark Beck, declined to comment on whether the sergeant has cooperated with prosecutors or has struck a deal in exchange for his testimony.

“This just isn’t something Sgt. Sobel, through my office, is at liberty to talk about,” Beck said. “The last six months have been extremely difficult for Sgt. Sobel and his family.”

Sobel has long been a central target in the corruption probe.

His last squad was suspended after $48,000 turned up missing in a videotaped FBI sting operation Aug. 30. Sobel was one of two officers responsible for booking $500,000 in planted cash as evidence.

Indeed, one of his indicted crew members, Michael J. Kaliterna, noted in a brief interview Thursday that Sobel “was in charge of the money all the time.”

Of the 18 sheriff’s officers suspended in the scandal, only four had not worked for Sobel on at least one of the three drug crews he headed since 1985.

The only indicted officer who has not worked for Sobel is Deputy Macario M. Duran, who was charged with conspiring to steal drug money. He and his wife, Maria, also are charged with violating banking laws that require all cash transactions in excess of $10,000 be reported to federal authorities.

Duran, 43, apparently became part of the investigation Sheriff Sherman Block calls “Operation Big Spender” because of his wife’s ownership of a San Fernando Valley beauty parlor.

Scott Furstman, lawyer for Maria Duran, said investigators seized the beauty parlor’s records and searched the home of Maria Duran’s mother, who is co-owner of the business.

The Durans own two homes, including one they purchased in Northridge last August for $462,000, according to county property records. They have a $370,000 mortgage on that home, records show.

Aside from Duran, the common thread among the indicted deputies was their membership on Sobel’s last crew.

Squad members broke into rough categories of experience: seven veterans, ranging in age from 39 to 50, and two 31-year-olds born only days apart in 1958.

The youngest officers--James R. Bauder and John C. Dickenson--were on fast-track careers in the department. Dickenson was awarded the Medal of Valor in 1988 for going to the aid of an officer who was fatally wounded in a drug raid. Bauder is the son of a retired sheriff’s narcotics lieutenant. Both were indicted for theft and tax evasion.

The veterans on the crew were Terrell H. Amers, 22 years in the department; Nancy A. Brown, 17 years; Eufrasio G. Cortez, 14 years; Ronald E. Daub, 16 years; Daniel M. Garner, 18 years, and Kaliterna, 19 years.

They were all charged with at least one count of theft, with Amers and Cortez linked to six incidents, prosecutors said.

Cortez, Amers and Daub were social friends. Since 1988, all three have purchased speedboats, and each has bought a house on the Colorado River.

Attorneys for Cortez and Daub said most of the deputies’ large purchases were made with money from gifts or with loans, which they are paying off with family incomes.

Of the crew, only Daub was known to gamble regularly. A relative of Daub said the deputy once walked away from a Nevada casino with more than $25,000 in winnings.

Garner, who holds a college degree, said this week he burned out on narcotics work early last year and had been off the job on stress leave until just a week before the Aug. 30 sting.

Six months of waiting has only increased the stress, said Garner, 43, who is married and has two children.

“You go home and sit with your wife for six months, and every day is a different disaster and you don’t ever get to tell your side,” he said.

“The people around you worry more about you than you worry about yourself,” Garner added. “And you see it’s taking up their lives too. It’s very depressing.”

Several of the suspended officers were highly respected by other sheriff’s deputies and by people who have dealt with them professionally.

Kaliterna, for example, is widely praised by attorneys for drug dealers.

“He is a great officer--brave, hard working, a good guy,” said attorney Ted Naimy, who also knew Kaliterna while serving as a reserve deputy. “I won’t believe that he is involved in this unless somebody shows me.”

Perhaps none of the suspended officers was more highly regarded by his superiors than Sobel, whose reputation for diligence was established while he was still a patrol sergeant at Lakewood Station.

He is also known for his dedication to his family and for his quiet, aloof nature.

A Long Beach man who leased Sobel a boat slip last summer said the sergeant would sail most of the time by himself, but sometimes he would take his two daughters along. “You could hear them laughing,” he said.

The slip owner said Sobel told him, “You’ll like having me here. I’m a peace officer.”

That was shortly before Sobel was suspended--and the sailboat he bought with $31,500 in cash and cashiers’ checks was seized by federal authorities.