Judge Used Chambers to Buy Drug, Police Say : Cocaine: Investigators detail sting operation that led to court commissioner’s arrest in an Anaheim motel.

Municipal Court Commissioner Robert K. Tuller Jr. used his Fullerton courtroom chambers to arrange to buy cocaine and was ultimately ensnared with the help of a man who claims to have used the drug with him for 10 years, police records revealed Friday.

Tuller, 46, was arrested in the bathroom of an Anaheim motel room May 11 with a vial of cocaine in one hand and a blowtorch in the other. Nearby were still more telltale signs of freebasing: a glass pipe, test tube, baking soda and 151-proof rum.

Tuller, who was appointed commissioner in July, 1986, was charged Friday with one felony count of possessing cocaine. Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Carl Armbrust said Tuller’s scheduled arraignment Monday would be postponed until he completes a drug rehabilitation program at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.

Detailed police reports filed in Municipal Court on Friday provide the first look at how the police began trailing Tuller and how he ended up face-to-face with the law during an undercover sting operation at the Sheraton Inn last week.

Police records show that after his arrest, Tuller asked to consult a lawyer before making a formal statement to investigators, but indicated that he would be willing to have “a background conversation” if officers turned off their tape recorder.

Once the tape stopped rolling, Tuller told them he currently used cocaine about three times a month, police say. He confessed that he has had a cocaine problem since he became a practicing attorney and that he had sought treatment once before, but had resumed using the drug, a police report said. Tuller said his drug use was something he “had to face like a man and tell his family about,” and that he hoped they “will understand and rally around” him, the report said.

Tuller’s secret began to unravel in October, when Anaheim police received a tip from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that he had freebased (the preparation and ingestion of a purer form of cocaine) with an Anaheim woman, according to the reports. Two months later, the police got word from a “reliable” male informant that Tuller had been smoking cocaine in the man’s trailer in Anaheim. Subsequent stakeouts of the trailer in the 1200 block of North East Street showed visits by Tuller.

The informant, who describes himself as a “major cocaine dealer,” told police he had known Tuller since the mid-1970s, had sold the drug to him and had personally witnessed Tuller using cocaine more than 100 times in the last 10 years, police reports show.

Once the informant volunteered on May 10 to help Anaheim police catch Tuller, they wasted little time. The next day, they obtained a court order allowing them to use three grams of cocaine from their evidence locker in the sting operation. They rented two adjoining rooms at the Sheraton Inn, which resembles a huge castle, and wired one of the rooms with microphones and videotape monitors. A small platoon of officers from the Anaheim Police Department and the state Justice Department’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement waited in the other.

The informant, stammering frequently, called Tuller’s courtroom three times from the Sheraton that morning, leaving messages with his staff to call when he got off the bench, transcripts of the recorded calls show. When Tuller called back from his chambers at 12:15 p.m., the informant told him he was “partying” with friends at the Sheraton.

“So, ah, are you inviting me?” Tuller said.

“Yeah,” the informant said. “Well, I’m waiting right now, but you know, we’ll see, hopefully we’re going to get something. . . .”

A few seconds later, Tuller asked: “Do you have the makings and stuff?”--supposedly a reference to drug paraphernalia.

In another call from the informant to Tuller, the informant asked if Tuller was “going to want anything,” and Tuller said he didn’t have any money with him.

“Can you get it fronted?” Tuller asked.

“Well, I might be able to get it fronted,” the informant answered. “I don’t know. . . . “

“I’ll have a hundred there in a while,” Tuller responded.

When the informant asked what time he could expect Tuller, the commissioner uttered a profanity. The informant told him: “She’s got good stuff, Bobby, real good stuff.”

“Um, sure, 1:30, 2,” Tuller said.

Tuller called the Sheraton at 1:05 p.m. to say he was on his way, asking, “Is anything there?” When told the drug courier was on her way, Tuller inquired, “Is she bringing some for me?”

Tuller arrived at the hotel room, carrying a bottle of Bacardi 151-proof rum, records show. Undercover officers had supplied the room with the other freebasing paraphernalia. Freebasers heat cocaine powder in a pipe, reduce it to its purest form, and then inhale its fumes.

The commissioner lounged and chatted with the informant and his girlfriend, awaiting the arrival of “Patty,” an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer.

Shortly after the undercover agent arrived, Tuller gave her five $20 bills and received two one-gram portions of cocaine, each wrapped in paper. Police records show he placed one in his shirt pocket and emptied another into a glass vial and headed for the bathroom, a blowtorch in his left hand.

Officers from the adjoining room burst in at that point, screamed at Tuller to stay still and grabbed the torch and the vial of cocaine, court documents said. When one officer snatched the packet of cocaine from Tuller’s shirt pocket, Tuller asked: “How did that get in there?”

On Monday, the judges of Municipal Court in Fullerton, who had appointed Tuller, voted to ask for his resignation. Colleagues said they were stunned to learn of his alleged drug use and that no indication of it had surfaced in his work. Tuller had most recently been presiding over the court’s misdemeanor arraignments.