Clerk at Jail Arrested in Escape Probe : Corruption: Woman faces bribery charges for allegedly helping a Colombian drug suspect slip out of facility three years ago. Additional arrests are expected in the case.

A senior clerk at the Los Angeles County Inmate Reception Center has been arrested on bribery charges for allegedly helping a suspected Colombian drug dealer escape from jail three years ago, Sheriff Sherman Block said Thursday.

Glenda Louise Bell, 39, was relieved of duty and taken into custody Wednesday night shortly after arriving for work, Block said, as sheriff’s and federal investigators climaxed a lengthy probe into the baffling escape of William Londono. Block said he expects additional arrests in the case.

Londono, described as a high-level “cog” in a Los Angeles-based money-laundering ring, was discovered to be missing on Aug. 31, 1987--six days after he walked out of the downtown Men’s Central Jail when someone sent an unauthorized “release message” on the jail’s internal computer system.

Bell, a 13-year department veteran, stands accused of using a computer at the Inmate Reception Center to free Londono.

“There is no indication that she had any direct involvement or contact with Londono. This was accomplished through intermediaries on behalf of Londono,” Block said, adding: “I can’t get any more specific than that.”

Speaking at a news conference at the Hall of Justice, the sheriff said Bell was paid by Londono for her assistance, although he declined to provide any details.

“It was a significant amount. That’s all I can say,” Block said, adding that investigators expect to make additional arrests. None involve other Sheriff’s Department employees.

Bell, a Los Angeles resident, could not be reached for comment. She was released from custody Thursday after posting $15,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 6 in Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Block said investigators had focused on Bell as one of the employees who had access to the computers used in Londono’s escape and had interviewed her but could not complete their case until recently.

“All I can say is that suspicion focused rather early on this individual,” he said, adding that evidence against her was developed “through a variety of avenues.” These included interviews with “people in the community, people involved in the drug scene and others,” Block said.

Londono, who was being held on $3-million bail, remains at large and is believed to be hiding in his native Colombia, the sheriff said.

Londono was 23 at the time he was arrested, swept up in Operation Pisces, a multiagency drug probe that resulted in the arrest of 240 people nationwide.

Londono, whose ring reportedly laundered $48 million in profits from cocaine sales into Panama and Colombia, was arrested at an estate in Ventura County’s Bell Canyon community and later placed in a maximum-security cellblock at the Central Jail.

An inmate normally would have to pass through nine security checkpoints to go from the jail’s maximum-security area, where Londono was kept, to the jail’s main entrance, one floor below his cell. But with the help of the unauthorized computer message, Londono slipped out of the facility on Aug. 25 after passing through only one checkpoint, a guard station.

It took deputies six days to realize that Londono had vanished from the 7,000-person jail. Block said authorities realized early during their probe that their security system had been compromised, prompting them to set up “enhanced security procedures.”

Last March, however, another inmate--a convicted murderer named Victor Ramirez Castellanos--escaped from the Hall of Justice jail. His escape, which was blamed on a deputy’s computer error, went unnoticed for three weeks.

Castellanos also remains at large. But Block said that unlike the Londono case, there was no indication of any corruption by employees in that escape.

The arrest of Bell is the latest incident to shake a department that in the past year has been marred by the indictment of 10 sheriff’s narcotics officers in a money-skimming scandal and the suspension of 18 other deputies in that ongoing probe.

But Block denied that there is any corruption problem in his 11,000-member department.

“No, it’s not a crisis,” he said Thursday. “Anytime we determine that any member of this department is involved in any corrupt practice, we will vigorously pursue the investigation and the ultimate arrest and prosecution of that individual. That is what is happening with the narcotics officers . . . and that is what is happening in this case.”