Inquiry Into LAPD May Jeopardize Drug Cases : Law enforcement: The D.A.’s office says policemen may have stolen money. None have been indicted.

The district attorney’s office is alerting drug defendants arrested by certain Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officers that several officers are themselves being investigated “for the theft of confiscated drug monies and other crimes.”

Police sources said that at least five officers have been accused of beating drug suspects, falsifying evidence and stealing drug money--and that 30 drug cases could be affected.

The investigation of LAPD officers represents an expansion of an 18-month federal probe of alleged money-skimming by narcotics officers in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The latest allegations largely came from Robert R. Sobel, a former sheriff’s narcotics sergeant who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal $1.4 million in drug money and has emerged as the central prosecution witness.

In the sheriff’s investigation, nine other deputies have been indicted and face trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court. An additional 16 deputies have been suspended but not charged.

None of the Los Angeles police officers have been disciplined or charged in the case, officials said. They have been removed from field investigations and reassigned to administrative duties, according to a police union attorney.

Sources said that investigators also have reviewed the personal finances of the police officers and searched one officer’s home.

With the money-skimming case spreading to the Police Department, some administrators are bracing for the worst. “These guys at Parker Center are running scared,” said one LAPD supervisor who has been briefed on the investigation. “They saw what happened with the sheriff’s deputies.”

Based on Sobel’s information, prosecutors began sending letters in September to attorneys for drug defendants arrested by the LAPD officers under investigation.

“The purpose of this letter is to inform you that Los Angeles Police Department Officer . . . , who may be a witness on this case, is being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department and federal agencies for the theft of confiscated drug monies and other crimes,” said the letters.

Curtis A. Hazell, acting head of the district attorney’s major narcotics and forfeiture division, said Tuesday that the letters were sent because defendants were legally entitled to know that some testimony from police officers might be tainted.

The letters were sent to defense attorneys in an undetermined number of pending drug cases and in roughly nine closed cases, he said.

“On those (closed) cases, there are specific allegations of misconduct involving police officer activities, evidence or testimony which call into question the validity of the convictions,” Hazell said.

He added that more letters may be sent. “It’s an ongoing investigation,” he said.

Exactly what impact the investigation may have on drug cases is unknown.

The district attorney sent out similar letters last year and this year to attorneys for drug defendants who had been arrested by the sheriff’s deputies implicated in the money-skimming scandal.

Hazell said about 20 criminal cases involving sheriff’s deputies have been dismissed or otherwise affected. In some cases, charges have been reduced, and one convicted drug dealer was released from state prison.

Enrique Hernandez, an attorney for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said that the five officers have not been charged, but that the criminal cases they put together against Los Angeles drug dealers are being jeopardized by the corruption probe.

“These (accused drug dealers) are mid-level to major violators,” he said. “These are distribution and sale cases. These defendants are not the nickel-and-dime street dealers who are passing around rock cocaine.”

Hernandez said that the officers have done nothing wrong. “People suspect that perhaps they are corrupt, when there has not been any factual information that that is true,” Hernandez said. “I mean, here we are a year into this thing and there have been no indictments.

“And today they are devastated and demoralized. These are good, hard-working and experienced officers whose reputations have been tarnished.”

Sobel, the prosecution’s chief witness, previously worked as the supervisor of the joint Sheriff’s-LAPD Southwest Task Force that targeted mid-level street dealers.

The Times reported last year that the task force was originally known 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.

That special unit--initially four deputies and four LAPD officers directed by Sobel--had been accused by several witnesses of theft and brutality during investigations of Ross and other suspected cocaine traffickers.

Drug trafficking charges against Ross were dismissed in mid-1987.

In FBI interviews, Sobel made allegations against sheriff’s deputies and LAPD narcotics officers.

A Ladera Heights bust resulted in a situation where “a bag of money was recovered and everybody had his hands in it,” said an FBI summary of Sobel’s interviews.

“Sobel basically had to wrestle it away from them,” the summary said. “Then (one LAPD officer) transported the money back to the station and only (that officer) and Sobel got any, because (the LAPD officer) told him to take some as a going away present.”

Cocaine was taken illegally from the trunk of a car and planted in a house near Chadron Street in Hawthorne in February, 1987, with the complicity of four LAPD officers, the summary said.

“Sobel did see (an LAPD officer) remove the cocaine from the Chevy at Chadron and devise the plan of planting it at the other location,” according to the FBI report. “There is no question that each member of the task force knew that dope was moved and planted in this manner.”

The summary also said about this episode: “Sobel advised that he knew (an LAPD officer) played the game and that (the officer) stole when he was at LAPD.”

Intent on busting Ross, LAPD officers kept up a running joke about how they were going to plant illegal narcotics on the drug suspect, the report said. “As time went on, it became common knowledge among the entire task force that (an LAPD officer) was carrying around a kilo of dope in the tire well of his vehicle.

“(The LAPD officer) would be bragging about a present for Ricky Ross when they ran into him. There were constant jokes made about the dope they had ready for Ricky Ross when they found him.”

In another incident, the report said, a drug suspect allegedly was beaten by officers while other officers stood by. The officers were apparently upset with the suspect because one officer had injured his thumb during the raid.

“You could start to hear quite a bit of screaming after they went inside,” Sobel told the FBI. “This screaming went on for two to three full minutes. You could hear it all the way down the block.”