Drug Task Force Suffers Role Reversal : Law enforcement: The squad won much praise for arresting cocaine distributors. But now many of its members are under indictment and trying to stay out of prison.

Their mission was to roust cocaine dealers in Southwest Los Angeles. And the deputies on the Sheriff Department’s Southwest Task Force waged their special war on drug traffickers with the help of Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officers.

It was an alliance that would last only six months. But during that time, the narcotics officers from the county’s two largest law enforcement agencies targeted some of the area’s most notorious street dealers--most of whom would eventually land in jail.

But Friday, more than three years after their task force was disbanded, most of those same officers found themselves before a U.S. magistrate in downtown Los Angeles, posting bail and facing the possibility of going to prison themselves.

“One minute you’re a police officer . . . the next minute, you’re out on the street. It’s a very difficult situation,” Deputy Edward D. Jamison said after the bail hearing.

Jamison and five other officers, who served together on the Southwest crew, were indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury. Named in the 34-count indictment were deputies John L. Edner, Roger R. Garcia, J.C. Miller, Robert S. Tolmaire and Jamison, along with Los Angeles Police Detective Stephen W. Polak.

The narcotics officers are accused of falsifying search warrants, beating drug suspects and stealing cash and valuables from homes during drug raids from 1985 to 1988. The grand jury also claimed the officers filed false police reports and maintained a “conspiracy of silence” to cover up a wave of wrongdoing that included planting cocaine on suspects.

“The conspirators would ‘plant’ illegal drugs on suspected drug dealers, or their family members--a practice known as ‘flaking’ the suspect,” the grand jury said.

At their hearing Friday, however, the officers and their attorneys denied the allegations.

“None of the charges are true,” Jamison said. “There’s not a word of truth in it.”

The strongly worded indictment is a far cry from the commendations that the task force received from law enforcement officials a few years ago when the Southwest crew was operating.

According to sheriff’s officials, the Southwest Region Wholesale Distribution Task Force was created in September, 1986, to investigate major cocaine distributors in the South-Central Los Angeles area. Staffing the team were veteran narcotics officers from the Lennox sheriff’s station, and the task force’s primary target was a suspected drug dealer named Ricky (Freeway Rick) Donnell Ross.

Ross was believed to be in charge of a sophisticated distribution network that was handling as much as 75 kilograms of cocaine a week, according to narcotics deputies. And when the Sheriff’s Department learned that LAPD narcotics officers also were interested in Ross and other suspected cocaine traffickers, the agencies joined forces in January, 1987.

The task force made 44 arrests, served 66 search warrants and seized 38.6 kilograms of cocaine and $640,351 in cash during its six-month life span, according to sheriff’s records.

In a letter from Sheriff Sherman Block to Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, the crew also was hailed for “the arrest and prosecution of numerous mid-level distributors, virtually eliminating the activities of one major drug distribution network in the Southwest area.”

In that Dec. 30, 1987, letter, Block praised Polak and the other Los Angeles officers and added that “the professionalism and work ethic of these individuals cannot be overstated and directly led to the success of the unit, which has served as a model for federally funded grants recently acquired by both of our agencies.”

For the members of that Southwest crew, those laudatory words provide only a glimpse into the difficulties of their job. Narcotics officers dealt routinely with “ex-cons, gangbangers and heavyweight drug dealers” in a milieu where deception and street violence by suspected traffickers was the norm, Jamison said.

“Sometimes it was like a war zone out there,” said another former team member who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There were houses with bars on them and people armed to the teeth that we had to deal with, and it was risky at times.”

But the success of the task force soon spawned other anti-drug teams. Spurred by the Southwest experience, the Sheriff’s Department used a federal grant to pay for two new squads that targeted local rock cocaine houses. Some of the Southwest deputies were transferred to that group while others returned to different narcotics assignments.

The LAPD officers on the Southwest team were also given other narcotics duties or joined that department’s own anti-drug teams, ending the alliance between the Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department. By the end of 1987, the Southwest Task Force had expired.

Now, three years later, the former head of that task force--Robert R. Sobel, who also was named as an unindicted co-conspirator--is preparing to testify against his former subordinates. And drug dealers such as Ross, who is now in an Ohio prison, are ready to testify against the same narcotics officers who pursued them.

“It’s an unbelievable situation,” Jamison said. “It’s a nightmare.”