Judge Says Indicted Officers Aren’t Likely to Flee; Bail Is Set at $25,000

A federal magistrate set bail at $25,000 Friday for five Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and a Los Angeles police detective indicted on charges of conspiracy and civil rights violations, including viciously beating suspects and falsifying police reports.

U.S. Magistrate Joseph Reichmann set the relatively low bail after stating he believed there was minimal risk of flight. An arraignment was scheduled for Monday.

The law enforcement officers, all former members of a special anti-drug task force based in Southwest Los Angeles, were indicted Thursday on 34 criminal counts alleging they engaged in various acts of brutality, including trying to smother a drug suspect with a plastic bag and holding the heads of two others under water in a hotel hot tub.

The men were also accused of skimming more than $100,000 during drug raids, stealing cocaine and planting it on suspects, and falsifying search warrants during a three-year period that ended in April, 1988.

The bail hearing was the latest event in a scandal that has rocked local law enforcement since a probe of alleged corruption began 16 months ago. Last month, six deputies were convicted on federal charges of stealing drug money and a seventh was convicted on a related money-laundering charge.

With Thursday’s indictment, Stephen W. Polak, 41, became the first Los Angeles police officer charged with a crime in the broadening federal investigation. He appeared at Friday’s hearing with co-defendants and former crew mates John L. Edner, Roger R. Garcia, Edward D. Jamison, J. C. Miller and Robert S. Tolmaire.

Though prosecutors said they agreed that flight risk was minimal, “We do feel there is some danger to members of the community and that danger is reflected in some of the allegations in the indictment,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Emmick said.

Defense attorneys vehemently disagreed, saying their clients--all of whom have at least 15 years in law enforcement--have never posed a threat to the people they swore to protect. “It seems to me that the only members of the community who may be endangered by these men are those who choose to sell narcotics,” said attorney Bradley Brunon, who represents Jamison.

Polack’s attorney, David W. Wiechert, added that his client would never have been implicated had he not had “the misfortune to be teamed with an individual who has already admitted to being perhaps the baddest apple in the history of Southern California law enforcement.”

Wiechert was referring to Robert R. Sobel, former head of the Southwest Region Wholesale Distribution Task Force that once included the six defendants. Sobel, named as an unindicted co-conspirator, has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against his former subordinates, as he did in a previous money-skimming trial.