DEA Rejected Request for Probe of Garcia, Witness Says

A former federal prosecutor testified Wednesday that a Drug Enforcement Administration agent rejected a government request in 1986 to investigate whether former drug agent Darnell Garcia was involved in narcotics trafficking.

Stephen Czuleger, now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, said the DEA agent, Al Dovetko, concluded that there was not enough evidence to pursue Garcia at the time. Instead, he said, the Internal Revenue Service opened an investigation into Garcia and his associates.

Czuleger was an assistant U.S. attorney five years ago investigating possible corruption in the DEA’s Los Angeles office. He was called to the witness stand by the government to rebut Garcia’s testimony that Dovetko orchestrated a DEA vendetta against him.

Garcia has told jurors the reason he became a fugitive, after issuance of an arrest warrant for him in 1988, was that he feared for his life after years of hostility between him and other DEA agents, including Dovetko. Motivating it, Garcia said, were complaints he filed alleging racial discrimination against him.

Ultimately, Dovetko helped spearhead the prosecution of Garcia, 44, of Rancho Palos Verdes. Czuleger said that in 1986 he proposed that the DEA begin an investigation of Garcia’s activities. But Dovetko rejected it.

“(Dovetko) did not feel at that time there was enough evidence to open up a narcotics investigation of Garcia,” he said.

Instead, the DEA began its inquiry in 1987. It led to a major corruption scandal and the indictment of Garcia and two other DEA agents on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering.

To underscore his fear of being harmed by DEA agents, Garcia has testified about an incident in September, 1987, while he was in a car on the Pasadena Freeway. He was under DEA surveillance at the time. He said he confronted his pursuer, a DEA agent, at a stoplight in Pasadena.

Garcia said he walked up to the driver and asked, “Are you a good guy or a bad guy?” The driver, he said, pulled a pistol from a briefcase, pointed it at a spot below the car’s window and said, “What difference does it make? You’re going down anyway.”

On Wednesday, the DEA agent whom Garcia confronted, Mishel Piastro, testified that he never displayed a weapon. He also denied making threatening statements.

Piastro said he had a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver in an open briefcase on the passenger seat. He said that when Garcia approached, he put his hand on the weapon but never removed it from the case.