Sylmar Drug Ring ‘Patriarch’ Gets Life : Narcotics: A raid on his warehouse netted a record 21.4 tons of cocaine. Judge imposes maximum term without parole.

A former Mexican customs official, whom prosecutors called “the patriarch” of a drug trafficking ring broken with the seizure of a record 21.4 tons of cocaine in a San Fernando Valley warehouse, was sentenced Monday in Los Angeles federal court to life in prison without parole .

“This is a case that cries out for the maximum sentence,” U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. said in imposing the prison term on Carlos Tapia-Ponce. “Society must be protected as best it can.”

Hatter’s decision was tougher than the recommendation of parole authorities, who called for a term of 40 years.

Tapia, 69, has been incarcerated in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles since the drug cache and $12 million in cash was discovered in Sylmar on Sept. 28, 1989.

The short, stocky defendant was stoic as Hatter commented on the enormity of the crime. Then, when asked for comment, Tapia replied:

“I have nothing to say.”

Defense attorney Joseph Abraham of El Paso would not discuss the sentence.

“He’s the judge,” Abraham said.

The prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Atty. James P. Walsh Jr. and Special Assistant U.S. Atty. Susan Bryant-Deason, said the sentence was just.

“I hope anybody, in any country, who feels this area is a fair target for drugs will know we have a system and judges who say, ‘If you’re going to traffic in drugs, you are going to be put away for the rest of your life,’ ” Walsh said.

“I don’t think it was too harsh for a minute,” said Bryant-Deason, who works for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. “He didn’t think twice about mothers, fathers or children he was hurting in this world. All he was concerned about was money and himself. He got what he deserved.”

In urging a life sentence, Walsh told the court that Tapia’s “fingerprints are all over this case.” He said Tapia--who retired from his customs job four years before his arrest--had “hands-on supervision of the real work in that warehouse,” which he leased to establish a cover business called Fiesta Arts and Crafts.

Hatter noted the pre-sentencing report by the U.S. Probation Department, which recommended a 40-year prison term. But, in imposing the maximum sentence, the jurist read a portion of the report referring to federal Drug Enforcement Administration calculations on the cocaine’s effect on society.

The 21 tons, the DEA said, translated into 1.9 billion cocaine dosages of a gram--enough to provide 648 “hits” for every person living in Los Angeles, or seven for every man, woman and child living in the United States.

Tapia, described as the patriarch of the ring, was one of three defendants convicted last November on cocaine trafficking and conspiracy charges in the Sylmar case. The others were his sons-in-law, James Romero McTague, 42, of El Paso and Jose Ignacio Monroy, 37, of Mexico. A jury deadlocked on three other defendants who, with a fourth person, face a new trial in September.

McTague was to be sentenced along with Tapia, but Hatter postponed the matter until after the September trial. Monroy is to be sentenced next Monday.

During the trial, the government recounted how the cocaine was supplied by Colombian drug kingpins to distributors in Mexico. From there, the drugs were smuggled across the Texas border and hauled in big-rig trucks along interstate highways to Sylmar.