Ex-Sergeant Implicates LAPD Detectives in Drug Trial

A key prosecution witness in the federal civil rights trial of six narcotics officers testified Wednesday that several unindicted Los Angeles Police Department detectives falsified search warrants to validate drug raids and knew that deputies planted cocaine on suspects.

Former Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert R. Sobel said the officers, part of an anti-narcotics crew operating in Southwest Los Angeles, did not participate in planting drugs but knew of illegal activities as members of the multi-agency task force.

Sobel identified the LAPD officers as detectives Ron Michel, Tony Moreno and Ricky Ramos, who along with defendant Steven W. Polak had worked with sheriff’s deputies as the LAPD representatives on the task force known as the Southwest Crew.

None of the officers, who remain on the job, has been charged with any crime. They could not be reached Wednesday through the Police Department or the Police Protective League. LAPD spokesman Lt. Fred Nixon said the department would not comment.

But attorney David Wiechert, who represents Polak, challenged Sobel’s statements.

“We do not believe that there was any misconduct by any of the LAPD officers,” he said. “Only one LAPD officer has been indicted in this case, and that’s because of personal animus by Robert Sobel toward Steven Polak for reasons that will come out in the course of the trial.”

Sobel, who has been on the witness stand for four days, has already testified that the sheriff’s deputies and Polak skimmed money during drug raids, beat drug suspects with fists and flashlights and planted narcotics on people they wanted to arrest.

But Sobel made it clear Tuesday that he was unaware of any thefts or beatings by the other LAPD officers. He testified, however, that the officers doctored search warrants to justify drug raids or falsified police reports to link certain suspects with a drug seizure.

In one particular case, Sobel alleged that the narcotics crew raided a house in Los Angeles used by a drug dealer as “a cook spot” to process and prepare cocaine. But when the officers searched the house, they found several kilos of cocaine and nobody home.

Determined to tie the drugs to the cocaine dealer, the Southwest crew fabricated a story about seeing a man flee from a window and escaping--but not before they recognized him as the drug dealer, Sobel said. Michel wrote the false report and lied about conducting an initial surveillance that led to the drug raid, Sobel testified.

The ex-sergeant also said that Ramos had lied when he wrote a police report describing another raid in which the officers gained entry to an apartment by knocking on the door and announcing they were police officers. A valise containing cocaine was later found, implicating the occupants, the report said. But no such “knock and announce” tactic was employed, Sobel said, and no cocaine was actually found.

Sobel also claimed that Ramos, Michel and Moreno were present during another raid when Polak told the LAPD officers and sheriff’s deputies he was going to take some of the cocaine found in that raid and plant it at a second location.

Sobel also testified that it was “an open secret” among crew members that Polak once carried a kilogram of cocaine--that had been stolen during a raid--in his car trunk for weeks waiting for a chance to plant it.

In disputing Sobel’s testimony, attorney Bradley Brunon, who represents defendant Deputy Edward D. Jamison, suggested that the ex-sergeant is so eager to cooperate with prosecutors that he “has no compunction to name anyone including uncharged LAPD officers” as fellow conspirators.