Sobel Denied Charges 3 Years Ago on Tape

An ex-Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeant who alleges that six of his former narcotics officers beat drug dealers and stole drug money told investigators three years ago that similar allegations were untrue, according to an audiotape played Wednesday for jurors.

The federal court jury, which is hearing a civil rights case against five sheriff’s deputies and a Los Angeles Police Department detective, listened as Robert R. Sobel denied the misconduct allegations against his crew members during the taped interview.

Sobel, a key witness against his former subordinates, has testified that he and his fellow narcotics officers beat drug dealers, stole drug cash and planted narcotics on suspects while working together on a special task force in Southwest Los Angeles.

But as defense attorney David Wiechert played the 50-minute tape recording, Sobel could be heard vigorously defending his men during a 1988 probe by the Sheriff Department’s Internal Investigations Bureau.

The investigators were responding to complaints that members of Sobel’s crew had beaten people with flashlights and saps and engaged in other misconduct, but the former sergeant denied the allegations.

Sobel said drug dealers and their attorney had falsely accused his officers because they had disrupted a major drug organization headed by a dealer named “Freeway” Ricky Ross. In particular, Sobel said, Ross and his friends targeted Deputies J.C. Miller and Robert S. Tolmaire who, like Ross, are black.

“Ricky Ross and all his people seemed to key on Miller and Tolmaire . . . because they were black, and they couldn’t understand why a black officer would so aggressively go after them,” Sobel told investigators. “It became a personal thing.”

Sobel has since testified that he lied to investigators in 1988 to protect himself and his subordinates. But in playing the tape for the first time, defense attorneys hoped to shake Sobel’s credibility, as well as show that many of the drug dealers who have accused the deputies of wrongdoing--including Ross--are lying.

During that 1988 interview, Sobel claimed that attorney Alan Fenster, whose firm represented Ross and a number of other drug dealers, had orchestrated the complaints against his narcotics officers. According to Sobel, Fenster was pressured by Ross to take action against the officers. Fenster could not be reached for comment.

Some of the same misconduct complaints would later surface in the federal indictment against the narcotics officers. In addition to Miller and Tolmaire, the defendants now on trial are Deputies Edward D. Jamison, John L. Edner and Roger R. Garcia and LAPD Detective Stephen W. Polak.

In undergoing cross-examination earlier Wednesday, Sobel stuck to his story that he and his fellow officers had engaged in misconduct during the 3 1/2 years that he commanded the Lennox/Southwest Crew. He also repeated his testimony that officers shared money stolen during drug raids, lied on search warrants and beat drug suspects.

Sobel said that while supervisors from the Sheriff’s Department or the LAPD accompanied his crew on half of their search warrant cases, none of the higher-ranking officers were apparently aware of any thefts or drug plantings.

However, Sobel testified that Detective Richard Ginelli, a senior officer who sometimes accompanied the team as a supervisor, was aware of one excessive-force incident.