Drug Detective Disputes Theft, Abuse Charges

A Los Angeles police detective, testifying in the civil rights trial of six narcotics officers, said Monday that he never saw the officers plant drugs, steal money or beat suspects while they worked together on an anti-drug team.

Anthony Robert Moreno, a 16-year Police Department veteran, disputed prosecution claims that officers on the Lennox/Southwest task force routinely skimmed drug cash and violated the rights of suspects.

But Moreno testified that he had been warned by a representative of the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division last fall that he would face administrative charges if he stuck to his view, which he first expressed during an FBI interview.

“He said if I stayed with those answers, I would be looking at (charges of) lying and termination,” Moreno testified.

Moreno identified the Internal Affairs officer as Sgt. Charles Carlton, who was in the courtroom Monday. Carlton declined comment after the hearing and referred all questions to department officials.

Lt. Fred Nixon, a department spokesman, also declined to respond to Moreno’s assertions but said: “We believe that anything said in open court will be adequately dealt with by the system.”

Moreno, whom the department has removed from field duty, was called as a witness by the attorney for Los Angeles Police Detective Stephen W. Polak, who with five sheriff’s deputies is a defendant in the case.

Moreno, Polak and two other Los Angeles officers had worked with the deputies as members of the task force that targeted primarily black drug dealers in Southwest Los Angeles. Polak is the only Los Angeles police officer who has been indicted.

During his testimony, Moreno contradicted a key prosecution witness--former Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert R. Sobel--who once supervised the crew and who has implicated his former subordinates in theft, dope-planting and beating of suspects.

Moreno testified that he never saw excessive force used against a suspect and was unaware of any thefts or planting of narcotics. Moreno also disputed the testimony of Sobel and convicted drug dealer Ricky Donnell Ross that one defendant, Deputy John L. Edner, had fired a shot at an unarmed Ross and that officers falsely claimed that Ross dropped a kilogram of cocaine as he fled.

Moreno is expected to resume his testimony today and is expected to be followed on the stand by another Los Angeles police detective.

The first witness called Monday by defense attorneys was a former drug dealer who had pleaded guilty in a drug case but was released from prison in 1990 after the money-skimming scandal broke.

Trosper Parie, who served eight months of a five-year sentence, was released after authorities concluded that the Southwest officers who had arrested him might have manufactured the evidence against him and the circumstances surrounding their seizure of cocaine.

Contradicting the defendants, Parie testified that he was not home when officers raided his Los Angeles apartment.

However, Parie acknowledged under questioning from a defense attorney that he had pleaded guilty to the charge because he had, in fact, stashed kilograms of cocaine in his apartment.

Parie was called as a witness by Roger Cossack, who represents Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert S. Tolmaire. Cossack and defense attorneys for deputies Edner and J. C. Miller said they will be calling additional witnesses.

Two other defense attorneys indicated Monday that they were resting their case without calling any witnesses.

“It is our opinion that the government has not produced sufficient evidence against Deputy (Roger R.) Garcia, and we are resting our case,” said attorney Lindsay Weston.

Bradley Brunon, who represents Deputy Edward D. Jamison, said he also expected to rest his case without calling witnesses because “my feeling is that the government has not proven the truth of the charges against Mr. Jamison.”