Officer’s Past May Set Him Apart : Trial: But judge says if disciplinary action is used as evidence in narcotics case, he will split man’s case from those of five other defendants.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that prosecutors in a civil rights case against six Los Angeles County narcotics officers could introduce evidence that one defendant had been suspended for using unnecessary force and lying about an incident 13 years ago.

But U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi said that if prosecutors use that evidence against Los Angeles Police Department Detective Stephen W. Polak, he will split Polak’s case from the other defendants’ to ensure there would be no damaging “spillover effect” on the other officers.

Takasugi’s surprise decision came on the final day of scheduled testimony in the 4-month-old trial of Polak and five sheriff’s deputies who are accused of beating suspects, planting evidence on them, skimming drug cash and lying in police reports. His ruling also followed pleas from other defendants seeking to distance themselves from such a disclosure.

“This evidence is absolutely devastating to the defense, not just Mr. Polak, but the entire defense,” said Lindsay A. Weston, who represents Deputy Roger R. Garcia.

In addition to Garcia, deputies John L. Edner, Edward D. Jamison, J. C. Miller and Sgt. Robert S. Tolmaire have completed presentation of their cases. Under Takasugi’s ruling, the jury would hear closing arguments next week from attorneys for the five, then go into deliberations.

The jurors then would hear separate testimony and closing arguments regarding Polak. They also would conduct separate deliberations for Polak.

Prosecutors, however, said Wednesday that they may reverse their decision to introduce the 1978 case against Polak to avoid severing his case from the other defendants’.

“What it does is lengthen the trial quite a bit,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Emmick. “We’ll have to research all the legal ramifications.”

“There is a precedent (for the judge’s ruling),” he said. “It has been done before, but we just want to be extra careful.”

In the 1978 incident, Polak--who worked at the time as a sheriff’s patrol deputy--fired a shot at a fleeing teen-ager, then punched him twice in the face during an arrest in Norwalk.

Polak claimed that the 15-year-old boy was armed but later admitted that he had lied about the incident, according to a Sheriff’s Department report.

Polak said he had fired a warning shot at the youth, which was against departmental policy. He then used a broken strip of metal that he found in a nearby junkyard to support his story that he thought the youth was armed, the report said.

Polak was demoted and suspended for 30 days, according to Civil Service records. Three years later, he resigned from the department and joined the LAPD.

In arguing against the introduction of the 1978 case, Polak’s attorney, David Wiechert, told the judge that the incident was the act of a “brash, immature police officer” who has since turned his life around.

Since that time, Wiechert said Polak has won the Sheriff Department’s valor award for saving a 5-year-old boy who had stopped breathing and also won the LAPD’s Police Star for bravery, one of the highest awards given by the department.

Wiechert added that the Norwalk case was the only example of misconduct in Polak’s career--and occurred nine years before the alleged incidents for which he is on trial.

“There is nothing else the jury can infer from that (Norwalk incident) except that Steve Polak is a bad guy and they will convict him,” Wiechert told the judge.

Prosecutors, however, said the incident shows that nearly a decade earlier Polak was involved in a brutality incident similar to those with which he is charged.