Ex-Deputy Testifies He Stole $113,000 During Drug Raids : Courts: He implicates two former colleagues at their federal corruption trial. He also says team members planted cocaine in a suspect’s apartment.

A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy testified Thursday that he stole more than $113,000 as a narcotics officer and joined other deputies in skimming cash to pay for pizza and beer, as well as law enforcement tools, expensive dinners, vacation trips and home improvements.

Testifying for the first time as a prosecution witness, Virgil Bartlett told federal jurors that he and other members of an elite anti-drug team routinely stole money during drug raids, falsified police reports and--in a 1986 case--planted cocaine in a suspect’s apartment to justify a search warrant.

Bartlett, a key government witness against two of his former colleagues, also said he skimmed money on his own without the knowledge of other narcotics officers, and once kept tens of thousands of dollars of stolen cash in a shoe box under his bed.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Sean Berry asked Bartlett, in the midst of his daylong testimony, why he was breaking the “code of silence” and implicating his fellow officers.

“I believe it’s the right thing to do,” the retired deputy replied. “It’s the only way I could live with myself.”

Bartlett’s appearance in the trial of Deputies Robert Juarez and Tyrone Powe marks only the second time that a former narcotics officer has testified against his fellow deputies in a corruption scandal that surfaced more than 3 1/2 years ago.

During the first money-skimming trials, ex-Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert R. Sobel was the prosecution’s chief witness, and Sobel is expected to take the stand in this case along with another ex-deputy, Eufrasio G. Cortez.

In his testimony, Bartlett said Juarez and Powe--who face conspiracy, theft and income tax charges--had shared in skimmed money as members of a team that targeted major drug dealers and people involved in money-laundering.

After a 1986 raid, Bartlett said, the three men and Cortez rented a motel room in Norwalk to split a shoe box of skimmed cash. The deputies already had turned in another shoe box full of cash as evidence and had kept a smaller amount for themselves.

When they opened the box in their motel room, Bartlett said, they were surprised to find that they had taken the wrong box--and had stolen the bulk of the money they had seized.

“We divided the money,” said Bartlett, who received between $73,000 and $78,000 as his share. “There was nothing we could do. It wasn’t like we could return it.”

At other times, Bartlett said he was given several thousand dollars in envelopes in restaurant parking lots, or outside the narcotics headquarters in Whittier, as his share of thefts.

Under cross-examination by Powe’s attorney, Joel Levine, Bartlett said he participated in more than a dozen thefts and stole between $113,000 and $115,000. Some of the money went for pizza, beer and law enforcement equipment such as beepers and raid vests, he said. But Bartlett testified that most of the money was spent on dinners, trips and was “just blown, wasted away.”

He stopped receiving stolen cash, Bartlett said, when a fellow narcotics officer accused him of stealing money from other crew members.

Bartlett said ex-Deputy Daniel M. Garner--whose wife, Yhvona, is also on trial--gave him his last share of stolen money in 1987 and told him: “You’re out. I don’t want any part of you. You’re a thief.”