Two Deputies Called Part of Conspiracy of Corrupt Officers : Trial: They ‘kick-started’ spending sprees with stolen drug cash, the prosecutor says in closing arguments.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies facing federal corruption charges were part of a conspiracy of corrupt narcotics officers who skimmed drug money and “kick-started” personal spending sprees with the stolen cash, prosecutors said Tuesday.

“It’s time to take back our Sheriff’s Department,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Sean Berry in urging jurors to convict Deputies Robert Juarez and Tyrone Powe.

In their closing arguments, Berry and co-prosecutor Steven M. Bauer told jurors that the defendants--along with other members of an elite anti-narcotics team--had been protected by “a code of silence” that was shattered when several ex-deputies testified against them.

“Now, the code of silence no longer protects these deputies . . . from our justice system,” said Berry, who added that the corruption and thefts “kick-started” the deputies into a spending pattern that betrayed them.

Defense attorneys for Powe and Juarez, however, challenged that view and said both men have been implicated in the money-skimming scandal because of the false testimony of three ex-deputies who served as key prosecution witnesses.

“The government is asking you to convict my client with the testimony of human garbage,” attorney Joel Levine, who represents Powe, told jurors. “Please, don’t do it.”

The former narcotics officers who testified for the government--Virgil Bartlett, Eufrasio G. Cortez and Robert R. Sobel--had worked with the defendants on an anti-drug team known as Majors II. But attorney Terry Amdur, who represents Juarez, said the prosecution witnesses were the ones who stole drug money, planted evidence and perjured themselves.

These are “basically renegades who are hiding behind their badges and running their enterprise outside of Majors II,” Amdur said.

The closing statements marked the end of more than three weeks of testimony and arguments in the trial of Juarez, Powe and a third defendant, Yhvona Garner, whose husband also was a narcotics officer and already has pleaded guilty in the case.

Both Juarez and Powe are facing conspiracy, theft and income tax charges for allegedly sharing stolen drug cash in late 1986 and using the money to buy vehicles and jewelry and to remodel a home. Juarez is also accused of laundering some of the stolen drug money.

Charged with money-laundering and filing a false income tax return, Yhvona Garner had testified that she was unaware of any thefts because her husband handled the family finances and only learned later that he had stolen drug money. Her attorney, Phillip Deitch, called the government’s indictment of her “a power play” to try to force her husband to cooperate with investigators.

Prosecutor Bauer, however, told jurors that the Garners had deposited or spent more than $203,000 in cash from 1986 to 1989 on such things as cars and condos--and that Yhvona Garner had handled most of the couple’s banking activities.

Bauer also said that records show that Powe and Juarez had engaged in a flurry of financial transactions--including cash expenditures--in the months after the alleged theft of more than $200,000 in drug money in December, 1986, in which the defendants are accused of receiving more than $55,000 each.