Tough Wiretap Law Credited With Smashing Meth Ring : Drugs: A 24-count indictment against 11 people represents the first criminal charges in the state filed under the 4-year-old statute.

In the first charges stemming from California’s restrictive wiretap law, San Diego prosecutors indicted 11 suspected methamphetamine dealers, including a South Bay traffic court referee, and claimed Tuesday to have smashed a “major national drug ring.”

The ring, prosecutors said, made hundreds of pounds--worth thousands of dollars--of the drug over the past 10 years at East County labs, then shipped it to points east by courier.

The case came together earlier this year after authorities got court approval to tap the home phones of the two suspected ringleaders in El Cajon and Lakeside. Six weeks of taps led police and prosecutors to a 24-count indictment, officials said at a press conference Tuesday.

All 11 people were arrested Tuesday, including one in Utah, one in Kansas and one at Lindbergh Field, officials said. The nine who were arrested in San Diego were held pending arraignment Thursday, prosecutors said. Extradition proceedings are due to begin immediately for the other two, prosecutors said.

If convicted, each of the 11, including South Bay Traffic Court Referee Donald Wayne Russell, 40, of Chula Vista, could draw up to 20 years in state prison, prosecutors said.

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, who announced the indictment, said Tuesday that the arrests would not have been possible without thousands of wiretaps. Prosecutors took the opportunity Tuesday to call for a broadened use of the 1988 state law that authorizes taps.

Unlike federal wiretap law, which allows taps for a variety of crimes, the state law permits taps only for the investigation of large-scale heroin, cocaine, PCP and meth rings. If, for example, a police officer in such a drug probe hears a wiretapped suspect admit to murder, that evidence is not admissible in court under the state law.

Privacy concerns have kept the law from being expanded. But, Miller said, because the law is “so restrictive,” its utility is “extremely limited,” and that is why the taps at the homes of alleged ringleaders Larry Albert Ross, 42, of El Cajon, and Earl Frank Westbrook, 46, of Lakeside, led to the first criminal charges in the state under the 4-year-old law.

“In some cases, and this is certainly one, state wiretap authorization is the difference between success and failure,” Miller said.

The case began a few years ago when the county Narcotics Task Force served a search warrant at a home in El Cajon and found a meth lab, officials said. The task force is made up of officers from every police department in San Diego County, the county Sheriff’s Department and a variety of federal agencies.

Police suspected that Ross and Westbrook were behind the lab but couldn’t prove it. In November, 1990, a train courier carrying 10 pounds of meth was arrested in Albuquerque, en route to Kansas City, Kan. Agents learned that couriers had been moving drugs to Kansas City for years.

Still, officers could not trace the trail back to Ross and Westbrook. In January, police were stymied, and prosecutors asked San Diego Superior Court Judge Raymond Edwards, a criminal law expert, for permission to tap Ross and Westbrook’s phones.

The taps began Jan. 15 and ended Feb. 26.

“We knew a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” said William D. Holman, chief of the narcotics division at the district attorney’s office. “But we didn’t know who the (methamphetamine) cook was, when they were cooking or where or how they were going to cook, because we knew the organization was headed up by people themselves who didn’t cook.

“So, with the wiretaps, we identified the cooks,” Holman said. “We identified the locations. And it allowed us to locate a lab in operation,” a Lemon Grove house raided in February where officers found 20 pounds of meth and 10 pounds of the chemical ephedrine. The drug is “cooked,” or produced, in a chemical process based on ephedrine.

Police and prosecutors believe that the ring produced at least 150 pounds of meth between 1985 and 1990 and an unknown quantity since then, Miller said. Wholesale, the drug sells for $10,000 a pound, he said. It has a street value many times that, he said.

Ross and Westbrook were charged with each of the 24 counts in the indictment, which was returned last Tuesday and included conspiracy to operate a meth ring and charges of making, possessing, selling and transporting a controlled substance. The two men were held at the County Jail on $1-million bail apiece.

Russell, the traffic court referee, was charged with conspiracy and two other counts. He used his legal expertise to advise members of the ring about ways to evade the law, prosecutors alleged. Russell was also held on $1-million bail at the County Jail, officials said.

Russell had recently given notice at the South Bay Municipal Court that he intended to resign June 15 to take a job as a commissioner with the Three Lakes Municipal Court in Temecula--a promotion, since a commissioner handles a broader range of cases than a referee.

“This is hard for us,” said Ernest Borunda, presiding judge of the South Bay Municipal Court. Russell, who had been a Chula Vista lawyer before being hired for the referee’s post over 15 other attorneys last December, was a “steady, hard worker who turned out the work, probably turned out more volume than people would possibly expect,” Borunda said.

Thomas James Cleary, 34, of Spring Valley, was arrested Tuesday afternoon upon arrival at Lindbergh Field, Holman said. He was held on $500,000 bail at the County Jail.

Arrested Tuesday morning and held on $500,000 bail at the County Jail were Cleary’s father, Thomas Francis Cleary, 59, of Spring Valley; Roger John Radke, 46, of El Cajon; Thomas James Moir, 34, of Lemon Grove, and Richard Angelo Calabrese, 46, of San Diego.

Danny Solis III, 31, who had been arrested previously on an unrelated drug charge, remained at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, officials said. He and Ross have prior convictions for drug offenses, officials said.

Arrested Tuesday in Salt Lake City was Thomas James Cleary’s stepmother, Vivian Elaine Heartfield, 56, of Spring Valley, officials said. She also uses the name Vivian Elizabeth Coco, officials said.

Arrested in Kansas City, Kan., was John Michael Martin, 37, who lives there, officials said. Like Ross and Westbrook, Martin was named on all 24 counts of the indictment.