Agents in Raid Forged Papers, Sources Say

U.S. Customs officials forged documents to show that proper procedures were followed last month when drug agents raided three houses in Poway where no drugs were found and a homeowner was seriously wounded, federal law enforcement sources said Thursday.

The sources, who requested anonymity, said customs officials have produced documents showing that agents were briefed before the raid at the house of Donald L. Carlson on the night of Aug. 26. In fact, there was no formal briefing before the raid on Carlson’s Silver Ridge Road home, the sources said.

That incident, and the unsuccessful search of two other houses by agents who were looking for a cache of cocaine, is under investigation by a federal grand jury and investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice. The panel is investigating the actions of federal agents involved in at least two of the raids and the informant whose information led to the raids.

Several witnesses were called to testify before the panel Thursday, including a San Diego County deputy marshal who was accused of storing drugs in her Poway home and whose house was among those searched. No drugs were found at her house.

Carlson, a businessman with no criminal record, was shot three times by the agents. No drugs were found at his house. A customs agent suffered superficial wounds in an exchange of gunfire with Carlson. Two days after the incident, U.S. Atty. William Braniff announced that no charges would be filed against Carlson. On Thursday, Jack C. Kelley Jr., customs special agent in charge in San Diego, declined to comment on the allegations that agents forged documents to cover up any wrongdoing in the unsuccessful raids.

“Now you are getting into specifics of the investigation. I have no comment,” Kelley said.

Braniff said he did not know if the Department of Justice investigation had uncovered evidence of forged documents.

Although some agents may have been familiar with the plan of action on the night of the raid on Carlson’s house, sources familiar with the incident said there was no formal briefing beforehand, as is normally the case in such investigations.

However, the documents, which sources said were written after the raids, indicated that the search had been thoroughly planned in accordance with Customs Service policy.

“It was a sloppily planned operation by an overzealous supervisor. The preparation was inadequate,” a source familiar with the Carlson raid said.

These sources said that some agents who participated in the drug raid were merely called and instructed to meet at a staging area to prepare for the execution of a search warrant. Braniff said a federal prosecutor was at the staging area for at least one of the raids but did not participate in the search.

New details of the searches and the informant, known only as Ron from Tampa, Fla., were learned Thursday.

Federal law enforcement sources said the search warrant affidavit for the raid on Carlson’s house was actually written by Larry R. Latocki, customs senior special agent, but signed by a rookie agent. Latocki was an acting supervisor on the night of the incident and was recently promoted to supervisor.

Without conceding who wrote the affidavit, Braniff said it is not unusual for one or more people to draft an affidavit and have someone else sign it.

“But ultimately, the person who swears to the affidavit has to look at it and say it is accurate,” Braniff said.

Latocki is married to Assistant U.S. Atty. Cynthia L. Millsaps, chief of the U.S. attorney’s trial division. Millsaps is a former customs agent. Several sources told The Times that Millsaps was reviewing statements by agents who participated in the drug raids to the Department of Justice investigators.

However, that was emphatically denied by Braniff.

“That is not true. She was not at all involved in the investigation,” Braniff said.

The federal sources interviewed for this story also provided new information about Ron, the mysterious informant who befriended a Poway couple and then accused them of hiding thousands of kilos of cocaine in their home, leading to a search by federal drug agents supervised by Latocki.

According to these sources, Ron was brought to San Diego by agents from a customs air interdiction team. The informant was supposed to help the agents work air smuggling cases but was instead put to work with agents from customs and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration assigned to Operation Alliance.

Initially, Ron was assigned to work with a DEA agent. Though DEA agents reportedly dismissed Ron as unreliable, sources told The Times that DEA agents gave the informant high marks before the August raids.

“The guy gave the DEA good information about a drug organization. However, the agents couldn’t pinpoint the location where the drugs were stored,” a source said. “The DEA agent working with him went on vacation sometime before the raids and then the snitch (informant) calls a customs agent at (Operation) Alliance and gives him two addresses where the dope is supposed to be stashed.

“The customs agent then talked to Latocki, who drafts the affidavit for the agent to sign. After that, nothing went according to established procedures,” the source added. “There was no formal briefing. They were supposed to be going into a house where the crooks had four machine guns, but there were no attempts to protect the safety of the neighborhood residents. There was no planning for medical equipment and personnel to be on standby in case anybody got injured. It was a stupid, stupid way for federal law enforcement agents to operate.”

On Thursday, at least two witnesses appeared before a federal grand jury to describe their relationship with Ron, on whose word the searches of two homes within a mile of each other were carried out.

The day after Carlson was shot, agents appeared at the office of Michelle Jones, a 30-year-old deputy county marshal from Poway, Jones said. Federal agents accused her of hiding 100 kilos of cocaine at her home, she said.

Agents played a tape recording of a woman’s voice they said was Jones’ and insisted they had evidence that Jones was involved in wide-scale drug sales, she said. Jones said she invited U.S. authorities to her home, where they searched her house, van, garages and all-terrain vehicles. They found no drugs.

Six months pregnant and in poor health, Jones did not testify before the grand jury Thursday. But her husband, Tony, a 33-year-old worker at a Vons warehouse on Miramar Road, testified along with Howard Black, Tony’s best friend.

Ron had lived across the street from Black and worked out at the same health club as Tony Jones.

Thursday’s testimony by Jones and Black centered on how they met Ron and what he wanted from them.

Discussion centered on “how the relationship started, the amount of contacts they had with Ron and how long they had known him,” said William Nimmo, Tony Jones’ attorney. “It also included how the agents conducted themselves when they came to Tony and Michelle’s home, but didn’t really focus on that.”

Tony Jones told jurors that Ron was among a group that watched the Larry Holmes-Evander Holyfield fight at his home in June. Ron brought along a cellular phone and left the house several times to make calls from the driveway, Jones said.

The morning of the fight, Ron telephoned Jones to tell him he was working on a drug case involving a Michelle Jones, who worked either out of the marshal’s office or Sheriff’s Department, Jones said. Ron told Jones he didn’t think it involved his wife, Jones said.

Ron also was interested in Michelle’s job and how she came to be a county marshal, Jones said. The Joneses were surprised to learn that Ron had gotten a job with the DEA, when he had only moved to San Diego from Florida at the beginning of the year, Jones said.