Charges Being Cut to Save Job : Crime: Ex-sheriff’s supervisor admits stealing gun, selling it. Judge says he’ll reduce case from felony to misdemeanor.

A former Sheriff’s Department supervisor pleaded guilty Friday to stealing a gun from a property room he oversaw and selling it at an Oxnard pawnshop.

But over the prosecutor’s objections, Municipal Judge Bruce Clark said he would reduce the felony grand theft charge against Norman A. Wade to a misdemeanor when the defendant is sentenced Sept. 30.

The reduced charge carries a lighter sentence and apparently will save Wade’s current position as a toxicologist in Phoenix, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Meyers. Meyers said he was disappointed by the judge’s decision.

“Mr. Wade had a very serious position of trust as director of the crime laboratory,” Meyers said. “He darn well knew that he was committing a felony when he took the (firearm), and we felt that he deserved a felony conviction for his actions.”

Defense attorney Robert I. Schwartz said the judge’s promise to reduce Wade’s charge was critical in his client’s decision to plead guilty. Schwartz told the judge that Wade’s job would be terminated if he was convicted of a felony.

Wade, 49, joined the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department crime lab in June, 1990. He was forced to resign in June, 1992, after pleading no contest in court to charges that he stole a license plate registration sticker from the property room and falsified registration documents for his own car.

He was fined $300 and sentenced to two years probation in that case.

A subsequent audit of a gun locker in the property room found a .357-magnum pistol missing. Recalling Wade’s court case, detectives checked pawn slips that shops in Ventura County register with police agencies and traced the gun to Wade.

Wade sold the firearm at Get-Mor Loan & Jewelry in Oxnard for $125 in May, 1991, officials said.

Investigators suspected Wade in the theft of other items from the property room, including jewelry, cash and a camera. But the pawned gun was the only item for which the district attorney’s office could present evidence, Meyers said.

Clark’s decision to reduce Wade’s conviction significantly lessens the maximum sentence he will face, Meyers said. Under state guidelines, the theft of a firearm could bring a sentence of up to three years in prison with a felony conviction, he said.

But with a misdemeanor, Wade faces a maximum of one year in the Ventura County Jail, he said. With good behavior, he could be paroled in half that time, Meyers said.

Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Kenneth Kipp said the case has prompted the department to improve procedures in the property room.

“When you get a black eye, you try to fix it,” he said.

The 25,000 pieces of evidence that are processed through the property room each year are now audited regularly, Kipp said. Particular attention is given to cash, narcotics and weapons, he said.