Homes of 2 Carson Officials Raided

FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents Tuesday raided the residences of Carson Mayor Daryl Sweeney and City Councilwoman Raunda Frank, looking for evidence of an unspecified crime.

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Los Angeles, Laura Bosley, would not comment on the reasons for the searches, stating that a court had ordered that the search warrant affidavits, which ordinarily set out law enforcement officers’ suspicions, be sealed.

A third warrant was served Tuesday on the Gardena office of Browning-Ferris Industries, which recently won an exclusive commercial waste-hauling contract in Carson with the support of Sweeney and Frank.

The contract award process became enmeshed in controversy when it was revealed that a lawyer, employed both as a consultant by BFI and as an attorney for the city, faxed BFI secret bid information that a rival hauler had supplied to the city.

BFI on Tuesday referred an inquiry to its publicly traded parent company, Allied Waste Industries in Scottsdale, Ariz. Allied’s vice president for investor relations, Michael Burnett, would say only that BFI officials were cooperating in the search. He said the company was not in a position to comment on what the agents were looking for.

Sweeney was at City Hall on Tuesday night for a regularly scheduled council meeting, but the meeting was canceled because only two of the five council members showed up. He declined an interview request through the city’s public information officer, Evangeline Gaitlin.

Frank did not appear for the council meeting and could not be reached.

Council members and the mayor serve part time in Carson. Sweeney is employed full time as chief of staff to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry. Frank is a deputy Los Angeles County public defender.