Former LAPD Officer Suspected of Running a Ring of Robbers

Federal authorities believe a former LAPD officer organized friends, relatives and police officers into a network of thieves who stole drugs, money and property during home-invasion robberies, sometimes while in uniform, according to law enforcement documents and people with knowledge of the investigation.

Ruben Palomares, a former Rampart Division officer who is awaiting sentencing on drug trafficking charges in San Diego, is being investigated for allegedly overseeing the ring, which is suspected of committing dozens of robberies in Southern California over several years, sources familiar with the case said.

Palomares, 33, and his cohorts had keys to squad cars parked at the Los Angeles Police Academy and would use those vehicles during their crime sprees, authorities said. Palomares’ crew would go on rampages in which they indiscriminately beat up blacks, according to a statement taken from one group member by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Current or former officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, Long Beach Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are under scrutiny as part of the probe. Other members of the network, which authorities believe numbered more than a dozen people, allegedly included security guards and a professional female boxer.

Attorney Mike Lackie, who represents one of those under investigation, confirmed that prosecutors have told them of the probe and of their intention to charge his client, a prison guard and former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy named Rodrigo Duran. “They told me my guy was definitely going to be indicted,” Lackie said. He added that his client has done nothing wrong.

Palomares came to the attention of authorities during the LAPD’s interrogations of former Officer Rafael Perez, who described extensive police misconduct as part of a plea bargain that reduced his sentence on cocaine charges in return for information about corrupt officers. In those debriefings, Perez told authorities that Palomares once intimated that he had been involved in an unjustified shooting and had covered it up.

While the LAPD investigated those allegations, Palomares was committing other crimes, according to federal prosecutors and agents.

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Drug Bust

On June 6, 2001, Palomares was arrested for buying 10 kilograms of cocaine from undercover DEA agents in San Diego. Another man arrested at the same time implicated Palomares in a string of robberies and an unsolved murder in Huntington Park, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in the case.

Following up on Palomares’ arrest, agents searched his home; prosecutors said in court that those agents found semiautomatic assault rifles and a money-counting machine, among other things.

FBI agents, with the assistance of LAPD internal affairs investigators, are continuing to explore Palomares and his associates. Some of his associates are cooperating with the federal grand jury investigation, sources said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas O’Brien, who is heading the probe, declined to comment about the case other than to confirm that there is a civil rights investigation underway.

Several alleged members of Palomares’ crew, personally or through their attorneys, acknowledged that they have been questioned by federal authorities in connection with the case. One indication of the seriousness of the probe is that on several occasions officials with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., have flown to Los Angeles to participate in interviews with some of those under investigation.

Palomares, a onetime Golden Gloves boxer who sparred with such fighters as Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley, is expected to be sentenced Wednesday in connection with his drug arrest in San Diego. He pleaded guilty in the case last year. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Palomares is expected to receive about 15 years in prison.

“I made the worst mistake of my life,” Palomares said in a written plea for leniency submitted by his lawyer, David H. Bartick. “I turned away from everything I knew to be true and steadfast, a decision I will regret every day for the rest of my life.”

Palomares said he has turned his life over to God and wants to become a minister.

In court documents, he describes his transformation from police officer to criminal as one that began with an injury.

About a year before he was arrested in San Diego, Palomares said, he underwent surgery for a shoulder injury and was placed on disability from the LAPD. While off-duty, he said, he began abusing alcohol and pain pills.

As the months wore on, Palomares said, he was running out of disability payments and becoming distraught over how to provide for his five young children with two women, one of whom is an LAPD officer.

In desperation, Palomares said, he went to work for drug dealers, collecting bills for them, according to a report prepared by a psychologist after his arrest.

Although Palomares has admitted playing a role in the botched San Diego drug deal, he has described himself as a minor player in that transaction and in other crimes.

Federal authorities depict his actions differently. In documents filed in connection with the drug case, federal prosecutors said Palomares told an undercover DEA agent that he was the “one in charge” of the drug deal in San Diego; some of Palomares’ co-defendants also said he was the one calling the shots in that deal.

Thomas Nichi, the lawyer who represents Palomares in the case involving alleged robberies, would not comment.

Federal authorities have tried to pressure several of Palomares’ associates into cooperating with the investigation. One of those being urged to cooperate is Duran, a longtime friend of Palomares who is the godfather of one of his children.

Duran, the former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy represented by Lackie, now works as a corrections officer at Tehachapi state prison. When FBI agents arrived unannounced at the prison to question him in connection with the probe, Duran was visibly shaken and refused to answer their questions, said two people familiar with the encounter.

Lackie said that he and Duran have met with Justice Department officials about the case, but that prosecutors have refused to divulge exactly what Duran is accused of. Lackie said his client will not talk to authorities -- or the media -- until prosecutors provide him with more information about his suspected criminal acts.

One person close to the investigation said he has been told by law enforcement officials that Palomares is suspected of organizing members of his criminal network into several “cells” that would commit crimes independently of each other. The cells, that person was told, were unaware of what other cells did.

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Cells’ Expertise?

And officials added that they believe each cell had its own expertise: For example, one allegedly would commit robberies and another would move stolen merchandise.

One robbery authorities are investigating took place in early 2001 in an automotive garage east of downtown. In that case, several men dressed in suits and a young woman walked into the garage, identified themselves as police officers and said they were there to conduct an inspection, said Maria Arellano, who works as an office manager at the garage.

But seconds later, the “officers” bound her hands -- and those of several male colleagues -- with plastic handcuffs and forced everyone to kneel on the garage floor, Arellano said in an interview with The Times.

The robbers then took more than $3,000 from the safe, $500 from the cash register and an unknown sum from the pockets of employees, Arellano said. The robbers also removed a videotape from a security camera that probably would have captured their actions.

One of the robbers, Arellano said, was an attractive, physically fit young woman with a commanding presence.

“Don’t look at me,” Arellano said the armed robber warned at one point.

Investigators have identified at least one woman who they believe was part of Palomares’ crew: Jessica Treat, a onetime professional boxer who used to train and work out with Palomares and eventually began dating him.

Treat, who now works as the manager of an apartment complex in South Pasadena, would not comment on the case. Her attorney, former federal prosecutor John D. Robertson, also declined to comment, citing the pending grand jury investigation.

Arellano said LAPD detectives have come to the garage numerous times over the last two years, conducting interviews and taking photographs.

In another case, Palomares and others allegedly posed as on-duty LAPD officers to rob a liquor store of boxes of ephedrine, an over-the-counter drug used in the production of methamphetamine. The “officers” flashed police badges, told the person behind the counter that they were conducting a drug investigation, and began taking away the drugs.

According to law enforcement sources, Palomares targeted drug dealers for some of his robberies, using information from his contacts in law enforcement.

One of Palomares’ cousins who was arrested with him in San Diego had applied to work as a police officer at several local law enforcement agencies with the intent to use a police badge to commit crimes, federal prosecutors alleged.

Another member of Palomares’ crew, according to local and federal law enforcement sources, is LAPD Officer William Ferguson -- who had been arrested five times before he was hired by the department.

Ferguson, who like Palomares worked at Rampart during the time that Perez alleged crimes were committed by police, has had a string of disciplinary problems at the LAPD.

Last year the city paid $1.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging, among other things, that Ferguson and his partner, who were known on the streets as “Batman and Robin,” were involved in an unjustified shooting that they tried to cover up. That case remains under investigation by federal authorities.

It is unclear how or when Palomares and Ferguson met, but several sources said Ferguson attended barbecues and pool parties at Palomares’ Diamond Bar home.

Soon after Palomares was arrested, Ferguson towed his boat to San Diego for a deep-sea fishing trip. Internal affairs investigators, who were following him, were suspicious about the timing of the trip and wondered whether he might be planning to dump some kind of evidence into the ocean.

The police arranged for Ferguson’s boat to be searched by state Fish and Game authorities after his return, but nothing was recovered. He was not under surveillance while at sea, however, and investigators continue to speculate that the true purpose of the trip was something other than fishing.

Through his attorney, Ferguson denied any wrongdoing.

The alleged robberies are only part of the case that federal authorities are trying to build against Palomares and others. Also under scrutiny in the probe is a murder in Huntington Park. That aspect of the investigation, which has previously been reported, stems from an allegation made by one of those arrested with Palomares during the cocaine sting in San Diego.

After his arrest, 27-year-old Alvin Moon told authorities that he, Palomares and two of Palomares’ cousins -- Oscar and Gabriel Loaiza -- got into a dispute at a restaurant that ended in the stabbing death of a 23-year-old man. That killing remains unsolved, but authorities have confirmed that they are investigating Palomares’ possible role in it.