IN JAILS, A WAR ON DRUGS

With Contraband Seizures on the Rise, L.A. County Targets Big Smuggling Rings

The inmate's request seemed fairly benign inside the teeming, violent
Los Angeles County jail. He wanted Sheriff's Deputy Peter Paul Felix
to smuggle him in some decent food.

The deputy knew he was breaking the rules, but he obliged. What
started with hamburgers and pizza led to steadily more requests until
the inmate asked Felix to perform another favor: smuggle in a
marijuana package in exchange for about $600.

That delivery into the Castaic jail would be the first in a
months-long series of drug carries the deputy made, netting thousands
of dollars in the process. Inmates goaded Felix to bring them more,
telling the young deputy that he wasn't the only officer smuggling
drugs, and that they respected him because he was from the "hood."

The case underscores the Sheriff's Department's struggles to keep
drugs out of the nation's largest county jail system. Deputies
confiscate drugs from inmates on a regular basis - and have done so
for years. But Felix's crime and other recent cases reviewed by The
Times offer a window into the elaborate schemes used to breach
jailhouse security for major profit.

Earlier this year, Deputy Devin McLean admitted in an interview with
a sheriff's investigator that she had smuggled heroin hidden in a
toothpaste container into jail, according to a district attorney's office memo.

McLean said she was given the drugs by her then-boyfriend, a former
inmate she had met while working at the North County Correctional
Facility in Castaic. McLean explained that she carried the drugs into
the jail in her backpack and then delivered the heroin inside a
bedroll to an inmate, the memo stated.

Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against McLean, saying
that they did not have enough evidence to corroborate her statement
at a trial. She has been relieved of duty with pay pending the
outcome of an internal investigation. Her attorney declined comment.

In March, a federal grand jury indicted an employee of a private
company that delivers food to the jails for allegedly smuggling more
than 100 grams of heroin into the North County Correctional Facility.
That amount would easily get 150 users high, one expert said.

Angelica Mora, 40, was allegedly part of a drug ring whose members
communicated in code using jail telephones. Another defendant, the
operation's drug supplier, also oversaw other criminal activities for
a Los Angeles street gang and the Mexican Mafia, a notorious prison
gang, according to court records. Mora, the supplier and several
other defendants accused in the scheme have pleaded not guilty.

In June, a Beverly Hills attorney was charged with trying to smuggle
heroin to inmates in a courthouse lockup.

A drug-sniffing sheriff's dog discovered a bag containing 14.25 grams
of the narcotic, enough for 20 or more hits, in an area of the
downtown L.A. courthouse where only the attorney, Michael Inman, 48,
was waiting, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty.

Sheriff's records show a steady increase in drug seizures across jail
facilities over the last several years, with 370 last year compared
to 270 in 2006.

"This is just what we know, how much is going on that we don't know
about?" said Lt. Greg Thompson of the department's custody
investigative services unit. "But we think we have a handle on it."

He said some drug-runners have stuffed narcotics into tennis balls
and flung them over walls at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

"People have nothing to do but think here," he said. "And they're
pretty imaginative."

Sheriff Lee Baca said depression and anxiety among inmates creates a
huge demand for drugs.

"People incarcerated are looking for some form of psychological
support," Baca said. "Drugs seem to do that for most people who are addicted."

Despite the busts, drugs make their way in, sometimes with lethal consequences.

On Christmas Day last year, a 22-year-old murder suspect was found in
distress in his cell at Men's Central Jail and began spitting up
blood. Another inmate told authorities that Marlon Martinez had
snorted an entire spoonful of brown liquid believed to be heroin,
according to a coroner's report. The Mexican national was allegedly
holding the heroin for one or more other inmates.

Martinez died soon after paramedics attempted to revive him.

Felix's defense attorney, Spencer R. Vodnoy, said his client knew
little about the drug operation he was aiding, including who was
behind it. Felix, he said, believed that he was transporting
marijuana and had no idea that the deliveries included heroin.

The lawyer said Felix was unwittingly drawn in by the inmates when he
agreed to give them unauthorized food.

"He wanted to be liked, he wanted to please people," Vodnoy said.
"That's a nice thing in most people, but in a sheriff's deputy that
was a huge personality flaw."

Felix initially refused requests to transport drugs, his attorney
said. But he feared that the inmates might tell jail managers what he
had already done and that he would lose his job, Vodnoy said. And
though he was never directly threatened, the deputy began to fear for
his family's safety after inmates told him that they recognized him
from his days playing baseball growing up in Baldwin Park, Vodnoy said.

Felix also benefited financially from his role as drug courier.

He told sheriff's investigators that he was paid $600 or $700 for his
first delivery of marijuana and that he smuggled drugs into the jails
on three other occasions, according to a probation report in the
case. He was paid $2,000 to bring one package, and another job
brought him $4,000, the probation report said.

"It seemed like a quick buck in the beginning, and then they kind of
started asking for more," Felix told investigators, according to the
report. "I really didn't want to. The first time it was OK, I guess,
but after, they kept egging me on."

To those involved, Felix was known by the code name "Jackie O" and
was a crucial cog in a sophisticated scheme.

His "handler," according to records, was inmate Terance Warner, an
aspiring Mexican Mafia affiliate with a history of selling drugs
behind bars. In telephone exchanges monitored by investigators,
Warner directed several women on the outside to get drugs into the
jail through Felix, prosecutors alleged.

Some of the monitored communications were later shown to include
phone conversations between the women and associates of the Mexican Mafia.

From inside jail, Warner allegedly directed his wife, Latisha
Nichole Rubalcaba, to collect several thousand dollars from inmate
accounts that are set up by the Sheriff's Department. The accounts
are generally used by relatives of inmates to give loved ones money
to buy snacks, phone cards and other cheap items at jailhouse
concession stores.

But in one three-month period in 2008, more than $38,000 was
withdrawn from Warner's account, court records say. It is not clear
if all of that money came from drug sales. Inmates are not allowed to
carry cash, but officials said payments for drugs are sometimes made
through intermediaries depositing cash into the accounts of jailhouse dealers.

Prosecutors accused Warner, 28, of directing another woman, Monique
Ciara Garcia, to drop off drugs to Felix in a Baldwin Park parking
lot in October 2008.

Garcia was carrying more than 161 grams of heroin, almost 25 grams of
meth and roughly 50 grams of marijuana, enough to fill a large
sandwich bag, when she met Felix. She also brought $5,100 in cash as
payment for the deputy. The narcotics were intended to be smuggled
inside the jail where Felix worked, according to a felony complaint.

The drugs were particularly valuable in jail, where prices are
dramatically higher than outside, according to court records in the
federal case against the food supply company employee. Based on a
federal agent's estimate in that case, Felix's delivery would have
been worth well over $75,000 behind bars.

The deputy was driving away with the cache of drugs - and his
kickback - when authorities stopped him. He resigned from the
department shortly after the arrest. He had been on the job for about
two years.

Last week, Felix was led from a Los Angeles courtroom in handcuffs
after a judge sentenced the former deputy to four years in prison.
Warner, Rubalcaba, Garcia and another accomplice were sentenced to
two years in prison.

Sheriff's officials say new rules prevent inmates from making large
money transfers like Warner's. The department now caps accounts at
$900, and limits transfers to third parties to $300 a week.

Felix's attorney suggested that the department begin random searches
of jail deputies for drugs and other contraband to deter similar misconduct.

"These guys are master manipulators," Vodnoy said of some inmates.
"Unfortunately for my client, they got the right guy - a guy who
might be susceptible."