LONGTIME NARCOTICS AGENT FEELS STING OF REPRIMAND

As an undercover hit man, Detective Scott Kolb has negotiated the
terms of two murders.

His long hair and tattoos allowed him to infiltrate the haunts of
midlevel drug czars. He learned the intricacies of surveillance. He
put in 18-hour days and six-day weeks to bring down an outlaw biker
gang.

Kolb, 46, was an asset to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department
for 26 years, his performance reviews show. But officials began to
treat him like a liability after he spoke up on behalf of a member of
the Hell's Angels.

The result was an internal affairs investigation that led sheriff's
officials to reprimand Kolb. He since has been transferred from his
post in narcotics, gotten a pay cut and been asked to cut his hair.

Kolb, in turn, filed a lawsuit and is speaking out: He insists he did
nothing but uphold a law that compels officers to come forward with
information that could clear a criminal defendant.

"I want to be vindicated that I did the right thing," Kolb said in an
interview at his attorney's downtown office. "I did the legal thing
and everything else. I followed the rules."

The dispute stems from a sheriff's raid on the Embers topless bar on
Auburn Boulevard late on a Friday night, Jan. 19, 2007.

Kolb patronizes the bar but was not there that night, when deputies
arrested a Hell's Angel member on suspicion of having a loaded gun in
public.

After the raid, Embers bar manager Bill Gibson called Kolb, a longtime
friend, complaining that deputies had made a mistake.

Gibson said the gun was his and that the Hell's Angel had moved it
into a drawer in the bar's office when he saw the deputies entering.
But Gibson said deputies refused to listen to his story and arrested
the biker.

Kolb said he had his own misgivings about the arrest because he had
seen the gun in the bar's office the day before the arrest.

He said he took his concerns to his supervisor and to the arresting
officer's supervisor, telling them the law required him to notify
prosecutors he had misgivings about the arrest.

Both Kolb and district attorney's investigator Jimmie Ross raised the
concern to a deputy district attorney.

"It was appreciated on a couple of different levels," Ross said. "One
being, 'Hey, you did the right thing.' And two, it cuts off a bad
problem happening down the line."

Prosecutors never filed charges against the biker.

After the case fell apart, Kolb became the subject of an internal
affairs probe.

When that investigation was complete in September, Chief Deputy Mark
Iwasa reprimanded Kolb for discrediting the work of another officer
and failing to warn the officers entering the bar about the gun.

The punishment came with what Kolb said was a strong suggestion that
the waist-length hair that had been so useful in his undercover work
be cut.

Sheriff John McGinness said Kolb has been a good employee throughout
his career but that he could not elaborate on the case.

"We took action we believed to be appropriate and he's entitled to due
process of law," McGinness said.

Kolb started making drug cases when he was a deputy in the
department's branch jail in the '80s. He continued to develop drug
cases on patrol and became a narcotics detective in 1997.

There, he started buying crack undercover on the streets.

His performance reviews list bigger busts: 5 pounds of cocaine, 39
pounds of methamphetamines, 107 guns. Kolb recalls testifying that one
informant helped him get 100 pounds of drugs off the street.

"Once I got to narcotics it was absolutely consuming," Kolb said. "For
the past 10 years, that has been my life - seven days a week, all
night, all day."

Kolb went on to pose as a hit man in two murder-for-hire stings. He
led surveillance efforts that resulted in the arrest of 58 Vagos biker
gang members and the seizure of 32 pounds of crystal meth, 100 pounds
of marijuana and $220,000.

Kolb's dedication is a theme in his performance reviews.

"Once I realized just how much you were contributing off-time, I had
to practically beg you to put in for overtime," one commander wrote in
a 2001 recommendation for a state award.

Ross said it's disheartening to see his friend under scrutiny after
building a "sterling" reputation.

"It all comes back to the very, very unique world of being a narcotics
detective," Ross said. "The good ones live and die by their reputation
and integrity. So much of their evidence is in the form of their word,
their personal word."