ANOTHER BLOW TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department is snarled in the biggest criminal
investigation of its own deputies and civilian staffers since a narcotics
unit scandal in the late 1980s. Both deputies and civilian employees are
alleged to have participated in credit card fraud, and at least two are also
suspected of selling drugs to jail inmates. The allegations, coming on the
heels of the L.A. Police Department probe, are another sharp blow to the
region's public confidence in law enforcement.

So far, 11 department employees, including four deputies, have been relieved
of duty and referred for criminal prosecution. Two of them, a deputy and a
civilian jail employee, are also being investigated for possibly selling
black tar heroin to inmates at the Twin Towers Jail in downtown Los Angeles.
There have been suspicions for years that the amount of drug abuse in some
county jails could not have resulted entirely from visitors managing to slip
narcotics to prisoners.

The department's internal criminal investigation began after officials
received a tip about the credit card ring's operation. Sheriff's officials
discovered that one of the deputies, David Osorio, was allegedly involved in
a second and bigger credit card fraud scheme that did not involve the
department. The second ring has become a major focus of the investigation.
Sheriff Lee Baca said Thursday he expects the allegations to expand.

The case, although of a different nature and scale, has implications nearly
as chilling as anything the LAPD scandal investigation has come across.
Osorio, the alleged mastermind in the credit card plot, was said to have
been engaged in a credit card scam involving use of cards stolen by a postal
employee when he was hired by the Sheriff's Department four years ago; later
he allegedly came to lead another scam, one involving department employees.

Osorio worked at the Sheriff's Department's North County Correctional
Facility in Castaic. The other 10 department employees were assigned to the
Twin Towers Jail in downtown Los Angeles. One deputy was alleged to have
joined the credit card ring less than a year after completing law
enforcement training at the sheriff's academy. One of the employees is said
to have furthered the credit car operation by running license plate checks
to obtain personal information. To what extent did Sheriff's Department's
electronic access to important data figure in the fraud?

The good news is that the Sheriff's Department got wind of the credit card
scam and immediately turned it over to the department's internal affairs
office, which wound up conducting a sting operation replete with videotaped
evidence. That, in turn, led to evidence of the alleged heroin sales.

Sheriff Baca and his investigators can't rest until they are assured that
they have found all of the department's bad eggs. If Baca needs help in
doing that, he must not be afraid to ask for it.