OFFICERS IN DRUG RAID FACE CHARGES

Four narcotics detectives who raided a small time pot-and-pills sales
operation last year were arrested Monday on charges that include
planting evidence, taking a prisoner illegally and lying about it in
pretrial testimony.

They didn't break the law, lawyers for two of the officers said. None
were locked up, but all four surrendered at Miami-Dade County Police
headquarters, were booked at a branch county jail, and posted bail
before they were let go.

The officers and the charges against them:

Sgt. Jose J. Diaz, 36 -- false imprisonment, perjury in official
proceedings and conspiracy to commit perjury.

Officers Hector J. Llevat, 25, and Andre B. Vaughn, 37 -- both
charged with perjury and conspiracy.

Officer Florencio Boucourt, 31 -- false imprisonment, perjury,
conspiracy and official misconduct.

They are accused of dishonestly conducting a raid on the night of May
22, 1998, on a townhouse at 6621-E SW 116th Pl., in a development
called Snapper Village. The motive is not clear, said Donald Ungurait,
spokesman for the state attorney's office. Cocaine, marijuana and
rohypnol -- a sedative nicknamed "roofies" -- were confiscated in the
raid. They also found money and a pistol.

The original suspects

Four men were arrested. Two pleaded guilty. Another was placed in a
program. Charges against the key man, Adrian Ramos, were dropped.

All of them were denounced Monday evening by Boucourt's lawyer, Richard
Sharpstein:

"Detective Boucourt and the others have been dedicated officers for
years, keeping drugs off the street. Now the state attorney has
outrageously turned the tables on them by believing the stories of
drug dealers."

Said Doug Hartman, Llevat's lawyer: "There's got to be more to this
than we know."

Evidently so. Defendants often accuse the police of setting them up,
but it's unusual for such accusations to lead to the arrest of the
arresting officers.

Information from lawyer

Adrian Ramos' lawyer, Bill Clay, gave investigators the information
that brought that about. He said that a few months after the raid,
when the detectives submitted to pretrial depositions under oath, he
caught them lying, hinted strongly that he knew it and gave them
plenty of chances to switch.

"I've taken thousands of depositions," Clay said. "I've never invited
someone to the truth as much as I did in these depositions."

According to Ungurait, the state attorney's spokesman, this is what
happened on the night in question:

"These guys are a narcotics unit. Their squad received a tip from a
security guard at the apartment complex that narcotics activity was
occurring in an apartment. They went there and stopped two young
ladies who had just come from the apartment. They confiscated some
rohypnol and marijuana from them."

Apartment pointed out

The women pointed out the apartment where they had bought the dope,
the spokesman said: While Llevat stayed outside with them, the other
detectives went to the apartment, knocked on the door and pushed their
way in when the door was opened.

Inside, three tenants and a visitor were detained while the place was
searched. Later they were taken to jail.

Apparently, illegal drugs were legitimately found in the apartment --
cocaine, marijuana and equipment such as scales, according to
Boucourt's lawyer -- but Ungurait said the detectives also planted
under a mattress the drugs they had taken from the women outside. That
apparently was done in order to hold a suspect named Freddie Castro,
who couldn't be linked to the other drugs, the spokesman said.

Outside, he said, Detective Llevat let the two young women
go.

Women not mentioned

Their names, not made public Monday, were not mentioned in reports the
detectives filed about the raid and arrests.

Ungurait said Clay, the defense lawyer, eventually discovered
discrepancies in the detectives' descriptions of what happened that
night. He told the state attorney's office and the county police
department's professional compliance bureau, which investigates
complaints against officers.

Clay found the discrepancies when he summoned the detectives to
depositions -- a routine pretrial preparation process. Such sessions
are usually conducted semi-formally out of court, but the oath to tell
the truth is the same one witnesses give during a trial and it is
equally enforceable.

Clay said he found out most of the answers before he asked the
questions, so he knew when the truth wasn't being told.

Early in his investigation, he had acquired police radio dispatch
tapes on which the detectives were heard asking for cars to transport
six prisoners -- the four men in the raided apartment and the two
women who were stopped outside. He thought it peculiar that only the
four men were taken away, and that the women were not mentioned in any
police reports written that night.

His client, Ramos, knew one of the women. Clay found her and then the
other.

"I interviewed them and they told me what happened," Clay
said.

"In the depositions, I was signaling the detectives that I know the
truth; don't BS me. I asked a series of questions and then re-asked
them a different way. The questions were kind of impregnated with the
obvious message: I know the truth. Please tell me the truth. Don't
take a risk and lie. As a citizen and as a defense lawyer, it saddens
me to see police officers get into trouble. I'm sorry to see someone
who may have crossed the line and not told the truth under oath, but
that's their responsibility."