STATE SUSPENDS RIVERSIDE DRUG BUREAU CHIEF

Law enforcement: He is accused of neglecting his duty and poorly managing
office where $3
million in cocaine was stolen last year. He denies the charges.

The agent in charge of the state's drug enforcement effort in the
Inland Empire has been hit with a rare five-day suspension for his
"inexcusable neglect of duty" in supervising his bureau, where more
than $3 million worth of cocaine was stolen last year, state records
show. Management was so shoddy at the state Bureau of Narcotic
Enforcement's Riverside operation that a search of the evidence vault
discovered 31 kilos of cocaine in storage that had been mistakenly
marked as "destroyed," state officials said in a disciplinary report.

And the special agent in charge of the office, Edward J. Synicky,
couldn't account for all the people who had keys to the vault,
officials found. Synicky, a 27-year veteran of the state's drug
enforcement agency, also is accused of allowing a few employees--as
well as his own daughter--to illegally take home office computers. The
state Justice Department ordered Synicky in June to serve a five-day
suspension, but he has appealed to the state Personnel Board in
Sacramento, which is scheduled to consider his request at a
closed-door session today. The action against Synicky is a rare one.
It has been 17 years since a special agent of his stature at the
narcotic bureau has faced formal discipline, state officials said.
Synicky said the accusations against him are "just one side of the
story," but he declined to comment on the charges in any detail. He
said he is optimistic that the suspension will be overturned. "All I
am is a working cop. All I want to do is put people in jail for the
rest of my career," he said. The 38 sworn agents in Synicky's bureau,
which is responsible for Riverside and San Bernardino counties, have
scored some big busts in recent years, particularly in battling the
dramatic rise of methamphetamine. But their record was tainted last
summer when agents returned from the Independence Day weekend to
discover that 650 pounds of cocaine, worth more than $3.2 million, had
disappeared from their office.

It was the largest quantity of drugs ever taken from a Bureau of
Narcotic Enforcement office. The theft remains unsolved. A veteran
agent from the Inland Empire bureau faces trial on cocaine trafficking
charges.

The agent, Richard W. Parker, who was arrested in July in what began
as a routine drug sting, was found to have a secret cache of a dozen
cars and $620,000 in cash, authorities said. Parker had been working
in the bureau's Riverside office at the time of the 1997 cocaine
theft, but state officials have refused to say whether they believe he
may have been involved. Authorities have pledged to tighten security
in the Riverside office by installing recording devices and other measures.

But in moving to suspend Synicky, state officials suggested that the
man responsible for implementing those changes was partly to blame for
the problem. A June 11 notice against Synicky listed three reasons for
his suspension under the state government code: inefficiency,
inexcusable neglect of duty and misuse of state property. The cocaine
stolen from the Riverside bureau last year had been seized in a drug
raid in Orange County several years earlier and was supposed to have
been used by Synicky's agents in an upcoming sting operation. But
several standard safeguards appear to have been ignored along the way,
state officials found. No chemical analysis was done on the cocaine
after its receipt. Keys to the evidence vault were not changed each
time someone transferred out of the office.

And Synicky was unaware of at least four people who had the keys and

the combination to the vault, according to the disciplinary report,
which is known as an "adverse action." Meanwhile, a three-day audit
turned up misplaced evidence from 85 other cases that mistakenly had
been listed in bureau records as destroyed, including dozens of kilos
of cocaine. Synicky also was criticized for allegedly misappropriating
state property by allowing four bureau employees and his own daughter
to take home computers and printers. In his defense, Synicky told
investigators that he knew nothing about a memo sent to his office
last year with "a reminder that it is illegal to take state equipment
for personal use." But investigators produced conflicting testimony
from a supervisor who said Synicky had in fact been shown the memo
before the computers were disbursed. State officials warned Synicky
that they "will not tolerate further such conduct on your part" and
that "any continuance of such inefficiency or mismanagement" could
result in his being fired.

Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady