Drug Arrests

Two Mexican federal agents were charged Friday with possession of alleged drug money after they were arrested at a West Covina home with more than $500,000, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Some 800 marijuana plants were seized from inside a home in this upscale San Gabriel Valley community and two men were arrested Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said. Sheriff's Capt. Richard Shaw said detectives went to the home, on a 12-acre parcel in the 1900 block of Royal Oaks Drive, about 10 a.m. and arrested two of its occupants after finding the plants. Charles Smith, 42, and Laurence Poor, 47, were arrested on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana, Shaw said.

Actress MacKenzie Phillips was arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine and heroin by Los Angeles Airport Police officers Wednesday morning after the narcotics were discovered during a screening by federal security staff, authorities said. "During a secondary screening process, she was found in possession of what appeared to be a small amount of heroin and cocaine," said Los Angeles Airport Police Sgt. Jim Holcomb.

A man and a woman have been charged with trying to steal clothes and electronics from a Target store, and the man also faces a sexual battery charge, prosecutors said Wednesday. Jeremy Dean Stone, 21, of Buena Park and Tanya Rose Ekberg Oelke, 19, of Fountain Valley are each charged with one misdemeanor count of second-degree commercial burglary and one misdemeanor count of petty theft. Orange County prosecutors said Stone and Oelke went to the Target store in Cypress, where Oelke allegedly used a razor blade to cut the packaging of two MP3 players to steal the contents Monday night while Stone acted as a lookout.

Stephen David Royds, the high-living drug dealer who kept his girlfriend's corpse frozen in a 2-by-3-foot plastic bin at the Fairmont Newport Beach hotel for as long as a year, pleaded guilty Monday to drug charges and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Prosecutors charged actor Ryan O'Neal and his son Redmond on Wednesday with felony drug possession. The O'Neals were arrested Sept. 17 after Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies conducting a probation search at the 67-year-old actor's Malibu home said they found methamphetamine on Redmond O'Neal, 23, and in his father's bedroom. The search was related to a case involving Redmond O'Neal, who was on probation after his guilty plea in June to felony drug possession and misdemeanor driving under the influence.

Mexico detained a former senior police official Friday on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers, as well as an alleged founder of a vicious gang of drug cartel hit men. Police arrested Jaime Gonzalez Duran, also known as "The Hummer," in the northern city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. Gonzalez Duran is allegedly one of the founding members of the Zetas, a group of army deserters who went to work as hit men for the Gulf cartel.

Federal agents Wednesday raided 11 medical marijuana outlets in Los Angeles County, seizing several thousand pounds of processed drug, hundreds of marijuana plants, an array of guns and bagfuls of cash. The simultaneous raids, part of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, were the largest such operation in the county in recent memory. Five dispensaries in West Hollywood were raided with the other six in Venice, Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills.

THE official end of the notorious Cali cocaine cartel came late last year here with little more commotion than the rap of a judge's gavel. The Colombian drug lords Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, 63, and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 67, entered guilty pleas and were ushered off to federal prison for the next 30 years -- no Miami Vice-like dramatics, no bodies riddled with gunfire in the manner of Medellin rival Pablo Escobar.

Federal officials Wednesday announced the indictment of the alleged ringleader and 18 members of a drug trafficking organization accused of smuggling tons of cocaine into the U.S., in large part through the Imperial Valley. Dubbed Operation Imperial Emperor, the two-year investigation by several agencies has resulted in more than 400 arrests nationwide, including 66 in California, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales said at a news conference.