Police Corruption

A state narcotics agent being held on drug trafficking charges was accused Thursday of stealing 650 pounds of cocaine from the evidence locker at the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement office in Riverside. Richard Wayne Parker, a 10-year veteran at the narcotics agency, used two female acquaintances to peddle the stolen drugs to dealers, according to a new indictment from a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.

Federal agents and prosecutors around the country have repeatedly broken the law over the last decade in pursuit of convictions, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said it found during a two-year investigation. The newspaper, in a 10-part series that begins today, said it uncovered examples of prosecutors lying, hiding evidence, distorting the facts, engaging in cover-ups, paying for perjury and setting up innocent people to win indictments, guilty pleas and convictions.

When Roberto Rodriguez was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 1989, apparently ending his reign as one of the San Fernando Valley's premier cocaine dealers, a federal judge in Los Angeles gave the Cuban immigrant 30 days to get his affairs in order. That month became nearly a decade.

To Swiss authorities, Sergei Mikhailov is a dangerous man who heads one of Russia's largest crime groups from the isolation of his Geneva jail cell. He has been locked up without trial since October 1996 and going to occasional court appearances in an armored Mercedes with a SWAT team escort. Police arrested one of his Swiss lawyers, accusing him of smuggling Mikhailov's letters out of jail and passing them to an accomplice who faxed them to Moscow.

A state narcotics agent charged with drug trafficking lost a bid for release on bail from federal jail Friday even though the wife he wronged apparently was willing to help out. The case involving Richard Wayne Parker of San Clemente case has been marked by acrimony with his wife, Diane, who learned during a court hearing that he was having an affair for the past year and paying for the other woman's $1,000-a-month Newport Beach apartment.

In a major shake-up of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division, two top police administrators were moved out of their positions by Chief Bernard C. Parks late Wednesday because of concerns that they did not adequately supervise officers at that station, sources said. The reassignments of Capt. Richard A. Meraz and Lt. Daniel P.

Much of Mexico's anti-drug strategy--from informants' names to intelligence methods developed over the years--has now passed into the hands of criminals as a result of the alleged corruption of this nation's top anti-narcotics cop, a former senior official declared Wednesday. The comments by Francisco Molina Ruiz, who was this country's drug czar until December, were the strongest public indication yet that Mexico's anti-narcotics fight is in shambles and could take years to rebuild. U.S.

The entire Baja California federal police force is being replaced with army soldiers amid indications of new nationwide changes in the notoriously corrupt federal agency, authorities said Friday. The 87 Baja agents were ordered to Mexico City on Thursday for drug tests and debriefing, according to Gen. Jose Luis Chavez Garcia, the new Baja federal delegate, who oversees the force. Federal police will be retrained or reassigned, but not fired, he said.

Corrupt Mexican police, military and immigration officers have helped the notorious Tijuana narcotics cartel ship and unload drugs, assassinate fellow law enforcement officers and avoid capture, new documents say. Most chilling of all, witnesses who dare to testify against the cartel's notorious hit men have been betrayed by police, according to statements given to U.S. and Mexican prosecutors. The allegations, made by two confessed henchmen of the cartel, were filed in U.S. courts.

At age 18, Gerardo Mendoza has already served three years in the Mexican Army. The baby-faced private spent most of it in the mountains--burning marijuana fields, chasing drug smugglers and running counterinsurgency operations in the southernmost state of Chiapas.