The former undersheriff and an ex-sheriff’s captain, who are facing obstruction of justice charges for allegedly directing efforts to quash a federal investigation into excessive force and corruption in the county’s jails, made their first appearance in federal court Friday, says the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Both pleaded not guilty.
The charges against Paul Tanaka and William “Tom Carey bring to 22 the number of current or former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials charged in an ongoing federal probe into corruption and civil rights violations by guards at two downtown jail facilities.
Tanaka—formerly the department’s second in command and the current mayor of Gardena—and Carey, who oversaw an internal sheriff’s criminal investigations unit, are charged in a five-count indictment returned Wednesday by a federal grand jury.
H. Dean Steward, one of Tanaka’s attorneys, said his client planned to “aggressively defend” himself in court against “baseless” charges. “After all the facts come to light, we are confident he will be exonerated of any wrongdoing,’’ Steward said.
Carey’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. Tanaka and Carey, both 56, surrendered at the FBI offices in Westwood early Thursday and made an initial Los Angeles federal court appearance before a magistrate judge.
As the allegations demonstrate, “Tanaka had a large role in institutionalizing certain illegal behavior within the sheriff’s department,’’ said acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie Yonekura. “This case also illustrates how leaders who foster and then try to hide a corrupt culture, will be held accountable, just like their subordinates.”
Yonekura declined to answer questions regarding ex-Sheriff Leroy Baca’s possible involvement in the alleged conspiracy.
Tanaka and Carey are charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, and each is named in one count of obstruction of justice. Carey is charged with two counts of making false declarations for perjuring himself last year during trials of co-conspirators.
According to the indictment, the defendants were well aware of “problems with deputies’’ at the jails, “allegations of rampant abuse of inmates’’ and “insufficient internal investigations’’ into deputy misconduct.
But against that backdrop, Tanaka told deputies assigned to the jails to work in a “gray area,’’ and that he thought the sheriff’s Internal Affairs Bureau should be reduced from 45 investigators to just one, the indictment alleges.
Tanaka and Carey are the eighth and ninth sheriff’s department officials to face criminal charges stemming from actions taken in August 2011 when inmate-turned-FBI informant Anthony Brown was hidden from his FBI handlers.
Brown was booked and re-booked under a series of false names and eventually told the FBI had abandoned him, prosecutors said.
A half-dozen former department officials—two lieutenants, two sergeants and two deputies—were convicted in 2014 for their roles in the cover-up, and received federal prison sentences ranging from 21 to 41 months.
Stephen Leavins, Gregory Thompson, Scott Craig, Maricela Long, Mickey Manzo and Gerard Smith “endeavored to obstruct justice in a misguided attempt’’ to protect the sheriff’s department from outside scrutiny, U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson said before sentencing them.
“Blind obedience to a corrupt culture has serious consequences,’’ the judge said.
All claimed they had been following orders in assisting a legitimate investigation into how and why a cell phone had been smuggled into a jail. But Anderson said an “us-versus-them’’ mentality had been inculcated into them and into jailers and internal investigators alike.
The FBI was investigating claims of excessive force against inmates by sheriff’s department jailers and had intended to have Brown testify to this before a grand jury.
Former deputy James Sexton was separately sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for trying to obstruct the federal probe.
Tanaka, who has been mayor of Gardena since 2005, announced his retirement from the sheriff’s department in March 2013. He then ran for the job of sheriff but was defeated decisively by Jim McDonnell, the former police chief in Long Beach.
