Paul Tanaka ignored warnings about sheriff's deputies' behavior, witnesses say

The first witnesses to testify in Paul Tanaka’s corruption trial said Friday the former Los Angeles County undersheriff ignored waings that deputies were acting like gang members.

Testifying for the prosecution, retired Sheriff’s Department officials said they were transferred out of their jobs after raising conces about deputies’ behavior.

Tanaka, who served as then-Sheriff Lee Baca’s top aide, is accused of thwarting a federal investigation into deputy abuse and corruption and civil rights violations in the county’s downtown jails. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. His trial began Wednesday in a downtown Los Angeles federal courtroom.

Al Gonzales, a retired lieutenant who worked at Men’s Central Jail in 2003 and 2004, said he told a deputy that the way he was acting reminded him of a gang member. As an example, Gonzales said, deputies who worked on the jail’s most dangerous floors associated only with each other. He said although deputies finished their shifts in a staggered fashion, they would wait for the entire floor’s deputies to be dismissed and they would “march down the escalator” in unison.

During a 2006 meeting Tanaka held at Men’s Central Jail, Gonzales testified, the then undersheriff told supervisors that they should let deputies “do what they have to do” in dealing with inmates.

John Clark, a captain at Men’s Central Jail from 2004 to 2006, testified that he decided the incidence of use of force against inmates could be reduced if deputies were rotated among jail floors every two months. Clark said he received approval for the plan from his boss and sent a memo about it to deputies. But Tanaka quashed the plan.

Clark, who is retired, said that soon after that, he was transferred out of his post at the jail.

Steve Roller, a former captain of the Century Station, testified that he also was transferred out of his job after he reported conces about a 2007 meeting between Tanaka and his staff at the station in Lynwood.

Roller said Tanaka told deputies that in dealing with gang members, sometimes they have to “cross the line.” Roller, who is now retired, said he took that to mean that they should break department policy or the law.

“I was in shock because it had contradicted everything I was trying to do at Century,” Roller said.

The trial will continue Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors allege Tanaka, the longtime mayor of the city of Gardena, and others in the Sheriff’s Department obstructed justice when they hid an inmate from the FBI in 2011 after they leaed the inmate was a federal informant. Prosecutors also allege that members of the department tampered with potential witnesses by telling them not to cooperate with federal investigators, and threatened to arrest an FBI agent at her home.

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