Ex- undersheriff ’s obstruction case handed to jurors
Lawyers for defense and prosecution paint disparate pictures of Paul Tanaka during closing arguments.
Over the years, as Paul Tanaka climbed the ranks of the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, he built a reputation for being a tough, overbearing leader who inspired equal parts fear and respect.
By the time he retired in 2013 amid a growing scandal, Tanaka was the second- incommand, running the dayto- day operations of the nation’s largest sheriff ’ s department and holding as much or more sway than his boss, Sheriff Lee Baca.
But for the last two weeks in a downtown federal courtroom, Tanaka has denied charges that he impeded an FBI investigation, portraying himself in a very different light: as a supervisor who was unaware of what others around him were doing.
Tanaka has insisted that it was Baca who formulated the department’s response to the discovery that the FBI was running a secret investigation of his agency’s jails. Far from orchestrating an attempt to thwart FBI agents, Tanaka and his attorneys say, he was left out of the loop as Baca, consumed with anger, worked directly with subordinates.
Tanaka will learn soon how a jury views his role. Jurors began deliberating Tuesday after hearing more
than a week of testimony and evidence, which included the former undersheriff taking the stand in his own defense.
In his closing statement, Assistant U. S. Atty. Brandon Fox accused defense attorneys of presenting “totally inconsistent” versions of Tanaka after they urged jurors to see him as both “a strong leader” with a strict, hands- on style of rule and someone who didn’t know what was unfolding around him.
“This was Paul Tanaka’s operation,” Fox said. “He was in charge.”
The criminal charges against Tanaka center on allegations that he led a group of handpicked subordinates in a scheme to block the FBI investigation by intimidating the lead agent in the case, pressuring deputies not to cooperate and concealing the whereabouts of an inmate who was working as an FBI informant.
The trial marks the last of a string of high- profile prosecutions stemming from two frantic months in 2011, when sheriff ’ s officials discovered that an inmate in their main jail facility was working as an informant for the FBI. Agents were investigating allegations that sheriff ’s officials had done little to clamp down on lawlessness inside the country’s largest jail system, where deputies beat inmates and visitors without cause or consequence.
In all, nine members of the department have been convicted or have pleaded guilty for playing parts in the scheme to interfere with the federal inquiry, while several others have been convicted for abusing inmates.
Baca was added to the disgraced group last month when he admitted to lying to federal investigators. Under the terms of the deal he struck with prosecutors, Baca, who left office two years ago, will avoid being indicted on more serious charges and can be sentenced to no more than six months in prison.
U. S. District Judge Percy Anderson, who has handled the various proceedings stemming from the obstruction allegations, must still approve the agreement.
Tanaka, who also has served for years as mayor of Gardena, was a deeply polarizing figure in the Sheriff ’ s Department.
He developed a fiercely loyal following among a segment of the force as Baca promoted him from a midlevel commander to undersheriff in a matter of a few years. By the time that the jail scandal came to light, though, he was viewed as someone who had created a fiefdom under Baca that he ran with impunity.
A blue- ribbon panel that investigated the jails and found widespread problems of abuse faulted Baca for allowing his undersheriff to run the jails without effective oversight. Tanaka, they found, “failed to uphold the department’s goals and values.”
In his closing remarks, one of Tanaka’s attorneys, H. Dean Steward, acknowledged Tanaka’s controversial reputation but portrayed him as a demanding yet righteous man who did nothing wrong.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is not a crime to be a strong leader,” Steward said.
He acknowledged that his client had certainly “ruff led feathers” as he sidelined veterans he believed had grown complacent and were unwilling to do the work necessary to live up to his exacting standards.
“There are people who don’t like him, but that’s not a crime either,” the attorney said.
In this last plea to jurors Tuesday, Steward reiterated the defense’s contention that Baca, furious over what he saw as the FBI’s secretive encroachment into the sheriff ’ s domain, devised the department’s response. Tanaka, by contrast, didn’t know the extent of the oper- ation and, in any case, acted only to carry out orders from Baca that were lawful, Steward said.
“The driving force behind everything you’ve seen was Leroy Baca, not Paul Tanaka,” Steward told jurors.
Steward revisited some of the evidence of the trial, dismissing several witnesses who testified against Tanaka as either jealous of Tanaka’s “meteoric rise” to power or disgruntled former employees who had chafed under Tanaka’s demanding style of leadership.
Fox countered with a harsh appraisal of the retired undersheriff, calling him a vindictive, morally corrupt manager.
Over the course of the trial, Fox told jurors they had seen “the many faces of Paul Tanaka.”
They were the faces, Fox said, of a “man who overruled and undermined the people who sought to reform the Sheriff ’s Department,” who had encouraged underlings to work in the murky “gray area” of the law, and who had worked desperately to keep the FBI in the dark.
Fox took jurors through a review of the witnesses and evidence the government used to make its case. He reminded them, for example, of the testimony of Mickey Manzo, a former deputy who was convicted in an earlier trial for his role in obstructing the FBI.
Among other things, Manzo testified about meetings he attended during which Tanaka “was visibly upset” and exploded in profanity- laced rants against the FBI.
“Who do they think they are?” Manzo recounted Tanaka saying of the federal agents.
And Fox reviewed phone records that showed Tanaka was in frequent contact with underlings and Baca as the turf battle with the FBI was unfolding. The prosecutor argued that the records disproved Tanaka’s claim that Baca was handling the details of the plan himself.
Fox encouraged jurors to think of the case as a movie and Tanaka as its director.
Steward, he said, was “trying to rewrite the script” with his closing remarks. How, Fox asked, could Tanaka be the strong, hands- on leader Steward claimed but then ask jurors to believe that he wasn’t aware of what was going on?
If Tanaka was the moral leader his attorneys had presented during the trial, the prosecutor argued, he would have stopped underlings from interfering with the FBI and disciplined them.
“The vindictive Paul Tanaka you’ve heard about did none of these things,” Fox said, “because they were doing exactly what he wanted them to do.”
The criminal charges against Tanaka center on allegations that he led a group of handpicked subordinates in a scheme to block the FBI investigation.