Nope, no drugs here
On April 3 of this year, officers from the Venice Police Department,
armed with a search warrant, raided an apartment in the Sea Jay Apartment
complex on Barbara Drive. Officers had been advised that drugs and weapons
would likely be found. The police already had solid information that drugs
were being sold from the apartment, specifically
Oxycontin,
this information coming from three previous undercover drug buys.
The raid on April 3 produced no drugs, although a "long gun" was
found and confiscated.
Then something odd happened. One of the suspects stated that the reason the
cops came up empty in the raid was because the dealers knew that the cops were
coming.
That comment sparked an internal investigation into
Sgt. Ralph Adrian, who had reportedly tipped the department's hand to the
subjects of the investigation prior to the raid.
The internal investigation, which was concluded last
month, determined that Adrian did indeed give out confidential information
that gave advance notice of the raid
to the suspects. Ironically, the internal investigation report notes that
Adrian was the lead officer in the raid and briefed the other officers prior
to the raid.
Adrian, as noted in the report, disappeared during the
raid. Investigators wrote that Adrian could come up with no satisfactory
explanation for his whereabouts during the raid: "Sgt. Adrian made the VPD
officer assignments for this raid and he was the VPD uniform command officer
present for the raid briefing. By standard protocol for these types of
situations, Sgt. Adrian should have been present at the scene of the raid.
Given this, one wonders where Sgt. Adrian was when the raid went down and
what he was doing that was more important than raid site sergeant duties...
his absence at the raid was highly unusual and without adequate
justification or explanation."
In his defense, Adrian told investigators that his
warning to the suspects was a bit of fatherly advice to a young woman.
