In the months leading up to the 40th anniversary of the killing of Ruben Salazar, I filed a California Public Records Act request with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seeking documents that might shed light on what happened the day the newsman died. An L.A. Times columnist and Spanish-language KMEX-TV news director, Salazar was shot in the head by a tear-gas missile fired by a sheriff’s deputy after rioting exploded in East L.A. during the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War on Aug. 29, 1970. The case has been clouded by controversy and speculation for 40 years.

Sheriff Lee Baca initially denied my request. But amid public demands by Los Angeles County supervisors and others to release the thousands of pages of documents, Baca reversed his decision and said he would order a review of the eight boxes of files to determine whether he would unseal any records. I wrote a flurry of blog posts and articles and produced the Salazar video above. Below are links to some of the articles in this unfolding reporting endeavor:

Baca Refuses to Release Salazar Files
Baca Now Considers Releasing Salazar Records
L.A. Sheriff to Turn Over Salazar Files to Watchdog Agency
Confidential County Report Says Some Salazar Records Should Be Released

This 2005 multimedia project took me across the United States and into Mexico and Central America. We showed how a U.S. immigration policy of deporting “criminal aliens” backfired with members of the Mara Salvatrucha, spreading what was once a Los Angeles gang across six countries and 33 states. We captured original video footage inside a prison in El Salvador and interviewed gang members, law enforcement officials, victims and intervention workers for this eight-month-long project. Here’s the link to the entire series.

(Photo Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

To this day, questions still swirl around the death of L.A. Times columnist and KMEX news director Ruben Salazar, who was killed by a Sheriff’s deputy on Aug. 29, 1970. I produced this Ruben Salazar video, pictured above, in 2008 after the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a stamp honoring the reporter’s legacy. My Column One article was written in 1995 for  the L.A. Times on the 25th anniversary of the newsman’s slaying. I relied on a variety of sources, including friends and colleagues of Salazar, as well as documents from the FBI and LAPD, to reconstruct the final weeks before Salazar was killed by a sheriff’s deputy while covering an anti-Vietnam War rally that exploded into violence. I also wrote a follow-up article in 1999, after waiting nearly six years for the FBI’s Salazar file.

Los Angeles Times
Saturday August 26, 1995
COLUMN ONE
Journalist’s Death Still Clouded by Questions
Friends say Ruben Salazar, whose stories often criticized police treatment of Mexican Americans, believed he was in danger. His 1970 slaying left a lasting wound.
Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1
Metro Desk
91 inches; 3215 words
Type of Material: Non Dup; Mainbar
By ROBERT J. LOPEZ, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Shaken and nervous while picking at a plate of soft tacos, Ruben Salazar revealed his darkest fears. A leading advocate for the Mexican American community, the award-winning Times columnist and KMEX-TV news director suspected that he was being shadowed by police.

The newsman’s forceful columns and television coverage had sharply criticized police actions in Los Angeles’ Mexican American neighborhoods. Salazar had called the lunch meeting at an Olvera Street restaurant to put it “on the record” that he believed police might do something to discredit his reporting.

Two days later, on the eve of covering a major anti-Vietnam War rally, Salazar cleared his normally messy desk at KMEX and took his treasured hate mail off the wall. His former boss, Danny Villanueva, clearly remembers the response when he told Salazar he would see him later:

“Yeah, if I make it back,” Salazar said.

The next day he was dead. On Aug. 29, 1970, while covering the National Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, the 42-year-old Salazar was killed instantly by a sheriff’s tear gas projectile while he sat in an East Los Angeles bar.

Was it a coincidence that he had seemingly foreshadowed his death just days before? The three friends who lunched with him that day think not.

“He had a feeling they were going to kill him,” said Philip Montez, western regional director for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who was with Salazar at the restaurant.

All available evidence shows that Salazar’s slaying was nothing more than a tragic accident. The Sheriff’s Department said that its deputy did nothing wrong and was operating under riot conditions when he fired the wall-piercing missile through the curtained doorway of the Silver Dollar cafe.

The most prominent Mexican American journalist of his time, Salazar became even larger in death than in life. Parks, schools and scholarships were named in his honor. He instantly became a martyr for the Chicano civil rights movement. And he became a lasting inspiration for a generation of Latino journalists who followed in his wake.

But the killing left an open wound that has yet to heal a quarter of a century later. Even now, as activists prepare for a march today commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Chicano moratorium, the questions surrounding Salazar’s death still remain.

“It seemed too precise to be an accidental thing,” said Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente), who led a delegation that stormed out in protest from a coroner’s inquiry into the newsman’s killing. “It is still a major question mark in my mind today.”

The reasons for those doubts and suspicions have become clear with the passage of time:

* The coroner’s inquest failed to resolve conflicting accounts of the slaying and is widely believed by Mexican American activists to have focused more on the actions of the rioters than on the circumstances of Salazar’s slaying. Four of the seven jurors in the quasi-judicial proceeding ruled that the newsman “died at the hands of another,” a verdict that confused many and satisfied few.

* The district attorney decided not to file any charges against the deputy who fired the fatal projectile. The attorney for the Salazar family and many in the Mexican American community believe that manslaughter charges were warranted.

* Doubts exist about the thoroughness of a federal investigation into the slaying. Those close to Salazar say they were never aware that federal officials pursued a full-fledged investigation. The U.S. Justice Department insists that it conducted an exhaustive probe of the killing but found no grounds for criminal charges.

“Serious questions were never answered,” said Mario T. Garcia, a UC Santa Barbara history professor who has authored a newly published book on Salazar. “But whether or not he was killed on purpose, it was a tragic loss of a major voice for the Mexican American community.”

Hard-Hitting Reporter

When he stepped into The Times newsroom in 1959, Salazar was known as a hard-hitting, streetwise reporter, a reputation earned during his days at the El Paso Herald-Post.

At The Times, Salazar reported on a variety of issues and covered a Mexican American community that had largely been ignored by the media. In an award-winning 1963 series, he examined problems that still plague Latinos today: substandard education, high dropout rates and a lack of political power.

In 1965, Salazar became a Times correspondent in the Dominican Republic, then went to Vietnam and Mexico. In 1969, he returned to Los Angeles during a tumultuous period to report on Mexican American issues.

The Eastside had become a hotbed of protest and discontent in the four years that Salazar had been gone. Activists had begun calling themselves Chicanos instead of Mexican Americans . Thousands of students had staged walkouts at area high schools, demanding more Chicano teachers and improved facilities. Protesters, meanwhile, were decrying the disproportionate number of Chicanos dying in Vietnam.

Salazar covered many of those events, but he apparently felt an urge to do more. In January, 1970, he left The Times to become news director for the Spanish-language television station KMEX.

“Ruben was restless,” recalled former KMEX general manager Villanueva, now a Los Angeles businessman. “He wanted to do more to reach out to the city’s Spanish-speaking community.”

Bill Thomas, then Times city editor, asked Salazar to write a weekly column on Chicano affairs. In the little more than six months he spent as a columnist, Salazar changed from a journalist reporting the news to a commentator advocating on behalf of Mexican Americans. His columns explained the frustrations, triumphs and shortcomings of the Chicano community.

“His best work as a journalist, in my opinion, is that he described us for others,” said Felix Gutierrez, a Lincoln Heights native who is now vice president of the Freedom Forum media foundation. “[But] in describing us for others, he defined us for ourselves.”

At KMEX, according to his colleagues there, Salazar did some of his most hard-hitting reporting on law enforcement.
In July, 1970, Salazar assigned KMEX crews to aggressively cover the killing of two Mexican nationals by Los Angeles Police Department officers. Concerned about the coverage, police visited Salazar at the station.

“They warned me about the ‘impact’ the interviews would have on the department’s image,” Salazar wrote in a July 24, 1970, Times column. “Besides, they said, this kind of information could be dangerous in the minds of barrio people.”

About the same time, Salazar and KMEX reporters had begun a major investigation into widespread allegations that police and sheriff’s deputies had beaten residents and planted evidence when making arrests, according to William Restrepo, who was a KMEX reporter working on the story.

“We had [information] that we thought was going to be very explosive,” Restrepo, now a news director at a Miami radio station, said in an interview. Villanueva also said he knew that Salazar was gathering information on the police but added that he was not aware of the specifics.

While working on the story, Restrepo said, they were tipped off by a source that LAPD officers had found out about the project. “We kind of figured we were in hot water,” Restrepo said. He explained that he and Salazar feared that they might be followed or that police might do something to discredit them, such as plant drugs in their cars.

Ed Davis, the LAPD chief at the time, denied that his officers on the Eastside were engaged in brutality or planted evidence. He also said he was not aware of police following Salazar, though he acknowledged that it could have been done without permission by “some low-level officer.”

“I’m positive he wasn’t [being officially followed] because no one ever came to me in an intelligence briefing saying Salazar is up to this or the other thing,” Davis said in an interview last week.

The LAPD did have a file on Salazar that contained copies of some of his articles and transcripts of two KMEX broadcasts, police records show. The file also contains a half-page biography on the journalist that quotes a “reliable confidential informant (a Times employee) [who] states Salazar, in his opinion, is a slanted, left-wing-oriented reporter.”

Then-Sheriff Peter J. Pitchess declined through a spokesman at the Sheriff’s Relief Assn. to be interviewed. But Sheriff Sherman Block, who commanded the detective division at the time, said relations with East Los Angeles residents were good and that he was not aware of any surveillance against Salazar.

“I think I would have been familiar with something like that,” Block said, adding that he had never heard of Salazar until after he was killed.

In the weeks leading up to the Chicano Moratorium, according to his friends and family, Salazar not only believed that he was being followed, but he seemed to act as if he expected something to happen to him.

“Ruben had changed in those last few weeks,” Sally Salazar, who died two years ago, wrote of her husband in a column on the 10th anniversary of his death. “Whenever he left the house, he made a special point of telling me exactly where he was going to be–something he had never done before.”

About 10 days before the march, Salazar called the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “He said he just wanted it on the record that the police were after him, tailing him,” said then-commission staffer Charlie Ericksen, now a Washington journalist.

Ericksen set up a lunch meeting the following Wednesday at La Luz Del Dia restaurant on Olvera Street. Joining Salazar that afternoon on Aug. 26, 1970, were commission official Montez, Ericksen and a Catholic priest, Henry J. Casso.

“I realized that Ruben was scared,” recalled Montez. “I had never seen him as upset as he was.”

According to the men at the meeting, Salazar said the police were claiming that his reporting was inflaming emotions in the Mexican American community. “He also thoroughly mentioned how he was constantly looking over his shoulder,” said Casso, who has since left the priesthood and now lives in Albuquerque, N.M.

Ericksen said he remembers that they joked that police would try to shoot the newsman.

“What’s the worst they can do? Plant some dope in your car,” Montez said he told Salazar as they left the restaurant. “Just watch where you go.”

Thomas said he remembers Salazar mentioning something about being followed by police but added that the columnist did not appear too concerned. “I do remember some kind of talk about that, but it was not forcibly put,” said Thomas, who was The Times’ editor from 1971 to 1989.

It was not unusual, Thomas noted, for reporters on the police beat to have such concerns. “Everyone who wrote about cops and got critical in those days was looking over his shoulder,” he said.

On the eve of the Chicano Moratorium, Villanueva said, Salazar was acting “unusual.”

He cleaned up his messy desk. Pinned on the wall were hate letters, which Villanueva said Salazar displayed as his “badge that he was getting to people.” He took them down.

Salazar also kept asking if Laguna Park, where the rally would be held after the march, was in the city or in county territory. “He seemed concerned,” Villanueva said, “about whose jurisdiction it was: the police or the sheriff’s.”

Riots, Tear Gas, Death

On Aug. 29, 1970, Salazar, Restrepo and cameraman Octavio Gomez met at 7 a.m. at the East Los Angeles sheriff’s station next to Belvedere Park.

An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people from across the nation had arrived for the high point of the Chicano civil rights movement that had been building for more than two years. The men, women and children marched down Whittier Boulevard and flooded the grassy area at Laguna Park (later renamed Ruben Salazar Park).

As the multitudes sprawled on the grass that hot, smoggy day, the rally began. While folk dancers performed on a stage, deputies were hit by rocks and bottles when they responded to reports of looting at a nearby liquor store.
Sheriff’s commanders ordered helmeted, baton-wielding officers to clear the park–which rally leaders later charged was an overreaction.

Tear gas canisters, their white smoke trailing in the air, were fired into the crowd. Many fled in panic. Some stayed and battled deputies. Others ran down Whittier Boulevard, smashing store windows and setting fires in the street.

It was the biggest, bloodiest riot in Los Angeles since Watts five years earlier. More than $1 million in property was destroyed, dozens of people were injured and arrested. Three people would ultimately die.

Salazar and his crew furiously covered the action, working their way east along Whittier Boulevard over a period of several hours. “When we were walking down Whittier Boulevard, Ruben said we were being followed,” recalled former KMEX reporter Restrepo. “I turned around and I saw a lot of deputies.”

With the officers trailing them on foot, Restrepo said, he and Salazar went into the Silver Dollar Cafe to use the bathroom. Afterward, they decided to grab a quick beer.

What happened next has been the subject of dispute for a quarter of a century. The following scenario is based on interviews and testimony given at the Salazar inquest:

About 5 p.m., according to the Sheriff’s Department, a man in the area told deputies there were two men with guns who had entered the Silver Dollar bar, at 4945 Whitter Blvd. That report turned out to be inaccurate.

Deputies swooped down on the small, one-story building and said they shouted several orders for the occupants to come out. But 12 people who were inside the bar later testified that they never heard any such commands.

Raul Ruiz, then co-editor of a Chicano magazine called La Raza, was sitting across the street from the bar with a colleague and took a series of photographs as deputies surrounded the bar. He, too, said deputies never shouted any orders to leave.

The deputies, weapons in hand, poked through the curtained doorway of the bar, according to Ruiz, now a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge.

One of Ruiz’s photos shows what he and five other witnesses testified happened next: A shotgun-wielding deputy pointed his weapon at four men–one with his hands in the air–ordering them into the bar as they gathered outside the door moments before the gas was fired. The deputies later said that they could not remember seeing the men and denied forcing anyone into the bar.

But the four men, as well as a fifth person not in the photo, later testified that they were ordered at gunpoint into the bar, only to be gassed after obeying the command.

When the occupants failed to leave the building, according to Deputy Thomas H. Wilson, he fired two projectiles from the sidewalk as he moved rapidly from side to side in front of the curtained doorway. Wilson, who was three to five feet from the doorway when he fired, testified that he could not see people inside the bar because the curtain was closed. And he later said he had never heard of Salazar until after the killing.

The first shot–a 10-inch torpedo-shaped missile designed to pierce plywood–struck Salazar in the left temple as he and Restrepo sat at the bar.

“We didn’t even have a chance to start the beer when the first gas canister came in,” Restrepo said in an interview.
Minutes after Wilson’s two shots, a patrol car with four deputies drove up. One of the deputies, who later testified he was unaware that gas had already been used, got out of the car, got on one knee and fired two additional tear gas rounds into the building.

The choking smoke quickly filled the tiny bar, Restrepo said, as he and others crawled on their hands and knees out the back door.

Outside, Restrepo said, he saw his shirt splattered with blood, which he figured was Salazar’s.

“I told [deputies] I wanted to go back to the bar because my boss was still there, but they didn’t let me go back,” he recalled. “They took me to the corner about a block away and left me there.”

For about two hours, Salazar’s body lay in the dark, smoke-filled bar. Deputies later said they did not go inside because they did not have gas masks. Finally, about 7 p.m., his body was removed.
Investigation Demanded

Within days of the killing, accusations were swirling that Salazar had been murdered.
KMEX-TV, citing conflicting accounts of the slaying, asked the FBI to investigate. Then-Rep. Edward Roybal (D-Los Angeles) and 20 of his colleagues wrote a letter to the Justice Department calling for an “impartial” probe to “reduce the increasing suspicions and atmosphere of
distrust surrounding [Salazar's] death.”
*
It was in that environment that the coroner’s office decided to conduct its inquest. Held in a hearing room in the Downtown Hall of Records, the 16-day event became a media spectacle, with all seven Los Angeles television stations rotating unprecedented live color coverage.

An inquest is intended to disclose facts to help attorneys for official agencies and the family of the deceased determine further action. In many ways, the rules governing the proceeding resulted in the unfulfilled expectations that still haunt critics of the Salazar inquest.

An inquest verdict expresses no blame and is not binding on any other legal action. Unlike a court trial, normal rules of evidence do not apply, and the hearing officer controlling the inquest has wide latitude in allowing hearsay, opinion and non-responsive answers.

Much of the testimony was criticized as irrelevant by Mexican American activists, who walked out of the inquest on several occasions. The testimony, they charged, was intended to portray Latinos as people needing to be policed or bent on insurrection.

The seven-member panel was shown a graphic film featuring sights and sounds of rocks and bottles hurled at deputies at Laguna Park.
On another occasion, when Ruiz was questioned about his photos, hearing officer Norman Pittluck inquired about a placard carried by a marcher that said “Viva Che,” referring to Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.

“Is he Mr. [Fidel] Castro’s man?” Pittluck asked.

The inquest did uncover that Wilson shot the fatal projectile. The deputy testified that he fired quickly toward the ceiling of the bar to flush out armed men who he thought were inside. The deputy also said he did not know whether he had the fatal missile loaded in his gun or a less-lethal cardboard canister.

“I [just] wanted to get something inside,” Wilson said, “and I wanted to get it inside quick.”

It was never determined whether Wilson was following department procedure when he shot the high-velocity Federal Flite-Rite projectile. It bore the manufacturer’s warning: “For driving out barricaded persons. Not to be used against crowds.”

The Sheriff’s Department said its training manual for tear gas operations was “classified” and refused to submit it as evidence. Pittluck twice refused to subpoena it.

The Times recently requested the manual, but a department spokesman said it was disposed of years ago because use of the Flite-Rite was discontinued shortly after Salazar’s death.

After hearing 61 witnesses offer confusing, sometimes conflicting testimony, four of the seven jurors ruled that Salazar “died at the hands of another,” while the other three concluded that his killing was an accident. No one was certain what the majority verdict meant because it was not defined by the state law governing inquests.

The next week, then-Dist. Atty. Evelle J. Younger announced that no criminal charges would be filed against Wilson. He said that only one charge was ever considered–involuntary manslaughter. But if there was negligence, Younger said, it was not “aggravated, culpable, gross or reckless,” which would have been necessary to prove manslaughter.

Younger, who was running for state attorney general, was accused at the time by Chicano activists of not filing charges because he did not want to alienate the law enforcement community and its supporters. Younger, who died in 1989, denied the accusations.

After Younger’s decision, Pitchess said that “there was absolutely no misconduct on the part of the deputies involved or the procedures they followed.”

With that, the county closed its case.

But attorney Douglas Dalton, who represented Salazar’s widow and three children, filed a lawsuit against the county and won a $700,000 settlement for the family. “This should never have happened,” said then-Supervisor Ernest E. Debs. “A deputy sheriff used a gun against all regulations of the department and fired blindly through a door.”

Dalton said in a recent interview that he thought manslaughter charges against Wilson would have been warranted. Wilson later retired from the force and could not be reached for comment.
*
Despite the persistent calls for a federal probe, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles had no intention of investigating Salazar’s killing, according to an Oct. 20, 1970, memo from the FBI office in Los Angeles to the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

“For the information of the bureau, Robert L. Meyer, [U.S. attorney], Los Angeles, California, orally indicated to agents of this office on 10/19/70 that he has no intention of taking action regarding Salazar’s death,” the memo stated. “However, to offset any possible criticism of his office he is requesting FBI to investigate the cause of the riot.”

The Justice Department said Friday that it did conduct an exhaustive investigation and decided in March, 1971, that there “was insufficient evidence to permit the filing of criminal charges.” A spokesman said he did not know if a public announcement on the closing of the case was made at that time. Montez, the Civil Rights Commission official, and Roybal, the longtime congressman, say they knew of no such federal investigation.
*
Montez, Ericksen and Casso, the three men who lunched with Salazar three days before his death, to this day maintain that his killing was no accident. They said they only realized later how serious the situation was.

“I’m one of those people who still firmly believe that Ruben was a victim of a political assassination,” Ericksen recently told a group of journalists at a forum on Salazar’s legacy.

That view is also shared by Ruiz, the photographer outside the Silver Dollar, and Restrepo, who sat next to Salazar inside the bar.

But Sheriff Block strongly disagrees, saying he recalls testimony at the inquest showing how the bar’s curtain deflected the projectile toward Salazar’s head. “If you have an intent to shoot somebody,” he said last week, “you don’t do it with a tear gas projectile.”

Today, many in the Latino community still feel that a new, more thorough investigation is needed to help write the final chapter on the slain newsman.

But with many of the key people dead, the doubts, suspicions and questions will probably live on.

“When you start putting all those things together, it’s an amazing series of circumstances,” Villanueva says of Salazar’s behavior in those final days and the events leading to his death. “I guess I’ll go to my grave wondering.”

Sometimes visualizations are the best way to convey information. I produced this interactive map as part of a news package about traffic on the Westside of Los Angeles — some of the nation’s worst. The map was a perfect platform for viewers to check traffic data in areas they traveled. I obtained the raw data from the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica and then crunched the numbers to find congested intersections and analyze traffic patterns over a period of several years. To tell my tale, I wrote the story around a mother, Cathy Glueck, who lives on the Westside and relishes the challenge of tackling traffic. After interviewing her, I knew she would be great in front of a camera. So here’s a video I also produced, which takes viewers on a ride along with Glueck as she travels with her daughter to soccer practice during the afternoon rush hour.

Los Angeles Times 
Wednesday June 3, 1998
Alatorre Accused of Using Drugs With City Contractor

Officials: Councilman allegedly steered government work toward businessman. Both have denied wrongdoing.

By ROBERT J. LOPEZ and RICH CONNELL, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre repeatedly used cocaine with a friend and convicted narcotics offender while aggressively helping him obtain government business, according to allegations contained in court documents and supported by interviews.

Alatorre’s ties to Julian G. Carrasco date back more than 20 years, when the waste hauler and demolition specialist pleaded guilty to possessing and intending to distribute heroin. More recently, the lives of the two men have been entwined in ways that have prompted questions of propriety by government officials and business associates involved in their dealings.

Among other things, documents and interviews disclose that Alatorre wielded his influence in the early and mid-1990s to help Carrasco obtain government contracts, at least twice over the objections of civil servants who believed that public money was being jeopardized.

This occurred at a time when the councilman was regularly showing up at Carrasco’s office in Vernon, where the men allegedly shared cocaine on the contractor’s glass desktop. In addition, the company’s former controller says Carrasco directed him to write a $2,000 corporate check to the councilman but he balked, prompting his boss to instead withdraw cash from a personal account. The controller says he does not know where that money ended up.

Alatorre, through a spokesperson on Tuesday, refused to comment on any aspect of his relationship with Carrasco. In the past, he has issued general denials of any misconduct in his personal or public life.

Carrasco, for his part, flatly disputed the allegations, saying in an interview Tuesday that cocaine “has been out of my life for a long time” and that he has never used the drug “with anyone other than myself.” He said he has no knowledge of whether Alatorre has used drugs.

Carrasco said he and the councilman have been “longtime, loyal friends” but that he did not exploit the relationship for financial gain. He said each of his many government contracts was awarded on merit alone.

Carrasco blamed unhappy former employees for the accusations leveled against him and Alatorre, a man he calls “a peoples’ politician.”

“Everyone has employees that for whatever reasons . . . will say whatever comes to their minds,” he said.

The latest questions swirling around Alatorre come from disparate sources–ranging from records in unconnected court cases to interviews with disaffected former Carrasco employees and front-line public workers.

Taken together, they also appear to bolster accounts by a woman who came forward earlier this year with similar allegations–Alatorre’s former executive secretary.

In recent court documents, she accused the councilman of abusing cocaine and showing up at City Hall with wads of $100 bills after meetings with supporters, up to the time she left in 1995.

Linda M. Ward’s sworn statement, lodged in a bitter custody case involving the Alatorres’ niece, has been disparaged by the councilman as lies by a vindictive ex-girlfriend and disgruntled former employee.

Alatorre has told reporters that the white powder she claims to have seen on his nostrils and clothes might have been dandruff, denture powder or Doritos. The councilman also has insisted that he has not abused any substance since undergoing treatment for alcoholism 10 years ago.

Some of those new accusations have emerged in the custody battle, which has been transformed into an assault on Alatorre’s parental fitness. The Superior Court action was brought by longtime political rival Henry Lozano, who is seeking custody of his 9-year-old daughter, now living with the Alatorres.

Like Ward, Carrasco’s former secretary alleged in a sworn statement filed in the custody case that the councilman abused drugs–an open secret, she said, among the firm’s employees. “It was well known throughout the office staff that the councilman’s visits were for cocaine,” Beverly Vasquez-Bumgardner said.

One of those in the know was the ex-foreman of Carrasco’s now-defunct JCI Environmental Services.
In a signed declaration provided to The Times, Donald Benefield said he witnessed Alatorre preparing or using cocaine with Carrasco about half a dozen times during a several-year period ending in 1995, when the business shut down.

Benefield recalled one Saturday when Carrasco left his office door open. He said he saw Alatorre hunched over, inhaling one of several neatly aligned rows of white powder through a small tube.

“He sniffed it up at the glass desk, right there,” Benefield said in an interview.

Last year, the relationship between the contractor and the councilman became part of an FBI investigation into whether Carrasco’s JCI was improperly dumping hazardous waste. Three former JCI employees told The Times that federal agents asked them whether their boss was supplying drugs and money to Alatorre.

Carrasco said he had no knowledge of the investigation, in which no charges have been filed. It is unclear what, if any, information gathered in that investigation is being cycled into a current federal corruption probe of Alatorre.

Among other things, Alatorre, who also is a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is under investigation by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service for allegedly receiving cash from people with government business and for obtaining help in the purchase and remodeling of his Eagle Rock home–including the falsification of financial records and the financing of a $12,000 tile roof by a prominent government contractor.

Long Relationship With Businessman

Carrasco, 55, was an enterprising businessman who favored a lavish lifestyle. He wore a gold pinkie ring with a diamond in the middle and had a penchant for expensive cars. He also had a grand business vision: to join the ranks of Los Angeles’ giant public works contractors.

To boost his big-league image and highlight his Mexican heritage, Carrasco’s JCI sponsored an award-winning float in the 1995 Rose Parade. The creation, featuring huge Aztec handball players, was promoted in a glossy company brochure picturing Carrasco with Alatorre.

But even as he was striving for recognition, Carrasco’s finances were unraveling. In the spring of 1995, JCI filed for bankruptcy protection, leaving employees unpaid and creditors in line. One of them: the builder of his heralded float.
Carrasco said he is now a partner in a local manufacturing company and does various kinds of consulting work.

Alatorre’s relationship with Carrasco extends at least to the lawmaker’s early years in the Assembly, in the mid-1970s.
Carrasco has said Alatorre has written him letters of reference for public contracts, attesting “to my character.”

Their relationship also predates Carrasco’s 1977 arrest for allegedly arranging the sale of a kilogram of heroin to a federal agent in the El Monte area, according to federal court records. Prosecutors alleged that he was part of a conspiracy to distribute heroin in Southern California.

He pleaded guilty to a single count of possession with intent to distribute the drug, and was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

After his release, Carrasco returned to the waste hauling and demolition business he had begun in the late 1960s. But he had not left his drug days behind, according to former employees.

“Mr. Carrasco was not discreet about his use of cocaine in the office during my tenure,” the businessman’s former secretary, Vasquez-Bumgardner, said in court records. “He was clearly addicted, and his nose required reconstructive surgery on several occasions due to his overuse of cocaine.”

During this time, Vasquez-Bumgardner and other former JCI employees said, Alatorre’s was a familiar face around the office, located in an industrial area beyond the councilman’s Eastside district. He dropped by on workdays and on weekends, they said, staying anywhere from five minutes to an hour.

Vasquez-Bumgardner also said her boss “bragged” about his relationship with the councilman–and the benefits that accrued to both of them. Carrasco openly implied that Alatorre helped him obtain government business because he supplied the lawmaker with drugs, she said in the custody case document.

“Councilman Alatorre will do whatever I tell him, because he needs me,” the secretary quoted Carrasco as saying–a statement Carrasco denies making.

On “many occasions,” Vasquez-Bumgardner said in her court statement, she could hear Alatorre and Carrasco snorting cocaine. She described a morning in 1994 when Alatorre walked out of Carrasco’s office after a “snorting session” with cocaine “around his nostrils and all over his pants.”

“I said, ‘Richard, you have powder on your pants!’ He said, ‘Thanks, Beverly,’ and proceeded to wipe himself down.”
Standing nearby was the firm’s foreman.

“It looked like somebody had been eating a white doughnut,” recalled Benefield who, like other employees, said he is angry with Carrasco for failing to pay him thousands of dollars in salary when the firm went under.

The councilman’s visits became more frequent in the couple of years before JCI’s 1995 closure, Benefield said.

“I’d just see them in there, getting their drugs together,” he said. “It was a common thing between two buddies.”

Another former JCI employee, who requested anonymity, said it was hard to forget some of Alatorre’s visits. One weekend morning in the summer of 1994, he said, the councilman arrived “stumbling, smelling like alcohol.” After about an hour in Carrasco’s office, the councilman emerged “completely re-energized.”

“You could see the powder in his nose,” the worker said.

Both Carrasco and Alatorre were questioned about their relationship and visits in depositions taken in 1994 during a sexual harassment suit filed by Carrasco’s secretary, Vasquez-Bumgardner. Neither of the men, however, was asked about drugs.

Carrasco testified that Alatorre would visit in “spurts”–sometimes up to three times a week–to discuss his political ambitions and ways they could improve the community.

Alatorre, in his deposition, said he could not remember exactly why he paid calls to Carrasco or how often. “I visit a lot of people,” he said. “I may have visited, stopped by and bullshit with the guy.”

Alatorre’s visits, according to JCI’s former controller, were often accompanied by another ritual: requests by Carrasco for money from the firm.

Financial officer Andrew Lee told The Times that he was instructed by Carrasco in 1992 to write Alatorre a company check for approximately $2,000.

As Alatorre waited in Carrasco’s office, Lee said he told his boss it would be improper to put corporate funds in a politician’s pocket.

“He wouldn’t give a reason what it was for,” said Lee, now an accountant for the MTA. “He just said, ‘I owe him some money.’ ”

Lee said he was then told to prepare a check–payable to cash–from Carrasco’s personal account. After doing so,

Lee said, his involvement ended and he is uncertain where the money went.

More often, Lee said, his boss would ask him to dip into the company’s petty cash before or during Alatorre’s visits, withdrawing between $100 and $200 each time. He said the two men would then sometimes leave in the councilman’s car and return a short time later.

Carrasco disputes Lee’s account, saying he never provided the councilman with any money and never requested that cash be made available before or during his visits.

“Of course not,” he said.

Connections to Contracts

Whatever the attraction between the men, Alatorre repeatedly used his considerable political influence to help his friend obtain more than $2 million in local government contracts.

The lawmaker acknowledged in his 1994 deposition that Carrasco often sought his advice and help. “He’s had a lot of business problems,” Alatorre said.

One was at the city’s Department of Water and Power.

Carrasco’s firm had won a 1993 bid to demolish an old DWP service center east of downtown for a fee of $443,000.

But a conflict erupted: Warner Bros. wanted to blow up the building for a Sylvester Stallone film, “Demolition Man.”
Because the job requirements had changed, DWP staffers urged that Carrasco’s contract be terminated and that the job be rebid after the movie makers had finished, when the exact nature of the work would be more clear.

With that looming prospect, Alatorre personally intervened with then-DWP General Manager Daniel Waters, according to a source knowledgeable about the events. Soon after, Waters overruled his staff and allowed Carrasco’s contract to proceed as negotiated, the source said, adding: “You know, Councilman Alatorre is pretty powerful. . . . [Waters]
understood the reality of it.”

Waters acknowledged in an interview that he probably discussed the contract with Alatorre but said he could recall no specifics. He said that whatever actions he took were in the utility’s best interest.

Carrasco agrees. He credits Alatorre with helping to ensure that the lowest and best bid won the day.
“He did the right thing,” Carrasco said of the councilman. “I just told him what was going on. . . . All he did was relay the information that I told him.”

As it turned out, Carrasco would try to obtain even more money from the city after Warner Bros. had demolished some of the building–and before he had even started his own work.

As DWP staffers had feared, the Carrasco contract had left an opening for confusion and bickering. Carrasco informed the department that he wanted an extra $154,000 because the work had been made more difficult by the studio’s partial demolition of the structure–acontention the city disputed.

Warner Bros., which had agreed to cover any additional costs incurred by the city, wrote the agency, warning that Carrasco was trying “to ‘take’ the DWP for all he can.”

Although still battling for more money, Carrasco began the job–one in which Alatorre seemed to take an extraordinary interest.

The DWP manager overseeing Carrasco’s work, Jeri Ardalan, said Alatorre’s personal involvement was more than he had ever witnessed by a council member on a construction matter.

“On a contract like that, when the general manager and . . . Alatorre and everybody are involved, you feel the pressure,” he said.

Among other things, Alatorre showed up at the job site with Carrasco and convened a meeting with DWP executives and staff in his City Hall office to review lingering contract issues.

In the midst of the payment disputes, Carrasco faxed a letter to the DWP general manager seeking a $139,000 payment. The cover sheet noted that it was sent “per Councilman Richard Alatorre.”

Given the problems Carrasco was generating, DWP officials again began debating whether to terminate Carrasco’s agreement and rid themselves of a “troublesome and nonresponsive contractor,” according to internal DWP records.

But, as one DWP memo warned, doing so would mean “Alatorre and hence (General Manager) Waters will probably be upset.” Instead, they decided to let the contract move forward, an action ensuring that “Alatorre and hence Waters is happy.”

Carrasco’s demands for money did not end with the building’s destruction. He sued the DWP for $350,000 beyond the amount of the original contract, alleging that the city had required him to perform extra work and had discriminated against him because of his Latino heritage.

As city lawyers prepared for trial, questions about Carrasco’s “erratic behavior” and possible drug use arose. The deputy city attorney handling the case prodded Carrasco’s former partner to state “whether or not you thought [Carrasco] was using drugs or something.” The ex-partner avoided a direct response, saying: “I don’t want to be any part of that.”

The city’s attorney declined to say what led him to pursue that line of inquiry.
Eventually, the DWP settled, paying $40,000 to Carrasco’s firm, which also received $80,000 from Warner Bros.

During Alatorre’s 1994 deposition in the sexual harassment suit, the councilman said he could remember helping Carrasco’s firm only one time with the DWP. On that occasion, he said, he tried to expedite a payment the firm was owed.

Asked whether he contacted the DWP management in that effort, Alatorre responded: “I’m sure I did, yeah. I don’t know. I don’t recall at this time.”

Dispute Over Transit Business

Alatorre also provided Carrasco with help on another front–JCI’s efforts to obtain a piece of the region’s lucrative transit business, according to documents and interviews with key players.
In late 1991, while the councilman sat on the board of the now-defunct Rapid Transit District, JCI was one of several firms seeking a $2-million contract to clean up hazardous waste. The problem was that RTD staff had rejected

Carrasco’s bid, partly because his price was too high and he had failed to provide required information.
“He was validly shot down,” said Frank Hanok, then the RTD’s assistant director of procurement.

A staff report recommending another firm was sent to the RTD board for approval. But at Alatorre’s insistence, the board rejected the staff opinion, allowing Carrasco to file another bid–a move that Hanok said smacked of improper political tampering.

“Alatorre killed it, sent it back and made sure it went to JCI,” Hanok said of the contract.

Carrasco, in his interview with The Times, said he could not remember anything about the matter.

Carrasco himself has said that Alatorre, while preparing to become the MTA’s first chairman, helped him navigate the bureaucracy on another transit contract.

In late 1992, Carrasco had filed a formal protest after his firm was rejected for a multimillion-dollar waste hauling job, records show. Transit officials had ruled that JCI lacked management and technical expertise.

So he again turned to Alatorre’s office, according to testimony Carrasco gave in the 1994 harassment lawsuit filed against him by his secretary.

Although the contractor’s protest ultimately was denied, he testified that Alatorre used an aide to gather details on competitors’ bids for Carrasco.

Carrasco said in an interview Tuesday that he now has no recollection of the contract, but stressed that any information he may have received on his competitors was publicly available.

The secret of his success, Carrasco said, was to perform admirably and come in with the lowest bids.

“That’s the only way I got any contracts.”

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.