Officers’ Attorneys Close With a Flurry : Trial: In final arguments in drug case, they accuse federal prosecutors of using ‘scum of the earth’ to testify against their clients.

Defense attorneys in the civil rights trial of six Los Angeles County narcotics officers said Thursday that federal prosecutors are relying on liars and “scum of the earth” to press their case that the veteran officers routinely used excessive force and skimmed drug money.

Urging jurors to acquit their clients, the attorneys said the prosecution had failed to prove their case against the five sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles police officer on trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The officers, who worked together on an anti-drug team in the mid-to-late 1980s, are accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and property during drug raids, beating suspects, planting narcotics and falsifying police reports.

In their closing statements of the five-month trial, defense lawyers said the allegations are unwarranted and based largely on the testimony of admitted or convicted drug dealers who claim they were victimized by the officers.

“The government has tried to portray them as good guys,” attorney Robert Ramsey said of the witnesses, some of whom were brought from jail to testify. “They are dope dealers. They are scum of the earth.”

Ramsey, who represents Deputy J.C. Miller, told jurors that the witnesses had lied about thefts and beatings and said the dealers were seeking revenge against narcotics officers who were successful in disrupting their business.

“The government is trying to brand (the defendants) as felons, trying to put them on the same level as the dope dealers they put in jail,” Ramsey said.

Defense attorney Larry Bakman also questioned the credibility of the prosecution’s star witness--former Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert R. Sobel, who implicated his former subordinates in wrongdoing.

Bakman, who represents Deputy John L. Edner, said Sobel’s testimony--like that of the drug dealers--was replete with inconsistencies and untruths.

“You’ve got liar after liar after liar presented by the prosecution in this case,” he told jurors.

Prosecutors maintain that stolen items--including a jade elephant and a portable generator--were found in the homes of the deputies or their relatives. But both Bakman and Ramsey questioned whether the items, seized during searches by investigators, were the same as the ones allegedly stolen from a drug dealer’s home.

Meanwhile, a third attorney, Roger Cossack, echoed his colleagues’ description of the defendants as hard-working officers who routinely risked their lives in raiding homes of armed drug dealers. He said any force used by the officers was needed to control dangerous suspects.

“It’s not part of their job to get their brains blown out,” he said.