A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy confirmed Thursday that he attempted to smuggle more than a pound of heroin into Lockup, where he was tasked with investigating gang activities and drug trafficking.
Michael Miser, 40, pleaded guilty in federal court to possess heroin intended to distribute drugs within the North County Correctional Facility.
Assigned to a specialized unit called Operation Safe Jails, Meiser is to sell drugs, raise protection funds and monitor gang members attacking other prisoners within eight facilities, supervised by the sheriff’s department, collectively owning more than 12,000 men and women.
Instead, Miser admitted on his guilty plea, and he conspired with the gang leader to bring heroin to prison. There, the drug can be sold at 20 times its street value.
In an unsigned statement, sheriff’s officials said Miser, who was arrested 13 months ago, was “released from duty” on March 5.
“This incident represents a serious violation of public trust and undermines the department’s obligation to protect the health and safety of those under our custody,” the authorities wrote in an email. Since Miser’s arrest, the sheriff’s department has increased the use of drug sniffing dogs and mail and body scanners to try to keep drugs out of prison, officials write.
Miser’s lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment.
In the legal agreement, Meiser confirmed that on April 30, 2024, he collected grocery bags from a woman at a gas station in Valencia. The bag also had two envelopes filled with $15,000. His payment is his payment to bring drugs behind the bar.
Miser was carpooled with another deputy to the North County Correctional Facility in Castyick. He slipped a cash envelope into his backpack and placed a Pringle can on the trunk of a police car in the prison parking lot, the judiciary agreement said.
According to a sheriff’s report reviewed by The Times, Meiser asked another deputy for texting to drive his police car into the prison’s management area. The adjutant said he couldn’t do it, and said detectives from the Sheriff’s Department’s Internal Criminal Investigation Bureau had been chasing Miser all day, but seized heroin from a police car.
Miser was arrested as a colleague passed him through the prison gates. According to the sheriff’s deportation, detectives searched the house later that day and found $10,500 in a sock drawer.
His judicial agreement does not refer to the Mexican mafia, but interior detectives wrote in the report that Miser was working with the prisoner “shot cara” appointed by the prison gang to oversee the rackets at the North County Correctional Facility.
Miser, one of 17 people charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors in January, conspiring to smuggle drugs into prison. He was then the only defendant pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court to face federal charges.
A spokesman for the US Lawyer’s office in Los Angeles said when Miser was sentenced Dec. 11, he would face a mandatory minimum sentence in a five-year prison.
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