Drug Trial Resulting From Operation Roundup Opens : Courts: Lawyers differ over reliability of key witness in Santa Ana’s biggest narcotics and gang sweep. Defendant faces third strike and possible life sentence if convicted.

Telling a jury that “you need a crook to catch a crook,” a prosecutor urged jurors Thursday to convict a 25-year-old Santa Ana man of drug dealing using evidence gathered by an FBI informant with a long criminal history.

The opening statement by Deputy Dist. Atty. Kimberly Menninger in Orange County Superior Court launched the first jury trial resulting from Operation Roundup, Santa Ana’s biggest-ever gang and drug sweep last September, which yielded 115 grand jury indictments on drug charges.

Gustavo Bustos Chavez is charged with selling heroin to benefit the 6th Street Gang.

Menninger described how during the five-month investigation that preceded the sweep, investigators used FBI informant Henry Gomez to make 200 drug buys, which they videotaped and recorded. She played a videotape to the jury that showed Gomez giving Chavez money for a pellet-sized piece of heroin on March 29, 1994.

“They needed someone who was going to be accepted on the streets, so they couldn’t use an officer,” Menninger said. “You need a crook to catch a crook--and that’s what they did.”

But defense attorney Frank Ospino argued that any evidence gathered by Gomez is unreliable because he has a record that goes back to the 1970s and includes prior felony convictions for forgery, aggravated battery and residential burglary.

Ospino said that Gomez has admitted embezzling $115 from the program even though he was being paid $21,344 for his services, and that he has been promised a bonus based on how he performs in court.

“That is an ugly specter,” Ospino commented outside the courtroom. “Here is a man who is coming to court who is going to get a bonus. Hopefully, the jury will be able to evaluate it as well.”

Chavez, who has prior felony convictions for robbery and assault, faces his third strike and a possible life sentence if convicted. In a separate case that is expected to come to trial immediately after this trial, he is charged with another robbery.

Gomez, 39, appeared briefly as a witness and admitted to his prior record and to pilfering from the program, which was launched by the FBI, the Santa Ana Police Department and the district attorney’s office. The program targeted the city’s West 3rd Street neighborhood where gang members and drug dealers ruled the streets.

Gomez also described how he drove around the city’s West 3rd Street neighborhood in a 1984 Buick Riviera equipped by the FBI with a camera in the driver’s side door that taped the drug transactions in the car’s front seat.

He said his understanding about the bonus is that it is contingent only on whether he tells the truth in court. It is not contingent on a conviction, he said.

As part of the probe, investigators had Gomez point out drug dealers from booking photos, gang books and other sources to make the arrests. The cases against eight suspects later were dismissed because Gomez misidentified them.

More than 50 other suspects who were arrested during the sweep have pleaded guilty to various drug charges and are serving prison sentences, said supervising Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen.