The allegation that a Glendale detective betrayed his associate and arranged a 2016 attack remains unproven.
The Escalade was headed down a dreary and industrial stretch of road in Commerce when the first bullet buried itself in the driver’s back. He stomped on the gas. Bullets slammed into the car. Blood leaked from his gut.
His attorney, Craig Missakian, denied the detective was behind the shooting and said in court the allegations came from the mouths of witnesses who, facing prison for crimes of their own, were trying to save themselves “by pointing a finger at a high-profile cop.” Balian enrolled in the police academy at 23 and joined the Montebello Police Department in 1996. He flourished there: Officer of the Year in 2001, tapped to join the gang unit. “He was seen as a shining star,” said a former colleague who did not want to be identified because of Balian’s admitted ties to organized crime. “Everybody thought the world of him.”
Over the next 25 years, Dermen and his energy empire were investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI, and the Glendale and Los Angeles police departments, according to evidence introduced during the trial of his associate, his cousin’s appeal of a kidnapping conviction and warrants served on Dermen’s home and businesses in 2017.
Lawyers for both men would not discuss what went on there. But over the next decade, the two grew close. Dermen “surrounded himself” with law enforcement officers, federal prosecutors wrote in a recent court filing, to convey to business partners that he was insulated from prosecution. Patlan had tried in 2002 to abduct a wealthy Armenian baker at gunpoint in Glendale. Arrested that night at Glendale Memorial Hospital, he told a detective he was joined in the botched kidnapping by a short, overweight Armenian man he knew only as “Gordo.”Shown a lineup of possible “Gordos,’ Patlan picked out Dermen’s cousin, Arutyun Khrayan,
Jorge Grey, shown here after his arrest in 2015, has since testified that Glendale detective John Saro Balian tipped him to an indictment, allowing him to flee. Associates of the gang, trading testimony for leniency, have implicated the detective in various extortion plots. He has been charged in none of them. One was allegedly hatched after Cordero, who Balian had enlisted to find Patlan in 2014, was shot to death in Highland Park.
With Papazian proving uncooperative, the detective told Sanchez to hire someone to shoot up his car in front of his house, Sanchez testified. He said he demurred: “I wasn’t going to get someone’s house shot up just over bullshit, especially coming from a cop.” Assassins dispatched by the Mexican Mafia had mistaken Papazian’s cousin, friend and father for the bondsman, authorities said at a preliminary hearing. No testimony or evidence was introduced at the hearing that implicated Balian in the killings.
The agents weighed whether to recruit a Glendale officer to approach Balian and propose they commit crimes together, according to law enforcement documents reviewed by The Times. They decided against it, reasoning such a strategy was more likely to raise his suspicions than succeed. As a precaution, the Glendale officers assigned to the task force were walled off. LAPD detectives began tailing Balian’s unmarked grey Honda sedan through the streets of Los Angeles.
He spun around and saw stuffing from the SUV’s seats filled the air. He realized someone was shooting at them, that the seats were being punctured by bullets, and he slammed on the gas. Once he reached a safe distance, he pulled over and told Dermen’s son to call 911. He looked down at his hands, which had been clutching his stomach. They were covered in blood.
The detective, he said, had offered him and another gang member, Jonathan “Trigger” Montano, $100,000 to scare somebody — an Armenian man he didn’t know, according to the affidavit. Sanchez said he didn’t take part but lent his Honda Pilot to Montano, who returned the car that night, handed Sanchez a gun and said, “I think I hit him.”
Balian was arrested in May 2018, charged with lying about his dealings with the Mexican Mafia and Armenian organized crime figures. The detective, held in solitary confinement for his own safety, soon agreed to cooperate and pleaded guilty to three felonies. He admitted taking a $2,000 bribe, tipping Grey, the former Mexican Mafia associate, to his impending arrest, and lying to federal agents about his “criminal business relationship” with Sanchez, among other falsehoods.
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