COUNTYWIDE : Investigator for D.A. Honored for Service

Orange County Dist. Atty. Investigator James G. Aumond has received the Alfred E. Stewart Memorial Award from the California Narcotics Officers Assn. at its annual meeting in South Lake Tahoe.

Aumond, supervising attorneys investigator, was honored Thursday by the 4,000-member organization for his 25 years of law enforcement service that included police undercover assignments to infiltrate the Brotherhood of Eternal Love in the early 1970s.

While a uniformed officer with Newport Beach, Aumond, according to his award nomination biography, arrested John Charles Gale in 1971 with 200 kilos of marijuana. Gale, who died in a car crash in 1982, was among 45 people indicted by the Orange County Grand Jury on charges of being members of an international drug ring.

After serving with the Baldwin Park and Newport Beach police departments, Aumond joined the district attorney’s office as an investigator in 1973. In 1986, he formed a special narcotics enforcement team of 11 attorneys, five investigators, one paralegal and four assistants that works solely on narcotics cases.

He moved through a series of supervisory positions and now is the third ranking investigator in the office.

The Alfred E. Stewart Memorial Award is presented annually by the California Narcotic Officers Assn. to an outstanding law enforcement officer involved in the suppression of drug abuse.

Stewart, a lieutenant with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, was fatally wounded in 1973 while assisting a California Highway Patrol officer who was shot and killed by the same assailant. Stewart was the 1972 president of the association.