Deadly California drug sweep that claimed Marysville cop netted narcotics, 20 arrests

The Yuba-Sutter narcotics task force hunting down Northern California drug traffickers when Marysville police officer Osmar Rodarte was killed in Yuba County shut down secret drug labs and seized weapons, ammunition and other tools of the drug trade in the sweep, Yuba County District Attorney’s Office said Friday.

Rodarte was killed Wednesday morning while serving a warrant on one of the task force’s targets, a home in Olivehurst. The warrant was one of some 20 served across Yuba, Sutter, Butte and Tehama counties, part of a years-long investigation into transnational drug trafficking by NET-5, the multiagency Yuba-Sutter Narcotics and Gang Task Force. More than 125 law enforcement officers from 20 local, state and federal agencies were part of the four-county operation.

Twenty people were arrested on a variety of narcotics charges in the multi-county sweep, D.A. Clint Curry’s office said in a statement.

Authorities on Friday described the drug ring as a family-run operation that imported narcotics from Mexico and sold them to street-level dealers across Northern California.

“Investigators revealed a group of family members engaged in drug trafficking, moving hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of methamphetamine, fentanyl, and other drugs, from Mexico into California and beyond,” said Curry, who is also chairman of the task force, said in the statement.

Investigators also took 6.7 pounds of methamphetamine, 14 pounds of marijuana and 14 fentanyl pills — as well as firearms and roughly a quarter-pound of cocaine — in the Wednesday operation.

Investigators had confiscated more than 335 pounds of meth, nearly 9 pounds of heroin, more than 1,500 fentanyl pills and more than $150,000 during the years-long operation before Wednesday’s seizures. In all, 45 people have been arrested as part of the NET-5 investigation.

Rodarte’s killer, Rick David Oliver, 60, ambushed Rodarte and his partner as they made their way into the Kestrel Court home, Curry said in the Friday statement. The two officers returned fire, killing Oliver but not before Rodarte was struck with the rounds that ended his life a short time later at Adventist Health and Rideout hospital in Marysville.

Oliver, described Friday as a low-level player who distributed drugs for the operation, was a registered sex offender with a history of drug offenses and convictions for soliciting lewd acts and felony unlawful sex with a minor, Curry said in the statement.

Funeral services for Rodarte remain pending after his body was transported from Marysville to a Placer County funeral home on Thursday.

Darrell Smith

The Sacramento Bee

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Darrell Smith is a local reporter for The Sacramento Bee. He joined The Bee in 2006 and previously worked at newspapers in Palm Springs, Colorado Springs and Marysville. Smith was born and raised at Beale Air Force Base and lives in Elk Grove.