COP ACCUSES PARTNER OF THEFT\Officer blows whistle, deals with consequences.

Byline: Janet Gilmore Daily News Staff Writer

The businessman was dead in his boxers on the floor of a Koreatown hotel room, and LAPD Officer Blake Budai didn't have to go far to finger the suspect who he claims stole thousands of dollars from the corpse.

It was his partner, Budai said.

"It's a very difficult thing to do, turning in another police officer," Budai, 30, testified Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. "I've heard stories in the past where officers have been outcast for doing such things."

But Budai told jurors he was compelled to notify supervisors about what he saw the afternoon of March 10, 1995, and why he believed Officer LaTanya Bell stole $2,800 from Jae Young Oh, who died of an apparent heart attack.

As a result, Bell, 28, is on trial for grand theft, facing the loss of her badge and perhaps her freedom if convicted.

The single mother and five-year Los Angeles Police Department officer has pleaded not guilty.

Bell's attorney, Darryl Mounger, contends that anyone inside the hotel that day could have taken the money, given numerous occasions when the dead man's room was left unlocked and unattended.

At the same time the defense has portrayed Budai as an overzealous do-good cop who never got along with Bell and once threatened to write up a 5-year-old boy for urinating on the street.

It is an unusual trial pitting one cop against another, with both sides making the credibility of the suspect and accuser key issues.

"It's extremely rare," LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride said of the circumstances of the case. "To have any kind of allegation such as that. We feel we have one of the most honest departments in the country."

According to Budai, Bell, his temporary partner, and he received a "dead body" call at the Hamilton Hotel in Los Angeles' Koreatown. There they found Oh, whose chest scar indicated that he had previously had heart surgery.

As they investigated, Budai and Bell searched through a jacket hanging in the dead man's closet, looking for evidence of next of kin.

It was then, claims Budai, that he saw Bell conceal an envelope that prosecutors believe contained about $2,800 in cash. Budai testified that Bell slipped the thick envelope underneath a packet of airline tickets retrieved from the dead man's property.

Then, Budai said, when he tried to grab the envelope to see its contents, Bell snatched it back and walked away, saying the packet contained only blank white papers.

Budai's suspicions increased when Bell abruptly left to use the adjacent bathroom, leaving behind a thinner envelope that contained three $10 bills and no white papers.

Budai said he confronted Bell. Her response, he said, was puzzlement. Then he contacted a supervisor and others for advice on how to proceed.

"I felt betrayed," Budai testified. "I really wasn't sure how to handle the situation. I've never had a partner steal from me before."

According to trial testimony, authorities found thousands of dollars in a trash can elsewhere in the hotel. Its serial numbers corresponded with the numbers on the few bills found in the dead man's room.

In addition to casting doubt on Bell as a suspect, Mounger also has suggested in his cross-examination of Budai that he had it in for Bell prior to the March 1995 case.

A day earlier, the officers - assigned together as temporary partners for the first time - were on bicycle patrol.

When Budai saw a wrench in Bell's hands he asked her "Where'd you sneak that from?" or "You sneaked that, didn't you?"

Budai said he was half joking when he said it and apologized when Bell explained that the wrench was part of a tool packet that came with the bicycles.

Some supporters of Bell have suggested that a personality clash between the two is at the root of the allegations. Meanwhile, a number of prosecution witnesses, from a former clothing store employer to an LAPD field supervisor, have vouched for Budai's work ethic and sense of responsibility.

Diane Marchant, an attorney for the Police Protective League, said Bell was assigned to her home since March 11 and had her pay reinstated as of August. A police Board of Rights hearing has been postponed until the conclusion of her criminal trial.