JURY SELECTION GETS UNDER WAY IN L.A. POLICE CORRUPTION TRIAL

Opening Statements: Defense Calls Accuser Perez A `Street Thug In A Police
Uniform.'

LOS ANGELES -- The first trial stemming from the largest police corruption
scandal in city history opened Wednesday with attorneys for four accused
officers calling a former co-worker -- the prosecution's key witness -- an
evil, lying thug.

The statements were unusual because they came on the first day of jury
selection. Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor offered lawyers the
chance to give statements to inform the jury pool about what might lie
ahead in a trial that is expected to last three to four weeks.

Attorneys for the accused -- Sgt. Edward Ortiz and officers Brian Liddy,
Paul Harper and Michael Buchanan -- used the chance to attack former
officer Rafael Perez, whose accusations sparked the scandal.

"He was no more than a street thug in a police uniform, the likes of which
this city has never seen before," said Barry Levin, who represents Ortiz.
"His coldness, his callousness, his evil knew no bounds."

Perez, 33, received a lenient sentence for stealing $1 million worth of
cocaine from a police evidence room in exchange for testifying about
alleged officer misconduct in the Rampart anti-gang unit.

Perez accused his fellow officers of planting evidence, shooting suspects
and perjuring themselves. Some 100 cases have been reversed as a result of
Perez's story, but few officers have been charged.

"This is not the trial of Rafael Perez," said Laura Laesecke, deputy
district attorney. "This is the trial of four defendants who were members
of the Rampart CRASH," the gang-fighting Community Resources Against Street
Hoodlums unit that operated in the city's most violent neighborhoods near
downtown.

Defense attorney Harland Braun told the jury candidates they would hear
from a witness who saw Perez shoot a mother and son and dispose of their
bodies in Mexico.

"That's the kind of witness the prosecution is bringing before you," said
Braun, who drew on a Los Angeles Times story Wednesday that said federal
authorities were digging for bodies in a Tijuana dump.

The story said Perez's former lover alleged he and another former officer,
David Mack, murdered three people in a botched drug deal and disposed of
the bodies in the dump.

Mack is serving a 14-year federal prison sentence for bank robbery. Winston
Kevin McKesson, Perez's lawyer, has called the allegations "a desperate
plea for attention."

Braun also told prospective jurors about Javier Ovando, a gang member shot
by Perez and his former partner, Nino Durden, and left paralyzed for life.
Durden is charged with attempted murder in the shooting.

"This is a very clever man," Braun said of Perez, "a very smart man who
bamboozled the district attorney's office into the deal of a lifetime."