REPORT: COPS SUPPLIED INFORMANT WITH CRACK

Former Officer Details Dealings For Investigators

LOS ANGELES - Disgraced former Los Angeles Police Officer Rafael Perez and
his partner used a drug addicted homeless woman as one of their regular
informants, feeding her habit with crack cocaine as payment for
information, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Perez and officer Nino Durden would then use that information to shake down
drug dealers, stealing their money and drugs for their own profit, Perez
alleges in transcripts of his interviews with investigators. The officers
would also use the information to make legitimate arrests, but according to
the transcripts, Perez now concedes that about half of all his arrests at
Rampart Division were somehow illegal. There were so many, he said, that he
cannot remember the details of them all.

The informant, who The Times is identifying only as "Mary" to protect her
identity, told investigators that Perez and Durden once used her as a
guinea pig to test a foul-smelling brick of drugs they had stolen from a
dealer and suspected was "dirty dope," the documents state.

"I think we gave her a piece of it," Perez told LAPD detective John Cook
during a Nov. 3, 1999 interrogation. "She goes, 'It tasted horrible. That's
not cocaine.'"

Even after Mary tasted the drug and said it wasn't cocaine the officers
allowed her to leave with it. "She still took it and tried to cook it up,"
Perez said.

Mary is not the only informant Durden and Perez allegedly abused. The
transcripts are filled with accounts of people being bullied into informing
for the former partners. The two cops would steal peoples' money and
jewelry and use the loot as leverage to obtain their cooperation. One man
told investigators the pair took his food stamps.

Transcripts say Perez and Durden used Mary to finger cab drivers who were
dealing drugs on the side and to point out locations where drugs were being
sold. Sometimes the officers would send her to buy drugs, then burst in on
the seller. They then would allow her to retain drugs.

Perez said Mary approached him and Druden as often as they approached her.
Frequently, Perez said, the woman, who had but a single tooth, would show
up at the police station unsolicited.