OFFICERS CONVICTED IN L.A. SCANDAL

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- Three Los Angeles police officers were found
guilty yesterday of obstructing justice in the first trial arising from the
worst police corruption scandal in the city's history.

The jury deliberated for three and a half days after the four-week trial.

The trial revealed the inner workings of a special anti-gang police unit at
the "Rampart Division" near downtown Los Angeles. The unit's members have
been accused of shooting, beating or framing hundreds of innocent people,
mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Three officers, who vehemently denied the charges, were found guilty of
obstructing justice and filing false reports in the 1996 arrests of two
Latino gang members. A fourth officer on trial with them was acquitted of
all charges. A date for sentencing was not immediately set.

The trial was the first of many stemming from a scandal that has seen some
100 criminal convictions overturned and dozens of officers placed under
investigation.

But it went ahead without the testimony of rogue police officer Rafael
Perez, the man who sparked the scandal when he turned informant after being
caught stealing cocaine with a street value of about $1.6 million from a
police evidence locker.

The scandal has forced the City of Los Angeles to agree to have an outsider
appointed by the federal Department of Justice oversee broad reforms in the
America's second-largest police force.

The three convicted officers -- Sergeants Brian Liddy and Edward Ortiz and
Officer Michael Buchanan -- sat impassively as the verdicts were read.

But Ortiz told reporters afterwards he was disappointed at the outcome. ``I
still believe to this day that we're innocent and that we did our job to
keep the citizens of L.A., keep the streets, safe from all the gangs and
the crime that's going out there,'' said Ortiz.

Ortiz's lawyer, Barry Levin, vowed to appeal, saying the jury ''went into
this trial believing that Rampart officers were corrupt.''

Perez did not give evidence because of a bizarre sub-plot involving his
former lover Sonia Flores.

Just before the trial started, she alleged that Perez had murdered three
people and buried their bodies on the Mexican border.

Last week, with the jury already out, she admitted having made up the
allegations because she was bitter about being jilted by Perez.

Ortiz, Liddy and Buchanan were accused of fabricating or supporting a claim
that Liddy was hurt when a pick-up truck carrying two Latino gang members
struck him in an alley during a July, 1996, police raid.

The two gang members were charged with assault using a deadly weapon.

But the three were cleared of further charges that they planted a gun on
another gang member during an April, 1996, arrest.

The prosecution at the trial was put in the unusual position of asking the
jury to believe the evidence of gang members over the denials of the
accused police officers.