FEDERAL PROSECUTOR EXPANDS LAPD INVESTIGATION

PROBE: The government will review all federal prosecutions involving
Los Angeles officers who have been implicated in the scandal.

LOS ANGELES - the federal government has ordered a review of all
federal prosecutions involving city police officers implicated in the
continuing corruption probe.

The review was ordered about two weeks ago and announced Friday by
U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas, who said he believed "only a
handful" of potentially tainted cases were involved.

Federal Public Defender Maria E. Stratton said she hopes the U.S.
Attorney's Office will work with public defenders to identify more
cases.

The Public Defender's Office has started its own review of about 1,000
cases dating back to 1993, she said.

The U.S. Attorney's Office also has asked the Immigration and
Naturalization Service to stop the deportation of a Guatemalan citizen
who contends corrupt officers terrorized him and his girlfriend.

Jorge Toscano was scheduled to be released Thursday from an Imperial
Valley prison and transferred to the INS for deportation.

In an April 17 letter to the INS, Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney
Consuelo Woodhead said Toscano could be a potential witness to federal
civil-rights violations by police officers.

Toscano's attorney, Stephen Yagman, says his client was beaten and
robbed in 1997 by disgraced former officer Rafael Perez and his
partner, Nino Durden.

Perez, in a plea agreement, cooperated with authorities and told of
widespread corruption in the Police Department's Rampart station in
exchange for a lighter sentence for stealing cocaine from an evidence
room.

To date, 67 convictions have been overturned.

About 30 officers have been relieved of duty, fired or
suspended.

Perez has admitted that he and Durden stole money from Toscano and his
girlfriend, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday, citing
transcripts of Perez's interviews with investigators.

Meanwhile, a new trial is being sought for a man who says corrupt
officers framed him.

Jorge Sisco-Aguilar, 28, is serving a 70-month sentence at the
Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas for being an illegal
immigrant in possession of a gun.

The man says former Rampart anti-gang officers Paul Harper and Mark
Wilbur framed him.

Harper was one of three officers arrested Monday in the first criminal
charges brought in the corruption probe.