2 WOMEN SAY RAMPART SQUAD FRAMED THEM

In an alleged frame-up that has captured the personal attention of Los
Angeles County Public Defender Michael P. Judge, a mother and daughter with
no criminal records say a band of rogue Los Angeles police officers planted
drugs on them, stole their life savings, and took them to jail on false
charges that the city attorney later used to evict them from an apartment
they had lived in for more than a decade.

The arrests of Julia and Veronica Chavez reflect the depravity with which
former LAPD Officer Rafael Perez and his Rampart Division colleagues
operated, defense attorneys said. The Chavezes, unlike most alleged victims
of the LAPD corruption scandal identified so far, have never been gang
members, drug dealers or addicts, the lawyers added.

"These are two humble, decent women who played by the rules and were
terrorized by marauding, racist cops," said Judge, who went to the women's
Lincoln Heights apartment Wednesday with his top attorneys in connection
with a legal petition to clear their names.

"What was done here was vicious and can happen to anyone in the community
regardless of how honest and upright a life they live," Judge added.

It is unclear whether Perez, the man at the center of the corruption probe,
has identified the Chavezes' arrests as unjustified during his interviews
with LAPD investigators and prosecutors. But the Dec. 5, 1997, incident
fell within the period in which Perez said he was breaking the law as often
as he was enforcing it. Moreover, six of the seven officers involved in the
arrests of the mother and daughter have previously been implicated in
either crimes or misconduct.

Petition Will Seek Woman's Exoneration

Attorneys with the public defender's office said they plan to file a
petition today that they hope will exonerate 27-year-old Veronica Chavez,
who pleaded no contest to a drug possession charge on the advice of
counsel. Julia Chavez, though arrested and booked in jail, never faced
criminal charges.

"I couldn't believe this happened to us," Veronica Chavez said in an
interview with The Times. A student at the Puente Learning Center at the
time of the arrest, Chavez said her encounter with the police has scarred
her for life.

Police documents obtained by The Times indicate that officers alleged that
drugs were being dealt out of the Chavez home. According to a search
warrant affidavit submitted by Perez, he had been told by a confidential
informant that a male Latino who went by "Duster" and a woman known as
"Mama" were selling rock cocaine out of the South Burlington Avenue
apartment. The informant, whose information had not been previously tested,
allegedly told Perez that he had purchased rock cocaine from the pair on
about 10 occasions.

Perez said he enlisted a second informant--this one a snitch whose tips had
paid off in the past--in an attempt to buy cocaine from Duster and Mama.

Perez said he gave the informant $50 and watched as he went to the
apartment and knocked on the back door. Perez said a male Latino answered
the door and talked to the informant.

Minutes later, out of view of the apartment, Perez alleged, the informant
told him he had made the purchase and produced a paper bindle containing
several rocks of cocaine.

On Dec. 4, Municipal Judge W. R. Chidsey Jr. issued the warrant Perez was
seeking. A day later Perez, his partner Nino Durden and five other Rampart
officers raided the apartment, which was home to Julia and Veronica Chavez.

Perez wrote in his arrest report that he and Durden found the two women in
the bathroom, one of them bent over the sink, the other over the tub. He
said water was running in both basins.

Perez said he looked down into the tub and discovered a piece of rock
cocaine near the drain.

He said that after he read Veronica Chavez her rights she started to talk.

"I'm sorry, but it's not me that sells it; my mother and brother do. We saw
you guys coming, and me and my mom flushed it down the sink and the
bathtub," Perez's report quoted the young woman as saying.

Perez said he asked how much they had disposed of before the officers
arrived. "Everything that was inside the kitchen cabinet by the money,"
Veronica Chavez allegedly responded.

According to Perez's report, officers found $4,592 in the kitchen cabinet
and a bedroom.

Both Chavezes were booked on suspicion of possessing rock cocaine for sale
and taken to jail.

Three years later, Veronica Chavez at times cried as she offered a starkly
different account of the day she and her mother were arrested.

She said she woke up to the sound of her mother, who had been sick,
vomiting in the bathroom.

She went in to check on her. Minutes later, she said, two LAPD officers
suddenly appeared at the bathroom door, their guns drawn.

She said she and her mother were placed in handcuffs and separated.

One of the officers, whom she would later recognize as Perez, stayed with
her in the bathroom. "It was Perez who got in my face and said, 'Where are
the drugs?' " she recalled during an interview in which her mother joined her.

Veronica Chavez said she told Perez that she didn't know what he was
talking about, but that he persisted. "Tell us where the drugs are, or
we're going to tear your house up," he allegedly threatened.

As Perez interrogated her, she said, other officers roamed through the
apartment, pulling out drawers, opening cupboards and flipping over
mattresses. She said the one female officer at the scene made racist
comments about her citizenship and asked: "Why do all you Mexicans have to
come up here and sell drugs?" Veronica said the officers taunted them with
threats of deportation until one of them discovered her mother's
naturalization papers.

Veronica is a U.S. citizen.

"I guess it's your lucky day," one officer reportedly deadpanned.

Officer Suggested a Ruse, Woman Says

Eventually, Veronica Chavez said, Perez confided that he knew she and her
mother were innocent, and that it was really her brother, an 18th Street
gang member, whom police wanted.

Veronica said she told Perez that her brother had not lived in the house
for more than two years, since he was released from prison in 1995 after
serving a sentence for manslaughter.

"We don't want to arrest you guys. All you have to do is call your brother
and have him come here," she quoted Perez as saying.