DA MAY CHARGE RAMPART COPS WITH CONSPIRACY

The District Attorney's Office has resisted charging a few dirty cops
caught up in the widening LAPD scandal in the belief prosecutors can prove
a criminal conspiracy existed among Rampart Division officers to frame and
abuse suspects, the Daily News has learned.

Such an ambitious -- and risky -- strategy would implicate more officers
than filing individual charges against each cop, and would allow the
District Attorney's Office to use evidence, including hearsay, that
normally would not be admissible in court, according to several legal
experts.

Officers who participated in the conspiracy -- even tangentially, by
looking the other way -- could be found culpable for every crime committed.

For example, rather than charging one cop for perjury, another for
falsifying a police report, and a third for attempted murder, all of the
officers could be charged for participating in a conspiracy to break the
law and subsequently prosecuted for every crime committed during the
conspiracy. Those found guilty would be imprisoned for the combined
sentences of all the crimes in the conspiracy.

"It makes a good strategy," said Laurie Levenson, dean of Loyola
University's Law School and a former federal prosecutor. "You certainly
don't want to have to try these cases piecemeal or individually.

"The theory is that these are not random acts of criminality. These are
planned, concerted and supported acts of misconduct."

More than a dozen LAPD officers have been fired or relieved of duty in
connection with the investigation triggered by sworn statements by
corrupt-cop-turned-informant Rafael Perez.

Perez agreed to incriminate himself and other officers in exchange for a
lenient prison sentence for stealing eight pounds of cocaine from an LAPD
evidence room. He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.

Police Chief Bernard C. Parks maintains his investigators have given the
District Attorney's Office enough evidence to prosecute three dirty cops
connected to the scandal.

Despite criticism from Parks and Mayor Richard Riordan, District Attorney
Gil Garcetti has refused to file charges against the cops, saying more
needs to be done to build stronger cases that will win long prison
sentences for the officers prosecuted.

Last week, Garcetti said no police officers will be indicted in the
foreseeable future. He declined to comment on the prosecutorial strategies
being developed by his office.

"We are using all of our resources on this," said Sandi Gibbons, a
spokeswoman for the office. "It's really too soon to comment on legal
strategies."

What Is A Conspiracy?

A criminal conspiracy generally is defined as an agreement among two or
more people to break the law, according to Charles Weisselberg, a law
professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

"The crime is the actual conspiracy agreement itself and the people
involved are usually charged with the crimes that occurred through the
conspiracy," Weisselberg said.

A criminal conspiracy does not have to be explicit or formally agreed to,
he explained. Those involved in the scheme could share an unspoken
understanding, Weisselberg said.

Sources close to the LAPD corruption probe said the nature of the
conspiracy that would be alleged by prosecutors has not been determined.
But they added it probably would rest upon civil rights violations.

Perez, who has been cooperating with investigators since last September,
has painted a picture of a criminal syndicate of dirty cops in the Rampart
CRASH unit. Ironically, the cops behaved much like the notorious street
gangs they were supposed to police.

If the District Attorney's Office files conspiracy charges against the
cops, the statute of limitations for all the crimes committed would extend
from the last act of the conspiracy or the last attempt to cover up the
conspiracy, said Levenson.

"What it does also is puts more pressure on the officers to cooperate with
the prosecutors and go against each other," she said. "You won't have them
watching to see if an ax falls on the other guys. The finger pointing will
start and benefit the prosecution."

Getting officers to cooperate would prove critical to the prosecution since
the theory of a conspiracy among Rampart officers rests almost solely on
the testimony of Perez, who lacks credibility because he told his story in
exchange for leniency on drug charges that carried a 14-year sentence.

Initiation And Rules

According to Perez's testimony, which has been obtained by the Daily News,
police officers gained entrance into the Rampart Community Resources
Against Street Hoodlums unit only after they proved themselves.

During the course of the "probation" period, Perez said, criminal acts were
often required to prove loyalty, secret code words and other rituals were
used to communicate the acceptance of misdeeds, and a strict loyalty test
- -- based on the willingness to lie -- was administered.

"This is something you're taught," Perez said. "This is how it goes. ...
When you're there, supervisors, other officers, the senior oofficers, they
tell you what the history of Rampart CRASH is. And they tell you how they
do things.

"You're either in or you're not."

The syndicate was so tight that cops were not only breaking the law out on
the street, but also routinely participating in illegal activities inside
the Rampart detectives station at Third and Union, Perez said.

Most notably, Perez said he hid narcotics in a green cooler in the
officers' cot room and his partner, Nino Durden, used an electric metal
engraving tool to remove serial numbers from at least 10 guns that he was
stockpiling to plant on shooting victims or innocent arrestees.

Station-house beatings also happened, according to official records.

Makings Of A Syndicate

Membership in Rampart's CRASH unit was closely guarded and carefully
orchestrated, Perez told investigators.

"It's not a supervisor's doing, despite what anybody may think," Perez
said. "We vote them in. We have a round table. And we discuss this person.
We talk to people who he's worked with, uh, and find out the type of person
that he is."

The only other avenue into CRASH was to be sponsored by a member of the
unit, Perez said. "And if that person's gonna sponsor him in, that person's
gonna have to work with him."

Officers who were willing to break the law were tacitly considered to be
"in the loop," he said.

New recruits were carefully watched, in essence given a tryout. Those who
didn't go along with prescribed Rampart CRASH methods -- beating and
framing innocent victims, lying in court, or at least looking the other way
- -- "washed out," Perez said.

To protect themselves further, members of the Rampart CRASH unit never
allowed cops outside of their ranks, especially patrol officers, to
accompany them during searches of buildings or other areas, Perez said.

"We're not going to use any of the patrol guys, because if something goes
down, you don't want them involved," he said.

"We know who we have in CRASH. And we know that we can trust them. If
anything happens, and we cover it up, we know these guys that are with us,
they're solid. We don't have to worry about it.

"You know, they're, they're gonna be able to ... go along with the program
... whatever happens."

A Common Language

Much of the language used by the Rampart CRASH officers had a
conspiratorial flavor, according to Perez's 2,000 pages of testimony.

For example, Perez said, if he and others referred to another cop as
"solid," it meant that the officer could be trusted to commit crimes or
cover up someone else's crime and never tell a prosecutor or high-ranking
supervisor outside of "the loop."

Similarly, the term "squared away" referred to a cop who "knows how we do
things here," Perez said.

"You talk in sort of riddles," he explained. "You know, you kind of just
make innuendoes about what happened."

Further, there was an unspoken, but fierce loyalty among those in the
special anti-gang unit, reminiscent of the solidarity required of street
gangs. CRASH officers called it the ability to "take it to the box," Perez
told investigators.

"'Take it to the box' is saying that I don't care if Officer Perez gets
arrested, he will never get in front of a DA and in front of a, uh,
Internal Affairs supervisor and say this guy did this and this guy did
that," Perez said.

"Keep me in custody a year and never said a word. Everybody's confident. He
won't say a thing," Perez said, spilling his guts to investigators.

Cleaning Crime Scenes

As the conspiracy progressed, Perez testified, officers and their immediate
sergeants increasingly cooperated to hide evidence of the illegal activity.
Crime scenes were commonly cleaned up before commanders and non-CRASH
personnel arrived, he said.

According to Perez's December testimony to investigators, Sgt. Edward Ortiz
played a crucial role in helping the dirty cops create believable stories.
Ortiz allegedly was so exacting in his deviant behavior that he insisted
the cops agree upon the supposed tactical maneuvers used in the incident.

It wasn't enough that a shooting or arrest appeared to be legitimate; the
tactics leading up to the shooting or arrest also had to appear justified.

"That's the bottom line. If -- if something happened, if you were in a bad
position, you're gonna be in a good position by the time the shooting team
got there," Perez said. "Whatever it is -- the guy didn't have a gun, we'll
get a gun there."

"We'll do whatever we have to, to make it look like a justified shooting."

Nevertheless, Perez believes lieutenants and captains in the Rampart
Division should have been able to tell something was seriously amiss. Just
looking at the kinds of arrests being made by CRASH officers would have
tipped them off, he said.

Common threads existed in most of the fabricated reports. Guns always were
reported as loaded, and time after time weapons were reportedly found on
every person at a scene.

"You know that they know -- if they even glance at the report, you know
they know. You know that they know," Perez said.

"I mean not once ... did I hear a supervisor say, well, this arrest is
questionable. How is it that you guys have a party and you guys all see
five of these people running out of the house and they're carrying the guns
and dropped them?"

Instead, the officers were glorified by their commanders as the "chosen
people."

"It was always: 'Great job. Continue to do what you're doing. Just don't
tell us how you're doing it,"' Perez said.

The officers' numerous arrests were rewarded with picnics and beer parties,
some at the "benches" or Police Academy.

"Congratulate each other and pat ourselves on the back," Perez said.
"That's how the lessons start. That's your learning.

"And now we know that we can do this in front of you, and you can be
trusted. We know that you're not gonna go to Internal Affairs and say, uh,
you know this is happening."