REPORTS: Beatings routine at LAPD's Rampart division

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Anti-gang officers linked to the city's police
corruption scandal often tried to intimidate gang members by punching and
choking suspects, according to investigation documents.

Rafael Perez, the disgraced officer at the center of the probe, told
investigators that officers fabricated police reports to explain their
victims' injuries.

Transcripts of his testimony to a Police Department task force were reported
today by the Daily News of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times.

In one case, police said an alleged beating victim's bloodied face resulted
from his attempt to jump out of a third-floor apartment window head-first,
records show.

In another case, officers allegedly used a suspect as a human battering ram,
thrusting his face through a wall because he refused to disclose information
about a gun officers were seeking, according to the documents.

Many victims told investigators that officers beat them to retaliate for
filing misconduct complaints, while others said the attacks were designed to
menace gang members.

Perez, convicted of stealing cocaine from an evidence locker, is cooperating
with prosecutors in exchange for a lesser sentence.

He has alleged that he and other officers framed suspects, lied on the
witness stand and even shot unarmed men.

More than 30 convictions have been overturned and 20 officers have been
relieved of duty, suspended, fired or have quit since Perez began detailing
corruption in the LAPD.

He said two officers in particular -- Brian Hewitt and Daniel Lujan -- were
well-known among Rampart's rogue cops for brutalizing suspects.

"(Hewitt) just had this thing about beating people up while they were
handcuffed. That's what he did. He was just a brutal guy. Between him and
Lujan, that was their favorite thing. Just beat people up for no reason,"
Perez told investigators.

Hewitt was fired by the LAPD in 1998 for allegedly grabbing suspect Ismael
Jimenez by the neck, shoving him against a wall and punching him repeatedly
in the chest and abdomen.

Jimenez vomited blood in the interview room and staggered out of the police
station, according to police documents.

Though the LAPD has recommended prosecution, the District Attorney's office
has twice declined to file charges against Hewitt, citing a lack of
evidence.

Hewitt could not be reached and has denied that the beating took place.

Lujan was charged but exonerated of wrongdoing in the Jimenez beating.

However, Perez said Lujan badly injured the knee of an innocent man he had
chased down during a foot pursuit, and that a police sergeant told Lujan to
book the man on a drug charge to cover up the attack.

Perez also implicated two other anti-gang unit officers, Doyle Stepp and
Omar Veloz, in the beating of a man who allegedly tried to kill an LAPD
motor officer with his car as he fled from a robbery. Both officers have
been relieved of duty.

Lujan, Stepp and Veloz could not be reached to comment on the allegations.

Also in the transcripts, Perez claimed that he and a former partner gave
crack cocaine to a homeless woman they used to point out drug-dealing
locations and taxi drivers who were dealing on the side.

Perez also said he gambled away some of the thousands of dollars in cash
that he and his partner allegedly stole from suspected drug dealers.