SHOOTING SCENES RIGGED, PEREZ SAYS

As a 21-year-old man shot by police lay bleeding to death in the
hallway of a shabby Mid-City apartment building, Los Angeles Police
Department officers intentionally delayed calling an ambulance while
they planted a gun near where he had fallen and concocted an elaborate
story to justify the shooting, according to disgraced former officer
Rafael Perez.

"Everything [was] straightened out, cleaned up, whatever," Perez said,
according to transcripts of interviews with detectives and prosecutors
obtained by The Times. "That's what happens."

The 1996 shooting, from which Juan Saldana ultimately died, is one of
three in which Perez now says he or fellow anti-gang CRASH officers in
the LAPD's Rampart Division unjustly wounded or killed suspects.

In one case, Perez told investigators, CRASH officers opened fire on
unsuspecting New Year's Eve revelers who were shooting bullets into
the air to celebrate. Perez said one of the officers involved, Daniel
Lujan, confided to him that the officers fabricated a story that they
were being fired on to cover their tracks.

In the Saldana shooting, Perez said, he was running down the hallway
in an apartment building at 676 S. Shatto Place when he heard Officer
Kulin Patel shoot.

"Boom. And it's a gang member. . . . He gets one right in the 10
ring," Perez said.

"In the what?" asked the court reporter, who was transcribing the
interview.

"In the 10 ring. I'm sorry. It's a center mass. Or right in the center
of the chest," Perez said, alluding to the corresponding spot on a
firing range target.

Perez, who testified that he was just a few steps behind Patel when
Patel fired, reached the victim in a matter of seconds. "And I'm
looking at the guy. And I know there's no gun there. There's--there's
no gun."

Just then, Perez said, fellow Rampart CRASH Officers Brian Hewitt and
Doyle Stepp appeared at the bottom of the stairs, where Saldana had
fallen. The two officers had been chasing the gang member through the
building after they and other CRASH officers received information that
gang members were planning a retaliatory attack for a drive-by
shooting that occurred the day before.

Perez said the two officers looked down at the fatally wounded Saldana
and one of them said, "Oh, shit. . . . We got him."

Gun Placed Near Victim

He said the two officers ran back upstairs and returned within
seconds, Stepp gingerly holding a gun with the tips of his fingers.
Perez told investigators the officer placed it on the first step next
to Saldana.

Perez alleged that Hewitt, who since has been fired from the LAPD for
an unrelated beating, and Stepp, who has been relieved of duty in
connection with the scandal, later said "that the guy had dropped the
gun already when they were running after him."

At this point, Perez said, Saldana "seems perfectly fine. He's
talking. He's like, 'Man, what's going on?' "

But Perez said several minutes passed as the officers stood nearby and
got their stories straight. Saldana's condition steadily deteriorated,
and he collapsed at the door of the apartment building. He died a
short time later at County-USC Medical Center. An autopsy revealed
that he had suffered two fatal gunshot wounds, one in the chest and
one in the back.

Perez told investigators that he suspects Saldana--if he was armed to
begin with--had dropped his gun before Stepp and Hewitt shot him, but
that he had no proof of that.

"I believe that he had already dropped the gun, just by little talks
we were having," Perez said. "I remember joking around with Stepp and
Hewitt about how many rounds they had fired and . . . I remember it
was something that was said, some little jokes that were being made."

Perez, who in November led investigators on a predawn videotaped
walk-through of the shooting scene, said he did not have personal
knowledge of the wounding of Jose Perez, a second man shot by police
at Shatto Place. But Rafael Perez denied the official police story
that Jose Perez pulled a gun before running into the building.

"I can tell you emphatically . . . I was looking right at them [Jose
Perez and other gang members]. No one pulled a gun."

Perez told investigators about a second allegedly unjustified shooting
that occurred early New Year's Day, 1996. According to an LAPD
shooting report, Officers Lujan, Hewitt and John Collard were working
a so-called gunfire-suppression detail on New Year's Eve west of
downtown, and they heard multiple shots about 10 minutes after midnight.

As they searched for the source of the gunfire in the 1300 block of
Linwood Avenue, their report on the incident states, they came under
attack by two men who had been shooting their weapon into the air from
a second-story porch. The officers, fearing for their lives, returned
fire, the report alleges.

But Perez said Lujan told him at the scene that it was the other way
around: The police staged the ambush.

"When I arrived there, Officer Lujan began explaining what had
occurred, what had actually occurred," Perez told investigators. "They
had set up on the location where they were hearing the shots. And when
the guys came back out shooting up in the air, they [the police]
stepped out from where they were hidden and began firing at them."

Perez said Lujan told him to start picking up the shotgun shell
casings from the rounds he had fired, but that Lujan and the others
didn't think they had hit anyone they were firing at and they were not
going to report the shooting.

"Then they decided to go up there and check and on the porch there was
blood up there," Perez said. "When we saw blood, we said, 'Let's take
them into custody.' "

Then-Chief Willie L. Williams found the shooting "in policy" in 1996,
but found that the officers made a tactical error in trying to
apprehend suspects who were clearly armed and dangerous without
calling for backup. In reality, Perez said, the officers knew there
was no need for such precautions.

"It wasn't one of those things where, 'Oh, my God, they're shooting at
us, take cover' . . . and now we need SWAT to come get them out. We
went right in and just took these people into custody."

A 51-year-old man and his 18-year-old son were wounded in the
shooting. Charges against the father were dismissed when a judge found
there was no evidence he had ever picked up a weapon that night, much
less aimed it at police. The 18-year-old and his 27-year-old brother
pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner
and were sentenced to probation.

A second judge found that there was no conclusive evidence that either
man had shot at the police. In an interview with The Times last month,
a lawyer for an LAPD officer relieved of duty in connection with the
corruption probe described the New Year's Eve shooting as "hunting"
after being briefed by his client.

Failure of Probe Being Questioned

Why LAPD's shooting investigators did not find problems with the
officers' version of events is part of the ongoing criminal corruption
probe, sources said. The physical evidence, or lack thereof, should
have raised serious questions about the veracity of the officers'
account, they said.

Perez, on numerous occasions during about 50 hours of interviews with
a task force of LAPD and district attorney's investigators, suggested
that shootings involving officers were not seriously investigated, and
that even if they were, the deck was stacked against the investigating
detectives.

As an example, he offered the case of Javier Francisco Ovando, an
unarmed 19-year-old Perez says he and his partner, Nino Durden, shot
and then framed for attacking them by planting a gun on him. Perez
said his sergeant, Edward Ortiz, had no interest in what really
happened, just in trying to make it come out clean. Perez said that he
didn't think Ortiz knew they had planted a weapon, but that the
sergeant actively participated in fabricating a story surrounding the
circumstances.

"So, you're setting up the shooting scene, what's favorable to you and
Officer Durden?" one investigator asked during Perez's
interrogation.

"Right," Perez responded.

"That's what this is about?" the investigator asked.

"That's what the meetings are usually about," Perez responded. "When
we meet, we discuss how do we make this look as good as possible. . .
. You know how everybody thinks that the officers are split up and you
go sit in one room and you go sit in another room? I've never seen it
happen."

The standard practice after a shooting, Perez said, is to "celebrate."
The night Saldana was killed, Perez, Stepp, Hewitt and other officers
partied "till 6 or 7 a.m." at the Shortstop bar on Sunset Boulevard, a
popular police hangout near Dodger Stadium.

"We were there late," Perez recalled. "You know, [the bartender]
closes the bar, but he lets us stay in there."

As usual, Perez said, the officers talked about what had just
happened, but in a private code.

"You talk in sort of riddles, you know, you kind of just make
innuendoes about what happened," Perez told task force
investigators.

For example, at one point, he said, another officer made a comment
about the fact that the Rampart CRASH officers had just been in a shooting.

"And Stepp is describing and Hewitt is describing the shooting . . . I
know for a fact they placed the gun there. We would look at each
other," Perez said. "Without saying too many words, you're telling
each other--or you acknowledge, you know what really happened."