POLICE IN SECRET GROUP BROKE LAW ROUTINELY, TRANSCRIPTS SAY

Rampart: About 30 Officers, Including Supervisors, Celebrated Their
Shootings And Frame-ups Of Innocent People, According To Informant's
Statements.

Disgraced former officer turned informant Rafael Perez has told
investigators that an organized criminal subculture thrived within the
Los Angeles Police Department, where a secret fraternity of anti-gang
officers and supervisors committed crimes and celebrated shootings by
awarding plaques to officers who wounded or killed people.

The more than 30 current and former Rampart Division CRASH officers
who were "in the loop," including at least three sergeants, conspired
to put innocent people in jail and to cover up unjustified shootings
and beatings, according to transcripts of Perez's interviews with LAPD
detectives and Los Angeles County deputy district attorneys, copies of
which have been obtained by The Times.

The nearly 2,000 pages of transcripts, covering months of interviews
with Perez, coupled with hundreds of other official investigative
documents obtained by The Times, portray a police scandal far more
serious than officials have previously disclosed.

More than 70 LAPD officers are under investigation for either
committing crimes or knowing about them and helping to cover them up,
according to one document produced by members of a special task force
probing the scandal. Perez has told police and prosecutors about a
string of potentially unjustified police shootings, including one in
which he witnessed an officer place a gun on a dying suspect and
listened to a supervisor delay an ambulance so that the officers could
concoct a story to justify their shooting of the unarmed 21-year-old
man. In another, Perez describes his fellow CRASH officers as sneaking
up and opening fire on two New Year's Eve revelers who were shooting
guns into the air but posed no direct threat to the police.

Perez said some officers specialized in certain kinds of misconduct.
One officer liked "to thump people," he told investigators; another
planted guns on suspects, while another--known as the
"Candyman"--liked to put rock cocaine on his unsuspecting victims.
Sometimes, Perez alleged, officers orchestrated the deportation of
illegal immigrants who witnessed police abuses and could have
testified on the victims' behalf.

"I'm going to make a very broad statement. And you're not going to
like it," Perez told authorities two days after agreeing to a plea
bargain on drug theft charges. "I would say that 90% of the officers
who work CRASH, and not just Rampart CRASH, falsify a lot of
information. They put cases on people . . . it hurts me to say it, but
there's a lot of crooked stuff going on in the LAPD."

But although investigators believe they have corroborated many of
Perez's admissions and allegations, and though dozens of criminal
convictions have been overturned based largely on his word, the
ex-officer-turned-informant has failed a polygraph test, The Times has
learned.

"I answered every question truthfully. I know I didn't lie," an
agitated Perez told investigators on Jan. 26, the same day that LAPD
Chief Bernard C. Parks told reporters that investigators had no reason
to doubt Perez.

"You can blame me for everything else, all of the things that have
happened in CRASH. . . . The crimes that I've committed. Those are my
fault, and I'm paying every day," Perez told investigators. "But those
polygraphs are not my fault."

The former Marine and macho street cop added that he was suffering
from a bleeding ulcer, stemming from the stress of informing on
corrupt officers, who once were his comrades and accomplices.

"I'm dying from the inside out," Perez said.

Credibility Is An Issue

Perez's failure to pass the lie detector test could jeopardize his
plea bargain, in which he is expected to receive a reduced prison
sentence for stealing 8 pounds of cocaine from the LAPD in exchange
for his cooperation with the corruption investigation. The poor
results also could undermine Perez's credibility as a potential
witness against other officers.

Many experts, however, say that polygraph tests are an unreliable
gauge of a person's truthfulness. And they are not admissible as
evidence in court. Nonetheless, officers who have been implicated in
the scandal are certain to seize upon the development as evidence that
Perez has exaggerated, even made up, stories of police misconduct.

Sources close to the investigation, though troubled by the results,
still believe that Perez is telling the truth. One source close to the
investigation said Perez, who is anxious and stressed because he fears
retaliation, is a poor test subject. A defense expert has suggested
that the test was improperly administered, the source said.

In some cases, Perez's statements registered as untruthful even though
investigators independently determined that they were accurate.

Moreover, a second officer who has been relieved of duty in connection
with the scandal corroborated key elements of Perez's allegations of
beatings, evidence planting, false arrests and unjustified shootings
in an interview with The Times last month.

LAPD officials are so convinced that illegal activity plagued the
Rampart Division, west of downtown, that they believe criminal charges
should have been filed weeks ago against two current and one former
officer.

That belief has been fueled by the personal story revealed over the
weeks of interrogation that Perez has undergone by police detectives
and deputy district attorneys assigned to explore the Rampart morass.

During about 50 hours of interviews with investigators, Perez paints a
vivid picture of his personal journey from gung-ho rookie to corrupt
cop. He talks about the first time he stole money from a suspect, and
his first foray into drug dealing. In that 1997 case, Perez said, he
and his partner, Nino Durden, found a plastic bag containing a pound
of powder cocaine on a suspect and seized it.

"We keep that. We didn't book it," Perez told Deputy Dist. Atty.
Richard Rosenthal, one of the task force prosecutors.

Back at the station, the suspect's pager--which the officers had
confiscated--went off. Perez said he called the number, pretending to
be an associate of the dealer--a common police ploy in which officers
set up the deal and then arrest the would-be buyer.

In this case, the caller wanted a quarter of a pound of cocaine. Perez
said that he made the arrangements and that he and Durden hopped in
their undercover black Thunderbird to go make the arrest.

But, according to Perez, "when we first got there, Durden said, 'Screw
it. Let's just sell to him.' And I completely agreed."

The partners kept the dealer's pager and executed two more deals,
netting about $10,000, Perez said, adding that they hid the drugs in a
green Igloo cooler in the cot room at the Rampart station.

What ensued, Perez said, was an orgy of corruption in which the
partners seemingly broke the law as frequently as they enforced it.
They didn't even trust one another, according to the testimony. When
they were shaking down suspects, Perez was suspicious that Durden was
keeping more than half the money. "In other words, he was skimming off
the top of what we were supposed to skim," Perez told
investigators.

Perez said Durden initially did not know that he was stealing kilos of
cocaine from department evidence facilities, but that his partner was
envious when he found out.

"I want in on it," Perez quoted Durden as saying. "Hook me
up."

Lawlessness Is Described

But Perez didn't talk about just himself and his former partner. He
described a CRASH unit run amok in which officers shot a suspect
repeatedly with a bean bag shotgun for sport and laughed at the
resulting injuries. On another occasion, he said, someone slashed the
tire of a fellow officer's car. The officer and his partner found a
gang member they believed was responsible, stripped him naked and
dropped him in rival gang territory.

Perez told investigators that Durden once "outed" a confidential
informant in front of his fellow gang members, almost certainly
earning the man a beating, if not worse. In one mass frame-up, he
alleged, CRASH officers rousted a party and ordered several dozen gang
members to their knees. He said Officer Brian Hewitt, who has since
been fired from the LAPD for a station house beating for which he may
be criminally charged, marched back and forth, randomly pointing at
gang members and instructing fellow officers which false charges each
would face. After finding a gun on the ground, he told an officer to
handcuff Rafael Zambrano, to whom Hewitt allegedly said: "Lil' Man,
you're through. . . . I'm gonna violate your probation." Hewitt then
allegedly turned to another gang member called "Laughing Boy" and
said, "You're lucky that I didn't see you before I saw Lil' Man,
otherwise I'd be taking you to jail.' "

These practices were accepted--and protected--by those LAPD officers
and supervisors "in the loop," Perez has told investigators.
Protecting those secrets, Perez said, meant having a willingness to
"take it to the box."

Det. Michael Hohan, a corruption task force investigator, asked Perez
in the Sept. 17, 1999, interview, "What's the meaning of 'take it to
the box?' "

The officer responded: "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 D.A.
and in front of an Internal Affairs [Division] supervisor and say this
guy did this and this guy did that.

"And you know why he wouldn't do it? 'Cause he's been right there with
us. He's done it all before. He's right there--you see what I'm
saying?" Perez asked, seemingly oblivious to the irony of his current
situation.

At Rampart CRASH, where the motto was "we intimidate those who
intimidate others," Perez said an officer learns very quickly that he
is expected to fall in with the rest of his colleagues. In fact, even
to join the unit, a person has to be personally "sponsored," or voted
in, by the other officers.

"We have a round table and we discuss this person," Perez said. "We
talk to people who he's worked with and find out the type of person he
is."

Once he is in the unit, all eyes are on the newcomer as the rest of
the group determines whether he is trustworthy enough to be "in the
loop," Perez said. Female officers, he told investigators, generally
could not be trusted. He referred to one partner as a "weaker link"
because she was female.

Perez added that CRASH cops who were regarded by colleagues as "solid"
or "stand-up" guys were not the ones who were by-the-book officers.
Rather, he said, they were officers who would be willing to perjure
themselves, plant evidence and fabricate probable cause for searches
to put gang members and other presumed criminals in jail.

Several Rampart sergeants condoned, even participated, in the framing
of innocent people, Perez told investigators.

"Before I arrived at Rampart CRASH, I never put a gun on a person.
Never," Perez told investigators. "When you get to Rampart CRASH, this
is something that you're taught. This is how it goes."

That sort of lawless policing produced big results for Rampart CRASH.
Officers brought suspects in by the carloads, Perez said.

In one interview with Perez, LAPD Sgt. Luis Segura seemed incredulous
that officers would be able to haul in so many arrestees on trumped-up
drug charges without supervisors scrutinizing their reports.

"I mean, it seems to me that red flags should be going off," Segura
said to Perez.

"I know what you're saying," responded Perez, who lunched on pizzas
during interview sessions. "All that was cared about was numbers. All
they cared about was that at the end of the month was . . . how much
total narcotics was brought in, how much money and how many bodies.
That's all, really. That was the only concern."

Even officer-involved shootings seemed to receive relatively little
scrutiny by the station's upper management. Some supervisors, Perez
alleged, were in on cover-ups.

He said Rampart CRASH officers use a secret radio code that allows
them to broadcast information about officer-involved shootings and
other matters without alerting fellow patrol officers in the division
and command officers. The clandestine code, Perez said, is
particularly useful when an unjustified shooting needed to be covered
up.

"Here's how we were trained when I got to CRASH," Perez said. "If
there's an officer-involved shooting, no one, but absolutely no
one--not the lieutenant, not the captain-- . . . [is allowed to] come
into the scene. You create some kind of diversion, something. 'Sir, we
still got suspects running. Stay here for a second. We've got officers
searching.'

"And what's really going on is they're discussing what's going on.
Whoever's involved in the shooting, directly involved shooter-wise,
will talk to the supervisor and they will figure everything out. The
game plan."

Responded Rosenthal, the prosecutor: "And you're saying you learned
this when you joined CRASH?"

Perez said: "This I learned when I joined CRASH.

"If we need to add something to the story to make it look a little bit
better, that's what we do," Perez added. "If we need to correct
something--then and there before we have the officer-involved shooting
team, lieutenants and captains and everybody showing up--we fix it and
correct it right there. And we always say that once we come up with a
story, that's the story. That is it. You never change it. That's it no
matter what."

Details Of Cover-Ups

Perez said he helped cover up three unjustified shootings in 1996. The
first was a shooting early Jan. 1 in which officers fired at several
unsuspecting New Year's Eve revelers who were firing guns into the air
about midnight.

Perez said he helped collect the officers' expended shell casings so
there was no evidence of the shooting, but had to put them back when
officers discovered that they had wounded two men. A cover story was
quickly conceived, he said, in which officers would say the men were
pointing their weapons at police when, in fact, they weren't. In the
second alleged cover-up, Perez said he witnessed officers place a gun
next to a 21-year-old man whom they shot. As Juan Saldana bled to
death, officers intentionally delayed summoning an ambulance as they
huddled with a supervisor to concoct a scenario that justified the
shooting, Perez alleged. That supervisor was Sgt. Edward Ortiz, the
man one LAPD official has said was "quarterbacking" cover-ups in Rampart.

Perez was one of the triggermen in the third and most widely known
cover-up since the scandal broke. In that case, Perez alleged that he
and Durden shot an unarmed man and planted a gun on him. They then
perjured themselves to send Javier Francisco Ovando to prison for 23
years. As a result of Perez's disclosures, Ovando was freed from
prison in September.

Such shootings did not trouble Rampart CRASH officers, Perez told
investigators. In fact, he said they were celebrated. The officers
gathered and drank beer and talked about their misdeeds, he said, even
handing out awards.

"Uh, the plaque that you probably saw in my house . . . you know what
that plaque is even about? That CRASH plaque with . . . a red heart
and two bullets in it?" Perez asked the investigators. "Sgt. [George]
Hoopes gave me that plaque for the Ovando shooting. That's what that
is. We give plaques [of playing cards] out when you get involved in
shootings. Uh, if the guy dies, the card is a black number two. If he
stays alive, it's a red number two. "

"Is it more prestigious to get one that is black than red?" asked Det.
Mark Thompson.

"Yeah. I mean, you know, the black one signifies that a guy died,"
Perez said.

Anecdotal Evidence

Although Perez spoke in detail about the alleged crimes and misconduct
of his fellow Rampart officers, he offered mostly anecdotal evidence
of wrongdoing by officers outside the division.

Perez said he and other cops would trade war stories at the Short Stop
bar on Sunset Boulevard or at "the benches" at the police academy
across from Dodger Stadium.

"You know, 77th CRASH and Rampart CRASH get into a shooting. . . . We
talk about how things went down. How they really went down and how
they were fixed up," he said.

Perez told investigators that there were "so many incidents" that he
could not remember them all.

"What I'm saying is specialized [LAPD] units need to be looked at,
because there is--and believe me when I tell you, if there was 15
officers in CRASH, 13 of them were putting cases on people," Perez
said.

"When you say 'putting cases on people' do you mean manufacturing
probable cause, or do you mean actually, in essence, framing somebody
who did not do something, for a crime?" one task force member asked.

"Both," Perez said. "Both."

Perez said his suspicions about what went on in the 77th Division
CRASH unit were heightened upon the arrival of Durden, who transferred
from that unit to Rampart a few years ago.

"When he came up to Rampart CRASH, he was talking the talk from the
get-go. I mean, he was talking like he knows everything that goes on."