LAPD TASK FORCE PROBES '95 NEW YEAR'S EVE SHOOTING

Detectives on the Los Angeles Police Department's corruption task force are
investigating a 1995 New Year's Eve shooting in which officers wounded two
men, one of whom had been shooting bullets into the air at midnight to
celebrate.

The officers from the Rampart Division's anti-gang CRASH unit said they
returned fire after they came under attack from two armed revelers who were
firing shots from a second-floor balcony outside an apartment building west
of downtown.

But one officer who has been relieved of duty in connection with the ongoing
corruption scandal told The Times through his lawyer that the officers were
"hunting" that night, and were not provoked.

Several sources close to the investigation confirm that the police shooting
is regarded as "questionable" and is under intense scrutiny by the task
force. One source said authorities are looking not only at the officers'
actions in the shooting, but also the involvement of those who conducted the
follow-up investigation of the incident and found nothing amiss.

Whether the department has the ability to effectively police its own has
been a central question in the wake of the Rampart scandal. If detectives
discover that those who investigated the shooting ignored evidence or
otherwise acted improperly in an effort to support the officers' version of
events, it would move the scandal beyond the Rampart Division and squarely
into Parker Center.

Despite the officers' claims that they were fired upon, the revelers--who
had no criminal records, according to court files--never were charged with
attempted murder or even assault. In fact, according to court files, there
is no physical evidence that the officers were attacked.

Of the three officers who fired that night, one has since been fired for
beating a suspect and another has been relieved of duty in connection with
the scandal. Two others who were on the scene are also under investigation.

Shooting Is One of Seven Under Scrutiny

The shooting is one of at least seven under investigation by the Rampart
corruption task force. Already, ex-officer-turned informant Rafael Perez,
the man at the center of the scandal, has implicated himself and a former
partner in the shooting of an unarmed man. Perez has also characterized a
second police shooting in which a man was killed as "dirty." To date, 20
officers have been either relieved of duty, suspended, quit or were fired in
connection with the scandal. More than 30 criminal convictions have been
overturned as a result of police misconduct.

In the case at hand, officers Brian Hewitt, Daniel Lujan and John Collard
were working a special detail aimed at suppressing the gunfire that
customarily rings in the New Year in some neighborhoods, according to LAPD
documents. About midnight, the officers were in the 1300 block of West 8th
Street when they heard numerous shots fired. Nearby, they found a large
gathering of people at a party in a yard outside a house on the corner of
Linwood Avenue and Witmer Street. As they looked on, the officers heard
additional gunfire coming from the area of the party.

The officers got out of their car and walked toward the party, butwalked on
the opposite side of the street, using parked cars for cover. They were
headed for a van parked directly across the street from the gathering. From
there they planned to watch for any sign of additional gunfire.

Just as the officers approached the van, they heard shots fired from
multiple weapons directly behind them, LAPD documents state. Believing they
had just come under attack from the rear, the officers turned to the south
and saw what appeared to be two men firing weapons from a second-story
balcony.

Hewitt and Collard drew their 9-millimeter pistols and moved toward a car
parked in the driveway of the two-story apartment at 1312 Linwood Ave.
Lujan, armed with a shotgun, raced toward the safety of a large concrete
pillar at the apartment building next door.

"The officers were only able to detect the silhouettes of two individuals on
the landing behind the muzzle flashes. Lujan saw that one of the suspects
was holding his arms out and pointed what Lujan believed was a large caliber
rifle in the officers' direction," according to police documents.

Hewitt, who had taken cover behind the parked car, shouted "Police!" in an
attempt to identify himself, but the suspects continued to fire.

Collard also shouted "Police!" as the shooting continued. Collard, fearing
for his life--according to police documents--fired two shots at one of the
suspects. Seeing that his shots had no apparent effect, he took cover beside
Hewitt.

As they crouched behind the parked car, Hewitt and Collard noticed that
Lujan had fallen in the front yard of the building next door and thought he
had been shot.

Hewitt fired three rounds at the suspects on the balcony. He again shouted
"Police!" but the men continued to shoot. Hewitt fired three more shots.
Simultaneously, Collard fired "a controlled sequence" of 11 rounds at the
suspects, according to police.

Lujan, who had not been shot, but had tripped over a concrete embankment
surrounding the lawn of the apartment building next door, twice fired his
shotgun at the suspects as he ran for cover. When the officers ceased fire,
the suspects continued to fire for several seconds before fleeing through a
side door into the second-story apartment, according to police.

By the time the shooting stopped, four other CRASH officers had arrived at
the scene. They huddled and came up with a plan to arrest the suspects.
Without calling for backup, four officers ascended the staircase to the
balcony outside the apartment into which the shooters had retreated, a
tactic later criticized by then-Chief Willie L. Williams in a review of the
shooting, which was found in policy.

Though still armed, the suspects who minutes earlier had allegedly been
firing on the officers with abandon, offered no resistance. The officers
detained Sebastian Delgado, 51, Demetrio Delgado, 18, Ismael Roman, 27, and
two women who were in the apartment. The officers recovered two rifles, two
handguns, ammunition and more than 70 shell casings.

Sebastian Delgado, who had been shot in the arm, and Demetrio Delgado, who
was shot in the leg, were taken to the hospital, then later arrested and
booked for assault with a firearm on a police officer. Vicente Roman, though
not mentioned in the LAPD report as having been one of those detained, was
booked for discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner.

Officers' Version Called Into Question

In court, charges were promptly dismissed against Sebastian Delgado when
Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell found in a preliminary hearing that there was
no evidence that he had held a weapon that night, much less fired one at
police. Ismael Roman testified at the hearing that his brothers Demetrio
Delgado and Vicente Roman had been firing guns that night, but never pointed
them in the direction of the officers. Rather, Roman said, they were
shooting them into the air to celebrate the coming of the New Year.

Two months later, in March 1996, Demetrio Delgado and Vicente Roman pleaded
no contest to discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner. They were
sentenced to probation.

"Based on the evidence presented at the preliminary hearing, it can't be
clearly ascertained that any shots were being fired, indeed, at the police,"
said Judge Robert O'Neill.

There are several other factors that tend to call into question the
officers' version of events. Despite what police claim was a barrage of
gunfire aimed at them from some 50 feet away, there is no mention in police
documents or court files about any bullets being recovered from the car or
the concrete column that the officers were using for cover. In fact, there
is no mention of any bullets being recovered.

There is also some question as to why, if the officers believed they were
truly under attack, they would have risked attempting to arrest armed
suspects who were barricaded inside the apartment without calling for
backup.

One of the seven officers at the scene, who spoke to The Times on the
condition of anonymity, scoffed at the notion that the shooting was somehow
unjustified. He said there was no question he and his partners were under
fire, that they could actually feel "air compression" as bullets whizzed
past.

"It was a clean shooting," the officer said.

Previous Times coverage of the Rampart police scandal is available on The
Times' Web site:http://www.latimes.com/rampart.