WOMAN'S SUIT SAYS RAMPART OFFICERS BEAT, ROBBED HER

A 35-year-old woman alleges in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that a former LAPD
officer--now the central figure in the department's current corruption
scandal--and his ex-partner beat and robbed her and then threatened to kill
her if she went to the authorities.

Cynthia Diaz contends in her federal civil rights lawsuit that she was in
her hotel room on April 1, 1997, when Officer Rafael Perez and partner Nino
Durden, both on duty and in uniform, rousted her and her drug-dealing
boyfriend under the guise that they were going to arrest the couple.

Instead, she said, the officers terrorized her and pressured her to become
an informant for them.

The suit, filed by Venice attorney Stephen Yagman, is the first by a woman
claiming to be a victim of Perez and Durden. Perez, a former anti-gang
officer from the Rampart station, has since pleaded guilty to stealing eight
pounds of cocaine. In a deal that is expected to shave time off his prison
sentence, he is now providing information to detectives which is the basis
of the department's corruption probe.

Diaz said Perez and Durden never arrested her, and she never complained to
the LAPD about them. In fact, Diaz said she only decided to file a lawsuit
after she was contacted about three weeks ago by a detective on the
departmental task force investigating LAPD corruption.

In an interview, Diaz said Det. Jesse Castillo recently contacted her
boyfriend, who is now in prison on unrelated charges, about the incident.
After that, Diaz said, the detective came to see her. She said she was shown
about 30 photos of officers and was able to pick Perez and Durden from them.

An LAPD spokesman declined to comment, as did Durden's lawyer. Attorney
Winston Kevin McKesson, who represents Perez, said his client has never
forcibly robbed anybody. He declined further comment.

Diaz said Wednesday that she had just left her room at the Lafayette Hotel
on Beverly Boulevard to go pay the rent when an officer she later learned
was Durden pointed a gun at her and told her to freeze. She said Durden took
a $50 bill, the rent money, from her hand and put it in his shirt pocket. He
then handcuffed her.

Seconds later, Perez walked up, Diaz said. Both officers wanted to know her
room number, she said, and she reluctantly told them it was 315. The
officers then led her upstairs to the room, she said.

"You're going to do something for me," Diaz quoted Perez as saying. "When I
knock, and he says who is it, you're going to answer and say it's you."

Diaz said her boyfriend was in the bathroom and wasn't quick enough getting
to the door. He didn't have time to answer before Perez allegedly knocked it
down.

Inside the apartment, both officers screamed, "Where is it? Where is it?"
apparently referring to drugs, Diaz said.

She said she and her boyfriend said they had no drugs. When she complained
to Durden about the way the officers were behaving, she said, "He slapped me
upside the head and pushed me up against a wall." She said he later shoved
her down some stairs.

When it became clear that Diaz and her boyfriend were not going to admit to
having drugs, the officers took them to an unmarked car and drove them to a
police station.

There, Diaz said, Perez continued to pressure them.

"I need you to give me something before I can give you something," she
quoted the officer as saying.

Eventually, she said, her boyfriend told the officers where they would find
money in the room. She said the officers left, leaving the couple locked in
an interview room.

About a half-hour later, she said, they came back empty-handed. At that
point, the boyfriend convinced Perez and Durden that he would show them
where the money was. They all drove to the hotel, she said, and there her
boyfriend was unshackled. He reached into a heater and fished out a stack of
bills amounting to $2,700, fastened by a rubber band.

She said the officers took the money and left, after warning them not to say
a word about what had happened.

"They told us they would get us," Diaz said.