LAPD CORRUPT TO CORE, SAYS OFFICER WHO STOLE DRUGS

The FBI is investigating the biggest corruption scandal in the Los Angeles
police since the 30s. It is alleged that officers have been involved in
fatal shootings, paralysing and framing a man, stealing and dealing in
cocaine, and carrying out extensive cover-ups to protect each other.

On Thursday a judge released Javier Francisco Ovando, 22, from prison when
it was revealed that he had been handcuffed and shot in the head by police
officers who then framed him. He was serving a 23-year sentence for
supposedly threatening the same officers, who planted a gun on him.

The judge at Mr Ovando's trial chided him for not showing any remorse, and
the officers laughed as he was jailed.

A dozen officers have been suspended or sacked as revelations emerge
suggesting systematic corruption and planting of evidence.

The investigation comes at a bad time for the LAPD, which is trying to
repair its image after a number of fatal shootings involving officers from
the police department's special investigations section (SIS).

The scale of the corruption came to light after a disgraced former officer,
Rafael Perez, decided to inform on his old colleagues in exchange for a
lighter sentence on a cocaine theft charge he is facing. His allegations
against fellow officers at the LAPD's Rampart division are likely to lead
to dozens of appeals by gang members jailed on the word of the officers.

The deputy district attorney, Richard Rosenthal, went to court to seek Mr
Ovando's immediate release because he was so shocked by what Mr Perez had
revealed. Judge Larry Fidler, the judge who freed Mr Ovando, said it
appeared he had been the victim of an attempted murder.

Mr Ovando, who had no previous convictions but was suspected of being a
member of a gang called 18th Street, was flown from prison to a secret
location. He has a daughter, Destiny, who was born after he was jailed,
uses a wheelchair, and will never walk again. He is likely to be a key
witness in the FBI inquiry.

In another 1996 case, described by Mr Perez as "dirty", a gang member was
shot dead when the police raided an apartment building on a tipoff that
gang members were gathering for a revenge attack on a rival gang.

The officers fired a number of shots. One man died and two were wounded. In
the light of claims by Mr Perez, the FBI is examining whether the gang
members were armed at all and whether the weapons found on them at the time
had been planted by officers.

Mr Perez has been offered a deal whereby he will serve only five years in
jail for stealing 3.6kg (8lb) of cocaine, about a quarter of the expected
sentence.

Some of his former colleagues claim that he has invented the allegations to
give himself a bargaining counter. But the LAPD and FBI are taking the
claims seriously.

The LAPD chief, Bernard Parks, said: "Every time there is an incident like
this, confidence suffers." He admitted that the allegations were deeply
damaging to police morale. Yesterday officers hung a large banner from the
station roof saying: "The community loves the men and women of Rampart
station." This week too the former madam Jody 'Babydol' Gibson alleged that
she was protected from prosecution by a detective with whom she was having
an affair, and a much-decorated former LAPD officer, David Mack, was jailed
for 14 years for a $722,000 (pounds 450,000) bank robbery.

In the 30s, in the wake of prohibition, the LAPD vice squad was riddled
with corruption, its officers working in cahoots with equally corrupt local
politicians. Since then periodic attempts have been made to clean up the
department and portray is as closer to the old television series Dragnet
than the James Ellroy novel, LA Confidential.