SECRET LAPD TESTIMONY IMPLICATED NINE OFFICERS

An ex-Rampart unit member also suspected many others routinely committed
crimes.

In interviews with state and federal authorities, the onetime partner of
corrupt ex-Los Angeles Police Officer Rafael Perez accused nine fellow
officers of serious misconduct and said he suspected that many officers in
the Rampart Division's anti-gang unit routinely committed crimes, according
to confidential transcripts.

Former Officer Nino Durden, in sometimes tearful testimony, said sergeants
in two different shootings instructed officers to lie about the
circumstances of the incidents to make their actions appear more tactically
sound when reviewed by police superiors. The officers, he said, went along
with the fake stories to protect themselves and colleagues from possible
administrative charges.

One of those shootings involved Javier Francisco Ovando, an unarmed gang
member who was shot by Perez and Durden and subsequently framed for
attacking them. Ovando spent three years in prison before being released
because of Perez's disclosures.

Four of the officers implicated by Durden in misconduct remain at work with
the LAPD.

The details of Durden's account could provide grist for future
prosecutions, as federal authorities continue to comb the Rampart scandal
for evidence of crimes by Los Angeles police officers.

They come to light just one day after Police Chief William J. Bratton, who
was not in office when the events at Rampart unfolded, expressed
unhappiness with the LAPD's internal accounting of the scandal and urged
city leaders to consider asking an outside panel to conduct a review.

To date, the misconduct allegations collectively known as the Rampart
scandal have cost city taxpayers more than $40 million to settle claims by
victims of police abuse. More than 100 convictions of alleged gang members
and others arrested by the LAPD have been overturned. In addition to Perez
and Durden, seven officers have been prosecuted. Three pleaded guilty or no
contest; three others were convicted by a jury, but their convictions were
overturned by a judge and that case is on appeal. One officer was acquitted.

Although Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley announced last year
that his office has concluded its investigation of Rampart cases, work
continues at the U.S. attorney's office, which still could charge officers
with federal offenses.

"These matters are still definitely on the table," said one federal
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Though Durden eventually pleaded guilty to crimes he committed with Perez
and is serving a five-year prison sentence, the contents of his debriefings
with investigators have not been made public because of the ongoing federal
probe. The interviews were conducted in February and March 2001; those
present included state and federal prosecutors, as well as representatives
of the FBI and Durden's two lawyers.

For the most part, Durden's statements to investigators were less sweeping
and detailed than those made by Perez. A self-described loner who spent
less than a year in Rampart's anti-gang unit, Durden said that if other
officers engaged in crimes, they didn't do it in front of him or confide in
him.

"Do I believe that other things were occurring in the seven or eight months
that I was there? Yeah, I do," Durden said, according to the transcript, a
copy of which was obtained by The Times. "I didn't feel like what was
happening was just exclusive to Perez and myself."

The interrogation of Durden centered on crimes and misconduct he committed
with Perez. Like his former partner, Durden admitted that they routinely
planted evidence and framed gangsters and drug dealers. He also
acknowledged that they stole money and drugs from suspects. But whereas
Perez was an effusive witness, volunteering information on scores of
officers, Durden was far more reticent, and his accounts occasionally shifted.

For example, when he was asked how many guns he and Perez had planted on
suspects, Durden initially said that had occurred only about four or five
times. When pressed again, he said it might have been seven or eight
occasions. Finally, he conceded the number could be as high as 10.

After several days of questioning, one frustrated interrogator challenged
Durden's truthfulness when he was unable to explain why he would run serial
numbers of guns through police records before he and Perez planted them on
suspects.

"I'm gonna tell you straight out, I'm struggling right now believing you,"
the questioner said. "Hot guns are run. You run them. And you don't know
why they're run. Help me. Help me out. Explain to me how that can possibly
be.... You go into a woman's house. Your partner takes her gun. You call
back to the police station and have the gun run. And your partner walks out
the door with this woman's gun. And you think nothing of it? I find that
absolutely unbelievable."

"I never said that I thought nothing of it," Durden replied.

"Well, what did you think of it?" the interrogator asked.

"I don't know," Durden said. "I really don't know."

Finally, Durden said the records were checked to see if the guns were
stolen or had been used in a crime.

"This isn't a game of cat and mouse," the questioner responded. "It's your
job to answer the questions truthfully. Now let's start answering the
questions truthfully."

Durden told authorities he was a young, inexperienced officer when he
joined Rampart CRASH - Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums - in
1996 and was partnered with Perez. Fellow officers and supervisors told
Durden he was lucky to be paired up with a such a solid officer, one
responsible for many arrests. From the start, Durden said, he looked up to
Perez, whom he described as one of the unit's leaders. He remembered Perez
telling him that he was now "in the big leagues" when he first arrived.

He had never done anything illegal before he joined CRASH, Durden said. But
soon after Perez became his partner, Durden was committing crimes on an
almost weekly basis, he told prosecutors. He said their misconduct started
out with them falsifying probable cause to arrest people they knew were
guilty and continued until they were planting guns and narcotics on people
and stealing money from drug dealers.

"It was just gradual," he said. "Just kind of twisting the truth, bending
it, and, I mean, it just snowballed into something else. Just out of control."

Authorities asked Durden, who was a top cadet in his police academy class,
why he didn't report Perez when he started committing misconduct.

"I just was happy to be in the unit. And, I mean, it was something that, at
the time, I thought was really important to me in my career and I just
didn't say anything," he said.

At one point, Durden was asked if he knew what was meant by the term "code
of silence."

"Yes," Durden replied.

"Did you believe in that?"

"I'd have to say yes, to a certain extent," Durden said.

In many arrests, Durden said, he and Perez may not have seen suspects
discard drugs or guns but would "embellish" their observations in reports
to say they had.

"How many embellishment cases did you engage in when you were a police
officer?" one interrogator asked.

"Oh, boy. That one is tough. Um, I really don't know," Durden said.

As for stealing from suspects, Durden said he "kind of rationalized it in
my mind as it's not their money. They didn't earn it. I'm not taking
something from somebody that went to work and actually earned it."

The questioning of Durden stretched over eight days, and he was often
emotional as he described his misconduct; the transcripts reveal his
interrogators frequently pausing to allow him to calm himself.

"It's just hard," he said at one point, "to sit here and spill your guts
and talk about things that you're not proud of.... Looking back at that
period of my life, I mean, it was terrible."

Most of the questioning focused on events in which Durden participated and
in which he allegedly witnessed wrongdoing by others. In two instances,
however, he told authorities about alleged misconduct that he did not see
but that Perez allegedly told him about. In one case, he said, Officer
Humberto Tovar improperly fired his gun, not because he was in danger but
merely in order to make it appear that he was backing up his partner,
Perez. In the other, Durden said, Perez told him that he and Officer Sammy
Martin had beaten up a gang member.

Investigators spent far more time probing the circumstances of the Ovando
shooting.

In Perez's 1999 debriefing with investigators, he said Durden shot the
unarmed suspect as he walked into a vacant apartment the two officers were
using as an observation post to monitor gang activity on the streets below.
Following Durden's lead, and believing Ovando was armed, Perez said he too
opened fire on the suspect.

When the officers realized Ovando was not armed, Perez said, Durden ran
down to their police car and retrieved a gun from which he had removed the
serial number and laid it on the ground next to Ovando to cover up their
mistake.

Authorities later found evidence that Durden had run the serial number of
the weapon through an LAPD computer before it allegedly wound up in
Ovando's hands - a key piece of evidence in the case prosecutors were
building against Durden before he decided to plead guilty.

In Durden's debriefings with authorities in 2001, he said Perez had asked
him to run the gun through the computer without telling him why, and that
it was Perez who planted the weapon, which Perez had carried to the
apartment in a black bag that he often carried while on duty.

That discrepancy aside, Durden's account matched Perez's in several key
areas. Durden, for instance, corroborated Perez's contention that there was
a secret radio code in Rampart CRASH that would bring other anti-gang
officers to the scene of a shooting without alerting others monitoring the
airwaves that one had occurred and inviting unwanted attention. Durden said
he used the code after the shooting that night.

Like Perez, Durden said he and Perez were not separated after the shooting,
as LAPD policy requires. Instead, according to both officers, they were
driven back to the station together in the same car. After they arrived,
they were placed in a room together and left alone for hours before being
interviewed by investigators. They used the time to rehearse their story
and get it straight, Durden and Perez both told authorities.

Also intriguing to prosecutors was what Durden had to say about the
involvement of other officers that night.

Like Perez, Durden told authorities that although no one was aware that he
and Perez had planted a gun on Ovando, their supervisor, Sgt. Edward Ortiz,
concocted a story to make the circumstances surrounding the shooting appear
more palatable to department investigators. That false account was later
backed up in written reports by CRASH Officers Michael Montoya and Mario
Rios, he said.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Durden said, Ortiz realized
that he might be criticized for allowing the officers to work alone in an
observation post - so he told Perez and Durden to alter their account.

"OK, here's the deal," Durden quoted Ortiz as saying in the hallway of the
abandoned apartment building where Ovando lay bleeding on the floor. "When
you guys told me that you guys were gonna do the [stakeout], I assigned
Montoya and Rios as your chase unit. They were there the whole time. They
were with you guys."

"You got it?" Ortiz asked, according to Durden.

"I told him, 'Yeah,' " Durden said he replied.

Durden said he did not recall whether Montoya and Rios were present when
Ortiz came up with the story, but believed they must have compared notes to
make sure their logs matched for the night of the shooting and the night
before, when they were also supposed to have been working as partners.

At one point in the interview, when Assistant U.S. Atty. Mary Andrues
showed him a copy of a daily log Montoya and Rios had prepared regarding
the night of the Ovando incident and the night preceding it, Durden
apparently broke into tears.

"Mr. Durden, you appear to have an emotional reaction to this particular
[report], and the circumstances surrounding it. Why is that? Do you
consider this [report] to be part of the cover-up?"

"Yes," Durden replied.

Montoya and Rios, who were called before a federal grand jury to testify
about their roles in the case in 2001, denied through their attorneys any
wrongdoing in connection with the Ovando shooting. The officers were found
not guilty of misconduct at an LAPD administrative hearing last year, even
though members of the LAPD board that heard the case were aware of Durden's
allegations.

Attorney Ira Salzman, who represents Officer Montoya, dismissed Durden's
account as "total lies." Sgt. Ortiz could not be reached for comment.

In a later interview with federal authorities, Durden alleged that another
sergeant fabricated the circumstances of a different shooting to make it
appear as though the officers' tactics were sound during that incident too.

According to the official police account of that shooting, Perez, Durden,
two other officers and a sergeant went to a house in South-Central Los
Angeles on June 2, 1997, to arrest a suspect wanted in connection with an
assault. The officers tried to surround the house to prevent the suspect's
escape. Two officers, Brian Hewitt and Doyle Stepp, climbed on top of a
garage roof because there was a dog in the backyard, the police report says.

Suddenly, a man in the yard fired at Stepp. Stepp returned fire and the man
fled into the garage, where he was arrested.

Durden said the shooting was justified, but Sgt. Alfonso Guerrero was
concerned about the officers' tactical plan, so he told them to lie about
how they were deployed.

Durden said Guerrero told them to say that Hewitt was with Stepp on the
garage when in fact he was on the ground.

Guerrero was concerned that they could be criticized by LAPD superiors
because partners had split up and were not staying together, which is
considered a better tactic, Durden said.

Durden said the officers all agreed to lie.

None of the officers involved in that incident remain on the job. Hewitt
was fired for beating a gang member at the police station, Stepp and
Guerrero resigned amid the Rampart investigation, and Perez and Durden are
in prison.

Stepp, in an interview Wednesday, denied any wrongdoing. Guerrero and
Hewitt could not be reached for comment.

Gary Wigodsky, an alternate public defender who has recently seen Durden's
statements, said Durden's account of that shooting "speaks volumes in
corroborating Perez that lying was rampant."

"It just shows how routine it was," he said. "None of them seemed to bat an
eye about it when they were told to lie. It never crossed their minds to
say that was a lie and they shouldn't do it."