EX-LAPD COP GETS 2 YEARS IN CASE TIED TO RAMPART SCANDAL

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- The disgraced former officer at the center of
the police department's corruption scandal was sentenced Monday to 2 years
in federal prison for violating the civil rights of an unarmed man he and
another officer shot in 1996.

Rafael Perez, 34, declined to speak when U.S. District Judge Christina
Snyder accepted his plea agreement on one count of conspiracy and one count
of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Perez, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Department's anti-gang
unit, agreed to the plea deal in December. He admitted fabricating a story
about a shooting that left Javier Francisco Ovando paralyzed and confessed
that he testified falsely at the man's trial. The firearm with the
obliterated serial number was used to frame Ovando.

The shooting was one of the most serious crimes that surfaced in a probe of
the now-defunct Rampart anti-gang unit.

Perez cooperated with investigators in exchange for a lighter sentence for
stealing cocaine from a police evidence locker. He was freed from state
prison last summer after serving 3 years.

Perez's allegations of widespread wrongdoing in the unit led the district
attorney's office to throw out about 100 felony cases. Some state inmates,
including Ovando, were freed as a result.