convictions are being exposed in the latest scandal engulfing this
city's p.o.lice force that it's getting hard to keep up with all of the
corruption.
The tally of abuse and deceit increases almost every week.
The p.o.lice chief now says that rogue officers in a neighborhood
overrun with gangs (the p.o.lice being one) framed at least 99
people during the past three years by planting drugs or guns on them,
and also may have reveled in shooting a few unarmed suspects.
The district attorney is investigating whether hundreds of criminal
cases, all linked to the growing list of p.o.lice officers under suspicion,
may be tainted or fake.
At last count, 32 criminal convictions have been overturned. And so
far 20 officer have been fired, suspended, or have quit.
It is one of the most corrosive police corruption cases ever in
Los Angeles, it rivals similarly sordid tales that have plagued other big-city
p.o.lice forces lately, and by all accounts the probe of it has only just
scratched the surface.
"An evil cancer has been found inside the LAPD," said Steven Yagman,
an attorney representing several dozen people allegedly assaulted or framed
by officers. "I've never seen anything like this all at once. We've got
boxes filled with these stories. This is a bad, bad thing, and the city knows
it.
The scandal, which have to light last fall, has grown so large that
P.o.lice Chief Bernard Parks has told city council members that settling
lawsuits could cost $125 million. That sum is twice what Los Angeles budgets
each year for liability.
Reeling from that disclosure, some city officials have begin discussing
whether to put a bond measure on the ballot and ask voters whose faith in the
p.o.lice department has been shaken badly -- again -- to help pay the huge
cost of cleaning up the force. Nine more criminal cases linked to a new set
of officers being investigated have been thrown out, and a fifth innocent
person who had been sent to prison on phony drug dealing charges was set free.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti is promising another
wave of overturned convictions soon. "The investigation has clearly expanded," said Victoria Pipkin, a spokeswoman for his office. "We're still in the early stages, but we believe that when the smoke from this settles, it will entail many more than 99" people framed.
In many ways the scandal is the same old story for the LAPD, which
has often been its own worst enemy in the last decade, from the beating of
Rodney King caught on video tape to its disastrous handling of the city's riots
land detective Mark Fuhrman's perjury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
One former officer, Rafael Perez, is the focus of the latest probe.
He has told investigators that he and a partner shot an unarmed 19-year-
old man, planted a gun on him, then testified that he threatened them an
assault weapon during a stakeout on gang turf.
The man, Javier Francisco Ovando, was sentenced to 23 years in
prison. He was freed one week after the scandal broke. He may be confined
to a wheelchair for life because of the shooting.
In another incident, Perez said that he and other officers shot an
unarmed 21-year-old gang member they ;had been chasing through an
apartment building, then delayed calling an ambulance while they
planted a gun on the scene to make the shooting look justified. The man,
Juan Saldana, later died.
And this is just the beginning of the sensational stories Perez has
had to tell. He is helping investigators in exchange for leniency on charges
of stealing cocaine from a p.o.lice evidence locker.
According to Perez's account, much of which p.o.lice say they are
corroborating, planting drugs, lying under oath in court, using brute
force and conducting illegal searches have been common in one of the
department's elite anti-gang units known as CRASH, Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, one of the city's primary weapons in the battle against gang violence.
P.o.lice say Perez has told them that in their zeal to bust suspected
gang members, he and other officers sometimes carried stashes of drugs when
they patrolled, to make a frame-up quick and easy.
In investigative transcripts obtained by the Los Angeles Times this
week, he also says CRASH members sometimes gave each other a plaque after
shooting a suspected gang member, such as Ovando.
In the ranks, the scandal has been devastating. Sgt. Armando Perez,
who has been assigned to the Rampart Division for six years, said officers
feel betrayed by their colleagues, frustrated by the pace of the investigation
and worried that they could be made scapegoats by a department under pressure.
On the streets and in court, Perez said, officers also sense their
credibility is in shambles, or gone.
"All the hard work we do is in question now," said Perez, who is one
of about 400 officers at Rampart. "At trials, the first thing that defense
attorneys are asking officers when they take the stand is, 'are you assigned
to Rampart?'"
To date, a core question has gone unanswered: What went wrong? Some
officials who have studied the LAPD say it has instilled a by-any-means-
necessary mentality in officers fighting gangs. Other city leaders wonder
whether a rush to beef up the force -- the department added about 2,000
officers in the past six years -- has hurt training. Similar moves in other
cities, including Washington D.C., have led to serious p.o.licing problems.
But the scandal here is not focused on patrol officers.
"We're talking about highly specialized units this time," said
Merrick Bobb, an analyst of p.o.licing practices who has investigated the LAPD. "You would think that the department would be able to carefully select officers for that kind of assignment."
What the department needs most, some say, is stronger civilian oversight.
But other community leaders contend that little will change until more officers
break codes of silence, report misconduct and face no recriminations.
real relevant rant and rave reading
