Not So Bad, After All
But watch out for those cab drivers.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
May 21, 2001 8:55 a.m.

he New Yorker weighed in on the LAPD last week, with 12,700 words in the May 25 issue exploring the Rampart scandal and other low lights from my department's recent, troubled past. Readers in New York might be inured to tales of police corruption, as it seems every few years or so we're treated to footage of the better part of an entire precinct doing the perp-walk up the steps to the Manhattan Federal Courthouse. But we here in Los Angeles, especially those of us of a certain age, raised on the pure-business, law-and-order images of Dragnet and Adam 12, have come to expect our cops to be above all that. As Peter J. Boyer makes clear in his New Yorker article, we've got some waking up to do.

Situated just west of downtown, LAPD's Rampart Division is one of the smallest but most densely populated of the city's eighteen patrol divisions. The population is predominately poor and Hispanic, and it is no exaggeration to say that the 18th Street gang is one of the primary cultural forces in the area. It was the task of Rampart's CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit to combat the increasing violence and corrosive influences of 18th Street's enterprises, which included murder, robbery, drug dealing, and extortion. Former officer Rafael Perez was assigned to the CRASH unit, and he was most effective in what was often referred to as a "war on gangs." Like all wars, this one was not without its atrocities.

On October 12, 1996, Perez and his partner at the time, Nino Durden, were in an abandoned apartment where they hid and watched drug sales taking place on the street below. They were surprised when Javier Ovando, an 18th Street gangster known as "Sniper," entered the apartment. When other officers arrived at the scene they found Ovando lying bleeding and handcuffed, a loaded gun on the floor beside him. Perez and Durden told investigators that Ovando had tried to shoot them, but they had shot him first. The tale was believed by everyone, including the jury that convicted Ovando and the judge who sentenced him to 23 years in prison for attempting to assassinate the officers.

But in 1999 it was Perez who found himself in the defendant's chair. Several pounds of cocaine had come up missing from the LAPD's evidence room, and the investigation revealed it was Perez who had taken it. His first trial ended with a hung jury, with jurors voting 8-4 for conviction. Considered a flight risk, Perez remained in custody as prosecutors prepared for a second trial. LAPD internal-affairs investigators used this time to look into more of Perez's evidence transactions, and they discovered he had sometimes checked out cocaine for use in court proceedings only to return the packages filled with Bisquick in place of the drugs. Faced with the near certainty of conviction at his second trial, Perez did what crooks often do when cornered: He made a deal and ratted out his pals.

To the horror of the investigators who interviewed him, Perez spun a tale of an entire CRASH unit gone amok. Ovando had been unarmed when he and Durden shot him, Perez said. The gun found at Ovando's side was a "throw-down," seized earlier and planted after the shooting. (Still paralyzed from the shooting, Ovando was released from prison, but he has since been arrested in Nevada, charged with transportation of drugs.) Perez said he and his partners stole money and drugs from dealers then sold the drugs themselves; they beat suspects without provocation; they planted evidence on gang members; they fabricated police reports; they perjured themselves in court. In short, Perez claimed that he and his CRASH cohorts were a law unto themselves, and anyone who crossed them did so at their peril.

Perez's allegations understandably brought an unprecedented response from the LAPD management, and some of the department's best and brightest detectives were drawn from their regular duties to investigate them. What they have concluded, after looking under every rock and peering into every nook and cranny, is that criminal activity was largely confined to Perez and his small circle of close friends. Nino Durden has now pleaded guilty for his role in shooting Ovando. David Mack, another former cop and friend of Perez, is serving a 14-year sentence for a bank robbery, the loot from which — over $700,000 — has never been recovered. Perez denied any involvement, though he and Mack went on a spending spree in Las Vegas the weekend after the robbery. Mack has refused to identify his accomplices.

Of the 70 officers implicated by Perez, five have been fired and eight have resigned from the department. Many others have been cleared after Perez was shown to be fabricating at least some of his information (he has failed several polygraph examinations). Still others are relieved from duty pending their hearings. In the only criminal trial yet to arise from Perez's allegations, three of the four accused officers were convicted of perjury and related charges stemming from the arrest of two gang members for attempting to run down officers with a pickup truck. Those convictions were overturned by the trial judge, who wrote in her opinion that the prosecution had not met its burden, and that she herself had not properly instructed the jury on the law. The D.A.'s office has appealed her decision, but it appears the ruling with withstand appellate scrutiny.

It is generally accepted inside the LAPD and the D.A.'s office that the Rampart scandal, though shocking and inexcusable, was not all it was cracked up to be when the story first broke. In any organization with 9,000 members, bad apples are all but inevitable. Rafael Perez, in the grand criminal tradition, attempted to point the finger of blame at everyone but himself, and gullible prosecutors granted him a deal that will see him released from jail next month. The U.S. Attorney's office is considering filing federal charges against him, but his plea agreement may preclude any such action.

What the rest of us in the LAPD are left with are a host of new rules and regulations designed to prevent a recurrence of Rampart's troubles, yet have only hindered honest cops in their efforts to get the job done. The net effect has been an almost paranoid overreaction to any perceived breach of the rules. Investigations have been launched into matters as trivial as police cruisers parked in red zones while officers took their meal breaks. (Memo to LAPD management: The next Rafael Perez may be operating freely while his sergeant is busy trying to figure out who parked in the red zone in front of the Sizzler.)

A better picture of what cops are made of was provided by ABC's PrimeTime last week. Equipped with hidden cameras, ABC employees approached cops in Los Angeles and New York and turned over what they said were found wallets and purses, all of them containing cash and credit cards. Twenty cops in each city accepted the items, and not a single penny, not a single credit card went missing. (Three LAPD cops refused to accept the items, an impulse I cannot endorse yet can understand.)

By comparison, 20 New York cab drivers were given wallets and purses containing cash and credit cards. Fourteen of them were returned with the contents intact, though six of those were returned only after PrimeTime contacted the New York Taxi Commission. Four wallets disappeared completely, others were returned with the cash missing. All told, ABC got stung for $242 in cash and two tanks of gas charged to one of the credit cards.

So, gentle readers, take comfort in the knowledge that the average cop out there is just an honest guy or gal trying to make a living by seeing justice done. And check your valuables as you leave the cab.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)