Word: perez
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...upshot has been the biggest police scandal in Los Angeles history. At the center is the Rampart division--a police station in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods--and its special antigang unit. In the six months since Perez started talking, lurid revelations about law enforcement Rampart-style have emerged almost daily: allegations that cops raped a woman while on duty; accusations that a cop interrogating a handcuffed man beat him until he vomited blood; a fast-growing list of prisoners who were allegedly railroaded with fabricated evidence and police lies...
That all changed when one of CRASH's own started talking. Perez says he was part of a tight-knit group of CRASH officers who played by twisted rules. This antigang fraternity acted a lot like a gang itself. When a new recruit joined the unit, CRASH members allegedly circled around and beat him--an initiation ritual that criminal gangs call "jumping in." In one case, a white CRASH officer leaving the scene of a police beating of a civilian--for which the city had to pay a $25,000 settlement--allegedly yelled out, "¡Puro Rampart! [Totally Rampart...
...Perez has recounted a stunning collection of illegal acts, many as bizarre as they are disturbing. He told of one officer whose car tires were slashed. The cop and his partner tracked down the gang member they believed was responsible and dropped him--naked--in a rival gang's turf. Perez tells of another CRASH officer who shot a suspect repeatedly with a beanbag shotgun--a nonlethal weapon used to knock suspects to the ground...
Some of the malfeasance was more lethal. Perez's most incendiary story concerns the 1996 shooting of admitted gang member Javier Francisco Ovando. Ovando was a skinny 19-year-old whom Perez and his partner shot and then, according to Perez, planted a rifle on to make it look as if Ovando had attacked the police. Ovando was paralyzed, and may never walk again. The judge at the trial lambasted Ovando--who had to be wheeled in on a gurney--for endangering the lives of two hero policemen, before sentencing him to 23 years in prison. In September, Ovando...
...Perez also claims to have helped cover up two other unjustified shootings. In one, he says, he watched police plant a gun next to Juan Saldana, 21, whom they had just shot. Perez says the cops delayed calling an ambulance for Saldana while they worked with a supervisor on getting their stories straight. Saldana ended up bleeding to death. In another case, Perez says, police shot at New Year's celebrators who were firing guns into the air at midnight. He says at first he helped pick up the officers' shell casings so they could deny having fired their weapons...