Put Cocaine in Car : Ex-L.A. Officer Gets Probation for Framing Man

A former Los Angeles police officer was sentenced to 3 years on probation Wednesday for planting cocaine in the car of a man he had stopped for drag-racing.

Timothy J. Cabezas, 28, of Reseda resigned from the Police Department when he pleaded no contest last month to a felony charge of false imprisonment in the May 13 incident.

The man who prosecutors said was framed by Cabezas was convicted of cocaine possession in a separate case 4 months after the incident and was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Cabezas, a police officer for more than 6 years, was assigned to the Van Nuys Division. On May 13, he and his partner were on foot patrol in an area of Van Nuys known for drug sales, according to court documents.

2 Men Arrested

The officers arrested two men on suspicion of cocaine possession. While driving them to the police station, the officers stopped two cars that were drag-racing at Roscoe and Sepulveda boulevards, Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert R. Lapin said.

Cabezas took the cocaine that had been found near the drug suspects and planted it in the car of one of the drag-racers, Kevin Boyd, 22, of Pacoima, Lapin said. Cabezas allowed the two drug suspects to go free and told his partner, Orlando Nieves, a police trainee, to pretend that the drug had been found in Boyd’s car, Lapin said.

Nieves refused Cabezas’ order to put the false version of events in a police report, so Cabezas wrote the report himself, Lapin said. No action was taken against Nieves, who reported the incident immediately to his supervisor.

Cabezas, in a letter to a county probation officer, said Boyd had become “irate and abusive” after being stopped for drag-racing. “Unfortunately, I became upset,” Cabezas wrote. “I know I made a terrible mistake. . . . I just didn’t think clearly about what I was doing.”

Judge David A. Horowitz levied the sentence of probation and 300 hours of community service after reading a probation report that Lapin termed “a little bit lenient.”

The report said of Cabezas: “Losing his job and the embarrassment have been punishment enough.”

Cabezas had pleaded no contest, which California criminal courts treat the same as a guilty plea, under an agreement that prosecutors would seek a sentence of no more than a year in jail.

Lapin said Wednesday that he is disappointed with the lack of jail time, which he said would have “sent a message” to other officers who might consider such an act. But he said he does not believe Cabezas received any special treatment.

“The only thing he didn’t get was jail,” Lapin said.

Boyd was arrested Aug. 11 in the San Fernando Valley on cocaine and gun charges, to which he pleaded guilty Sept. 22, court records show. Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Darlene E. Schempp sentenced him to 16 months in prison.