Officer Absolved of Most Charges in Massive Raid

A Los Angeles police officer was absolved Friday of four departmental charges stemming from a massive drug raid last summer that left apartments in two buildings west of the Coliseum virtually uninhabitable.

Officer Carl A. Sims Jr., however, was given a two-day suspension after he was found guilty by an Police Department tribunal of making false and misleading statements in an affidavit that was used to obtain a search warrant for the operation.

Sims, a seven-year LAPD veteran who now works as a detective trainee, was among 88 officers who took part in the August, 1988, raid on Dalton Avenue near 39th Street.

In June, 38 of the officers were cited by the LAPD for misconduct and, of those, nine were ordered to appear before department tribunals made up of three command-level officers.

In addition to the departmental citations, criminal charges are pending against four officers, including a former division commander who before the raid allegedly told the officers to render the apartments “uninhabitable.”

Sims’ was the first of the nine tribunals to be held.

Acquitted on 4 Charges

After hearing three weeks of testimony, the tribunal acquitted Sims of making a false arrest, filing a false arrest report, improperly disposing of evidence and failing to note in court records the existence of evidence.

But the tribunal, in a unanimous decision, found that Sims had submitted an affidavit falsely stating that there had been three formal complaints of narcotics and other criminal activity outside the targeted apartment buildings.

He also misrepresented the expertise of an undercover officer involved in surveillance of the apartments and the affidavit falsely asserted that one of the undercover officers had purchased rock cocaine at the location on “numerous” occasions.

Capt. William Gartland, the tribunal chairman, told Sims before giving him the two days off without pay that the inaccuracies in the affidavit were of “a minor nature,” but that Sims had to be “reminded of the need for your work to be factual and verifiable.”

Gartland, in explaining the penalty, cited testimony of Municipal Judge Glenette Blackwell, who said she would have signed the warrant even if the inaccuracies had been removed.

Sgt. Monrow Mabon, an LAPD officer who acted as prosecutor during the proceeding, characterized the search warrant affidavit as riddled with “outright lies.”

In closing arguments, Mabon had contended that Sims also lied in the affidavit about his own qualifications as a narcotics expert, the assignment he was working on and the number of previous arrests he had made in the area of 39th Street and Dalton Avenue.

The tribunal did not rule on those assertions by Mabon.

One local civil rights activist said the relatively light penalty sends a message to police officers that they will not be held accountable for improper actions.

‘Trivializes the Offense’

“Such a ruling trivializes the offense and the process,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

After the hearing, Sims said he thought he had been treated fairly and that “justice has been served.”

The raid from which the charges against Sims stemmed occurred the evening of Aug. 1, 1988, and was considered a major part of the Police Department’s anti-gang effort.

According to the search warrant, the officers conducting the raid were looking for rock cocaine.

Residents later said that the 88 officers seemed only intent upon destroying the four apartments and taking into custody as many people as they could find. Some of the residents contended that the officers were looking for someone who allegedly had called the Southwest Division a few days earlier and threatened to kill a police officer.