Ex-Officer Denies Charges He Choked 2 Women

A former Los Angeles police officer who has already been convicted of assaulting his wife pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of choking two other women.

Jeffrey Jerome Carter, who resigned from the LAPD a month ago after nearly 14 years on the force, is charged with two counts of false imprisonment and four counts of assault with a deadly weapon.

Carter is expected to go on trial in Van Nuys Superior Court in late January. He is being held in County Jail without bail.

According to court records, one woman claimed that Carter drove her against her will from the Palm Springs area to his parents’ Pacoima home on Feb. 1, and that he stopped on the way and choked her by closing her windpipe with his fingers.

The alleged victim, Ann Larsson, “said that she was unable to breathe or speak and at one point she thought she was going to die,” said LAPD Sgt. James Alan Miller, who testified at a preliminary hearing last month.

The second woman, Tracy Smith of North Hollywood, charged that she was assaulted on three occasions last summer.

Miller testified earlier that Smith “believed that she was being stalked by the defendant and she was scared.”

During both the preliminary hearing and an interview, defense attorney Bernard G. Winsberg questioned the credibility of the alleged victims.

“I think some of these problems . . . and some of the things they complain about are self-instituted,” Winsberg said Wednesday. “These ladies are aggressive about what they want and who they want it from.”

Both women told police that they started dating Carter in April, 1992, more than six months before Carter separated from his wife, and continued to see him after he was arrested for putting a gun to his wife’s head.

Carter was convicted by a San Fernando Superior Court jury in October in connection with 1992 incidents involving his wife.