Key Witness in 2 Officers’ Slayings Balks : Courts: Compton has paid man $11,000 for lodging and relocation. But after his mother’s slaying, he says he will not testify unless he receives more money to move his relatives to safety.

By most accounts, Calvin Cooksey was treated like royalty.

The key witness in the murders of two Compton police officers, he was put up in a nice hotel where $8,500 worth of lodging and meals were paid for by the city of Compton. The city also gave him $2,500 in “relocation” cash and promised a share of reward money. The district attorney’s office dropped a weapons possession charge.

It was not enough.

Arguing that his testimony in the high-profile case put him and his family in danger, Cooksey has demanded more money to relocate his relatives. He blames authorities for his mother’s death, claiming that she was killed as an act of revenge for his testimony. And he says he will not testify in the upcoming murder trial of suspect Regis Thomas unless he receives more money.

Cooksey’s threat has put the police killing case--one of the most notorious in Compton’s history--in jeopardy. It has also exposed the risky process that some law enforcement agencies use to solidify their cases: buying the cooperation of witnesses.

There is a fine line, experts say, between legitimately helping a witness in danger and paying for a version of the truth.

“It’s not a wise course to go around promising money to people. It tends to color their testimony. It’s a potential bribe,” said Gigi Gordon, a Santa Monica defense attorney appointed by the Superior Court as an expert on a series of jailhouse informant scandals in 1989.

Most witnesses who receive help get it through the district attorney’s witness protection program. Unlike occasional federal efforts--in which some who testify get a new identity, plastic surgery and jobs in faraway cities--the county program usually offers first and last months’ rent for a new apartment in a safer location. In the last fiscal year, the county gave relocation funds to witnesses in 93 cases, and to victims in 49 cases.

Problems are more likely to occur when individual cities such as Compton agree to augment the county program with extra funds, or when a witness agrees to testify because he or she expects cash in exchange for helping the prosecution. The district attorney’s office says it never agrees to such a quid pro quo, reasoning that if the implication of cash-for-testimony arises, defense attorneys can exploit it in court.

“These things do happen, unfortunately,” said Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor, who dealt directly with Cooksey on several occasions. “One of the most difficult things to handle, especially in high-profile cases, is witness coordination. . . . This whole thing is very disappointing.”

The biggest potential disappointment now facing prosecutors is that Cooksey--the witness who links the murder weapon to accused killer Thomas--could be discredited in front of a jury.

“An argument could be made that he (Cooksey) is a bought witness,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Arnold, who is prosecuting Thomas. However Arnold, who was kept aware of Compton’s payments to Cooksey, refused to criticize the city’s conduct. He said he believes Cooksey will remain credible because “he broke this case long before he was given anything.”

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Cooksey, a 33-year-old ex-convict, became vitally important to the Compton Police Department in March, 1993, when he told police he knew who killed Officers Kevin Michael Burrell and James Wayne MacDonald.

The officers, gunned down execution-style while making a traffic stop a month earlier, were killed by Thomas, Cooksey said--and Cooksey knew where police could find the murder weapon.

Cooksey told police he had met up with Thomas a couple of weeks after the officers were shot, while the story was still hot in the media. Thomas was nervously trying to get rid of a gun he had used to kill two cops, Cooksey said.

At one point, Cooksey said in an interview, he asked Thomas if the suspect was talking about the two Compton officers.

“Yeah, I killed them. They slipped, man,” Cooksey claims Thomas said, referring to a procedural mistake the officers might have made in stopping Thomas’ truck that night.

Cooksey offered to get rid of the gun for Thomas, saying he knew a safe place to keep it.

“Then I immediately went out and sold it to make a couple of hundred bucks out of the deal,” he said. “Because, really, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe he capped (killed) those guys.”

Within weeks, Cooksey was arrested on an unrelated weapons possession charge. For 24 hours, he sat in jail. When no one came to bail him out, he said, he decided to try to trade his story for freedom.

Cooksey and authorities sharply disagree on most of what came after.

The way Cooksey recounts it, once he told law enforcement officers that he knew something about a police killer, they promised he would be protected, probably get a cash reward and relocation money for his mother, three sisters, a list of cousins and five children he has fathered with five women.

The way police and prosecutors tell it, Cooksey voluntarily told them his entire story, and they felt obligated to protect him--but made no commitments to his family.

After Cooksey talked to police, investigators found the gun they say was used to kill Burrell and MacDonald in the hands of the man Cooksey said he had sold it to. Ballistic tests confirmed that the gun was the murder weapon. Thomas was arrested on first-degree murder charges that could lead to the death penalty.

In October, 1993, after Cooksey testified at Thomas’ preliminary hearing, prosecutors dropped the weapons possession charge--a deal both sides agree on.

In the months that followed, Compton paid Cooksey’s living expenses--an unusual move for a city, according to witness protection experts. The city budget lists no category for such a program.

Despite the largess, Cooksey’s relationship with the city soured--particularly in July, when he received a death threat to his extended family.

The threat was ignored by police, Cooksey said, and weeks later his mother was murdered.

Viola Pirtle Woods, 51, was killed by a gunshot to the chest on East 114th Street. Police believe that a street gang--to which Thomas belonged--in the nearby Nickerson Gardens housing project was involved in the killing. However, investigators believe her death was an accident rather than an act of vengeance.

Thomas’ trial is scheduled to begin in February. Police say they still expect Cooksey to keep his promise to testify. But Cooksey insists he is through cooperating, at least until police pay him additional family relocation funds--and maybe not even then.

“I ain’t interested in (civic) duty,” said Cooksey, who is living out of state and says he has a construction job. “I want my money like I made a deal for.”

Even if he does not testify at the trial, Cooksey could be eligible for a share of the $45,000 city reward that was offered for information leading to the killer’s conviction.

Cooksey says he bartered with Sheriff’s Deputy Larry Brandenburg and Compton police for protection for his entire extended family.

Brandenburg, who is assigned to a special gang unit, was not available for comment, but prosecutor Arnold denied the assertion, saying it was far beyond the limits of the county’s witness protection program.

“They’re not going to make him (Cooksey) promises like that,” Arnold said. “They wouldn’t do that. They can’t.”

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Authorities say they are astonished by Cooksey’s anger because they went beyond the call of duty to keep him cooperative.

For six months after Cooksey testified in Thomas’ preliminary hearing in October, 1993, Compton housed him at the Ramada Hotel, which the city had acquired after a developer defaulted on a city loan. The city also paid for three meals a day and Cooksey’s phone calls. The final hotel bill was $8,500, according to Cooksey’s receipts.

City officials admit that Cooksey was housed at the Ramada, but will not say how much it cost. Another witness in the police murder case, whom police will not identify, also stayed at the Ramada, according to several hotel and police sources.

Cooksey’s stay at the hotel ended in April after he assaulted a security guard who found him kicking a hotel cigarette machine, police said. Whether Cooksey was kicked out or left on his own remains in dispute.

So does the nature of the $2,500 that the city paid him.

According to Chief Taylor, the money, paid to Cooksey about three months after he testified at Thomas’ preliminary hearing, was a “relocation” check from the city, to be reimbursed from the county’s witness protection funds. County officials declined to comment on whether reimbursement was made.

Cooksey was supposed to use the money to move to a new apartment, according to Taylor. But Cooksey said it was “walking-around money” from the city. He said he blew it all in Las Vegas.

The fact that Cooksey spent the check on a gambling spree will likely do the most damage to his credibility with a jury, legal experts said. It could show that Cooksey believed--rightly or wrongly--that he was receiving cash for helping prosecutors rather than to protect him from harm.

“It’s always inappropriate to pay a witness for testimony,” said former Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay, a criminal defense lawyer in San Pedro. “It’s only appropriate to (pay to) shield a witness from imminent danger. It’s a bright line, but a hard one to identify at times.

“The jury may be more suspect of a witness who’s been paid by police when the police have a significant interest in the case,” Livesay added.

Cooksey has filed a $125-million claim against Compton in the wake of his mother’s death.

On July 24, Cooksey said, he was at a girlfriend’s house in Azusa when someone rang the doorbell. Nobody was there when he looked out, but he found a note on the doorstep made of pasted-together letters from magazines and newspapers, he said.

“Die alone,” the note read. “You can’t relax here. . . . Try putting yourself in the position of losing your sisters and mother over the police.”

The Azusa Police Department opened a file on the case, and officers in the Compton and Los Angeles police departments acknowledge that they were informed of the death threat.

About 1 a.m. on Aug. 6, Viola Woods was pushing her shopping cart on East 114th when police broke up a “gang party” nearby. Police said Woods sometimes stayed with a friend in Nickerson Gardens, but was mostly homeless.

“There were gangsters on every corner when that party was broken up. She got caught in the cross-fire,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Otis Marlow, who is investigating the case. “But they weren’t aiming at her. They would’ve had to shoot through 10 people to get to where she was, mid-block.”

Prosecutor Arnold says he is not worried about Cooksey’s threat not to testify at Thomas’ murder trial.

“Oh, he’ll testify,” Arnold said. “He’s going to court and he’ll get on that stand and he will testify.

“I just don’t know what he will say.”