Nation’s Borders Don’t Stop Special LAPD Unit

When Larry Bennett, a veteran LAPD detective, arrived at the scene of a brutal rape late last year, the images were enough to sicken even a hardened cop.

“It was just a violent, bloody scene,” Bennett recalled.

According to police reports, a 19-year-old woman had entered a shop on Venice Boulevard near downtown to buy candy when a man inside grabbed her, stabbed her repeatedly and raped her.

The woman survived to tell her story, but after Bennett and his partner followed the trail of the suspect for nearly two months, it ended--at Los Angeles International Airport.

For police detectives working in Los Angeles’ heavily immigrant communities, crime suspects fleeing the country are a frustrating reality.

Using little-known laws, however, a unique cadre of Los Angeles Police Department investigators is helping bring down international borders in the fight against crime. The Foreign Prosecution Unit is the country’s only known local police group to have such a specialty.

Part investigators, part diplomats, members of the 12-year-old unit work closely with local and foreign authorities to help prosecute cases in foreign courts that would otherwise languish as outstanding arrest warrants.

Most Latin American countries, the destination of choice for many area crime suspects, do not have extradition treaties with the United States. In the case of Mexico, although the two countries have a treaty, officials there are not required to turn over their own citizens.

Still, countries including Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, have provisions in their laws that allow for domestic prosecution of their citizens for crimes committed abroad, as long as they are considered crimes in those countries too.

There are no statistics on how many crime suspects flee the country, but Det. Arturo Zorilla, head of the unit and one of its founders, said the unit handles an average of 25 domestic prosecution cases a year, mostly homicides. Los Angeles had just under 600 slayings last year.

The Foreign Prosecution Unit also assists detectives in other areas, such as translations and contacting victims and witnesses abroad.

Zorilla and his team of five bilingual investigators navigate through a complex sea of bureaucratic protocols and foreign laws to prepare documents that prosecutors in other countries use to file arrest warrants and to try the cases in their courts.

Unlike in the United States, defendants in Mexico and other Latin American countries can be tried without live testimony if witness accounts are well documented and fulfill certain requirements, said Det. Federico Sicard, who has been with the unit for two years.

The intricacy of the legal procedures is mind-boggling at times.

El Salvador, for example, requires all proceedings to go through an extradition process, although the country has no extradition treaty with the United States. The country’s supreme court automatically denies the request, but it is a necessary bureaucratic step before domestic prosecution can proceed.

“It’s hard work,” Zorilla said. “But domestic prosecution is the best tool available at this point.”

The LAPD formed the Foreign Prosecution Unit after a 1984 study found that nearly half of the department’s outstanding arrest warrants involved Mexican nationals who were presumed to have fled the country. The unit started in 1985 with just two detectives.

When a wanted foreign national escapes Los Angeles police, the unit works with law enforcement agencies and Interpol offices abroad to find the suspect.

When the person’s location is confirmed, the unit prepares the paperwork to have him or her arrested and tried. Depending on the complexity of the case, the paperwork can take from two to eight months. Actual arrests and resolution of the cases, however, can take years.

“The problem we have is working with these foreign governments,” said homicide Det. John Curiel.

Curiel, who has used the unit’s help in two cases yet to clear, praised its work but blamed foreign authorities for being too slow to act.

Since 1988, when the unit began keeping statistics, it has cleared about 37% of its cases. In comparison, the LAPD cleared 65% of its homicide cases in 1996, the most recent figures available.

“In these other governments, there is less accountability,” Curiel said.

Zorilla disagreed.

“Officers have to understand that in many of these countries police have to work with limited resources,” he said. “They don’t have computers and often lack basics like transportation.”

Zorilla said he often has to pay for food and gas out of his own pocket when traveling abroad to investigate cases.

“This is not a panacea to clear all cases, but it is another tool,” he said.

For example, cooperation with Mexican authorities, where the majority of the cases reside, has been extremely successful, Zorilla said.

In 1992, Mexico established the Office of International Affairs to focus on law enforcement requests from other countries, mainly the United States. And the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles has its own legal attache representing the Mexican general attorney’s office.

Crime does not know borders, said Jorge Garcia-Villalobos, the Mexican attache. He handles all domestic prosecution and extradition requests from Western states.

“If a fugitive from the U.S. arrives in a community in Mexico, the community starts having criminal problems. That is why cooperation is very important,” Garcia-Villalobos said.

Zorilla first got the idea for a Foreign Prosecution Unit in 1980 when he was working as a homicide detective in the LAPD’s South Bureau.

He knew that many suspects were fleeing the country to Mexico, but there was not much the police could do.

“We would file a warrant and it would end there,” he said. “We felt rather helpless.”

Domestic prosecution laws in Mexico had existed since 1930, but few LAPD detectives knew about the tool.

A small San Diego office of the state Department of Justice has been handling domestic prosecution requests from California law enforcement agencies since 1979, said special agent Enrique Mercado.

Mercado and another special agent handle about 20 to 30 cases a year, including some from other states upon special request, he said.

Mercado said an increasing number of agencies are using the domestic prosecution statutes as a tool to pursue criminals, but the LAPD is the only police department to form its own foreign prosecution unit.

In the case of Freddy Centeno, the alleged rapist, the unit has informed Det. Bennett that he is in Nicaragua, and Sicard is preparing the documentation for his arrest.

“We will catch him,” Bennett assured the victim during a recent visit.