Rampart Scandal Figure Accused in Civil Suit of Planting Drugs

In a development that may expand the scope of the Rampart police scandal, a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed Tuesday, alleging that former Los Angeles Police Department officer-turned-informant Rafael A. Perez in 1992 planted drugs on a man who subsequently was convicted and imprisoned for possession of cocaine for sale.

Perez, who is cooperating with authorities to obtain a lesser sentence on his own drug charges, is at the center of the department’s expanding corruption probe.

The suit was filed by attorney Stephen Yagman on behalf of DeNovel Hunter, 46, a Vietnam veteran with a prior drug record who was sentenced to five years imprisonment in August 1992 after pleading guilty to one felony charge of possessing cocaine for sale. He spent four years in prison and another year on probation.

The lawsuit seeks $100 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages against a bevy of defendants. The suit also asks for an unusual legal remedy called a writ of coram nobis--in effect, a court declaration that Hunter was wrongly convicted and that his record should be expunged.

In addition to the new allegations against Perez, the suit makes sweeping charges that the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit was operated as a racketeering enterprise and that the illegal activities were condoned by top officials in the LAPD. The suit names 14 Rampart officers as defendants, along with Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, former Chief Darryl F. Gates, all the current police commissioners and a bevy of former commissioners, as well as current and past City Council members. Yagman is asking for broad injunctive relief against the LAPD as well--including abolition of the Rampart CRASH unit--on the grounds that it is violating the rights of a large group of individuals.

LAPD spokesman Cmdr. David J. Kalish said he had not seen the complaint so he could not comment on the latest charges other than to say that he was “sure it will be thoroughly evaluated” by the district attorney’s office.

The suit contends that Hunter’s conviction was based on evidence planted near him by Perez, on Perez’s subsequent written report of the arrest and on his testimony at a preliminary hearing. The suit says Perez arrested Hunter at a market in central Los Angeles, where Hunter said he was doing nothing illegal.

The suit also contends that Hunter “recognized Perez as a man who frequented a large, two-story house . . . known as the ‘Big House,’ ” where Perez “regularly came to purchase and use drugs . . . and came with a street prostitute . . . in order to have sex with her.”

In an interview at Yagman’s Venice law office, Hunter said that he frequently sold rock cocaine to Perez at the house in late 1991. He said Perez came to the house several times a month and described him as a “big customer.”

Hunter said that one day in May 1992 he was walking toward a market on Wilton Place when Perez pulled up in a car and asked him if he had “two doubs,” meaning two $20 rocks of crack cocaine. Hunter said he told Perez that he was no longer in the drug business. Then, Hunter said, Perez suddenly reached down in front of him and stood up and showed him two bindles wrapped in foil. Simultaneously, Hunter said he heard someone say on a police radio, “Good work, Ray” and a swarm of officers surrounded him.

Hunter said he only learned that Perez was a police officer when he saw him enter the Wilshire station after he had been booked. He alleged that his pleas to the watch commander that Perez was a drug user and ought to be tested were ignored.

Hunter said that initially his public defender, Maureen T. Austin, told him that the district attorney’s office had offered him a 27-year sentence in return for a guilty plea. Hunter said that he turned down that deal and subsequent offers of 18, nine and seven years.

Ultimately, Hunter said that he accepted a five-year term because “I figured no jury would believe me saying they planted drugs on me since I had two priors,” referring to drug convictions in 1979 and 1989.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said that office records confirmed that Hunter was arrested by Perez. However, she said that this case was “not on the radar screen” of the special unit working on the Rampart scandal.

Perez’s attorney, Winston Kevin McKesson, was not immediately available for comment. He has previously stated that his client was not involved in any illegal activity prior to joining the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit in 1994.

Yagman said that last week he approached Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Rosenthal, who is part of the district attorney’s Rampart task force, and was told by Rosenthal that prosecutors are not looking into any allegations about Perez’s actions prior to 1995 because the former officer’s immunity deal required him to testify only about events starting in that year.

Gibbons said she could not comment on any conversations between Yagman and Rosenthal. However, she said Perez had been given what is known as “use immunity,” meaning simply that “nothing he says can be used to bring a case against him.” She said that the immunity deal contains no time frame, meaning that if authorities independently develop information about illegal activity by Perez before or after 1995, he could be prosecuted for it.

Another source in the district attorney’s office said that after Yagman’s initial conversation with Rosenthal he declined to provide further information, including the name of his client.