2nd Inmate to Be Freed in Rampart Probe

A second prison inmate authorities now believe was framed by corrupt officers of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division is expected to be freed from custody this week, while another will be released from parole and yet another will be ordered resentenced, according to sources close to the ongoing corruption probe.

The three are among as many as 40 convicted individuals whose trials authorities believe may have been tainted by Rampart officers’ misconduct. Two other men, who currently are fugitives, will have pending criminal charges against them dismissed, sources added.

Former LAPD Officer Rafael A. Perez--the central figure in the unfolding scandal--has been providing investigators with details of officer misconduct in a number of drug and weapons cases. He has implicated himself and his former partner, Nino Durden, in misconduct connected to the cases set for action this week. Perez alleges that he and Durden planted evidence on innocent people and then gave perjured testimony against them, sources said.

Detectives have traveled to prisons throughout the state interviewing inmates in an attempt to corroborate the disgraced officer’s admissions and allegations.

Durden’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

Perez, who is cooperating with authorities to cut time off his cocaine theft convictions, has implicated himself and Durden in the shooting of an unarmed man, who was seriously wounded and then framed for assaulting the police. Javier Francisco Ovando, the victim in that case, was released from prison in late September after serving three years of a 23-year sentence. He has since sued the city.

It is unknown how many inmates will be released from prison by the time the spreading corruption investigation is concluded, authorities say.

In another shooting that Perez has characterized as improper, prosecutors have acknowledged that there is new evidence that could help exonerate a man who was shot by officers and then convicted of assaulting them. Authorities have not yet disclosed the new evidence, arguing that its release might damage the ongoing criminal investigation.

Several defense attorneys, and even some sources close to the investigation, complain that officials are proceeding with unwarranted caution when it appears that potentially innocent people are being allowed to sit in prison.

The man who is expected to be released from prison this week has more than two years left on his sentence for a drug conviction, sources said.

So far, the investigation--which still is being largely fueled by Perez’s information--has resulted in more than a dozen LAPD officers being relieved of duty. Police officials expect more officers to be caught up in the scandal. Some of them, sources say, will be disciplined, others fired or even prosecuted for crimes.

Sources close to the investigation describe the probe as a painstaking process in which detectives meet Perez at a secret location to question him. The investigators bring boxes of case files, which Perez scrutinizes.

Even before Perez began cooperating with authorities in September, informants, drug users and drug dealers from the Rampart area complained that Perez and other officers in the division’s anti-gang CRASH unit would both steal their drugs and plant drugs on them to make an arrest.

Durden has been relieved of duty pending a disciplinary hearing on charges that he, among other things, planted rock cocaine on a suspect, then falsely arrested the person. Sources said Durden will probably be charged with criminal offenses.

In the Ovando case, Perez accused Durden of planting a gun on the young, unarmed man after shooting him. Perez added that Durden had seized the gun during a gang sweep and kept it, filing off the serial numbers.

Framing suspects was encouraged by a sergeant in the CRASH unit at the Rampart Station, police officials have said.

In a briefing to officers last month, Lt. Dan Hoffman said the sergeant told officers under him that if they shot an unarmed suspect to plant a weapon to make the shooting appear justified.

The sergeant was “quarterbacking the whole thing,” said Hoffman, who was unaware that a Times reporter was present when he spoke.

In fact, items seized from Perez’s house after his arrest on cocaine theft charges last year, and cataloged in a search warrant obtained by The Times, may lend credence to the charges of evidence-planting.

In a box marked “CRASH” (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums), “Secret” and “Confidential” were a half-dozen knives and seven replicas of handguns, which sources speculate may have been stockpiled for planting at crime scenes. Among them was an air gun designed to look like an Uzi assault weapon.

Also seized during the search was a torn piece of paper, which read: “Look for the lowest person to help you with a crooked deal.”