More Allegations Raised About Ex-LAPD Officer

Former Los Angeles Police Officer Rafael A. Perez’s crimes and misconduct at the LAPD date back at least five years and include the theft of about 4 pounds of cocaine for which he was never charged, according to sources.

On Thursday, meanwhile, a federal magistrate-judge reopened the case of a man who has always insisted that Perez and other officers framed him on drug charges in 1992.

If the man’s allegations are proved, it would mean Perez’s misconduct, and perhaps that of other officers, began much earlier than first thought and outside the Rampart Division, where the ongoing scandal is currently centered.

A grand jury will soon begin looking into a wide spectrum of alleged misconduct by officers at the LAPD’s Rampart station that is said to include unjustified shootings, false arrests and planting of evidence. A dozen officers have been suspended.

In addition to being convicted of stealing about 8 pounds of cocaine logged as evidence by fellow officers, sources say, Perez has admitted to stealing cocaine he booked as evidence in his own cases, replacing the real drugs with bogus substances. He then sold the drugs on the street through his drug dealer girlfriend, who now is serving a state prison sentence, sources say.

The alleged thefts and subsequent sales may have gone on for years, sources say, predating the thefts that occurred in the three months of 1998 to which Perez has pleaded guilty.

Investigators are uncertain how far back Perez may have made the switches, because evidence in many of his older cases has been destroyed. However, investigators have tested evidence available from his old cases and found that, in fact, the seized cocaine was replaced with other substances, sources say.

Perez, as part of a plea agreement, is cooperating with LAPD investigators.

He has taken responsibility for various crimes and misconduct, including his role in shooting an unarmed man and framing him for assaulting police in 1996.

But some lawyers and convicts contend that Perez’s crimes began several years earlier. Esaw Booker charges that Perez falsely accused him of being involved in a $20 crack cocaine transaction seven years ago, while Perez worked undercover with the department’s narcotics unit.

Winston Kevin McKesson, who represents Perez, said his client denies engaging in crimes or misconduct before he began working at the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit in 1994.

Booker has said for years that he was innocent, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

“No one would listen to me at that time,” said Booker, 54, after federal Magistrate-Judge Brian Q. Robbins ordered the reopening of an evidentiary hearing so Booker’s attorney can have the opportunity to examine Perez in the wake of the ex-officer’s startling admissions.

“I shouldn’t even be on parole now,” said Booker, who spent five years in prison based on the testimony of Perez and two other officers.

“I’m happy to get an opportunity to get this all behind me,” said Booker, who uses a walker and whose speech is slurred because of a recent stroke. “Five years I spent in prison for something I didn’t do.”

Booker’s is among the first of what prosecutors and defense attorneys predict will be hundreds of criminal cases that will be reviewed as a result of the allegations that have undermined the credibility of Perez and other LAPD officers.

Booker says Perez falsely testified that Booker handed another man a rock of cocaine that the second man sold to Perez during an undercover drug operation in West Los Angeles. Booker and the other man were arrested.

Since his arrest April 14, 1992, Booker has maintained that he did not have any drugs and that Perez and two other officers lied on the stand in order to convict him, said his former attorney, Jonathan Ash.

“Even before I got the case file he started writing me these voluminous well-written letters from prison, proclaiming his innocence,” said Ash, who filed an appeal on Booker’s behalf in 1994 and lost.

Ash said he believed Booker from the start.

“As a defense attorney, you can get a bit jaded. But this case just didn’t make any sense. It seemed like [Booker] really had something,” the attorney said.

Among other alleged discrepancies, Booker said he was arrested by Perez and two African American officers, but the officers who joined Perez in testifying against him appeared white. After his conviction, Booker contends, a private investigator obtained the LAPD logbooks from the officers involved, showing that at least one of the officers who supposedly arrested him was assigned elsewhere that day.

LAPD officials and prosecutors have argued that officers’ schedules and duty assignments can change at a moment’s notice, meaning that such logbook entries are not necessarily reliable.

David R. Reed, Booker’s current attorney, argued in court papers that the evidence “reflects that a police conspiracy occurred in this case.”

Booker, who has a lengthy arrest record, has fought tirelessly to clear his name in this particular case. He even worked as his own lawyer for a time: His court file is full of neatly printed legal documents, written in blue ink. One document, written in pencil on loose-leaf paper, revealed the particular difficulties prisoners can encounter in waging a legal battle from behind bars.

“Dear Clerk:” Booker wrote, “Due to being in lock up . . . for reasons beyond my control, I am without access to a Xerox copy machine and therefore unable to afford the court the required amount of copies of this motion. I request that the motions be accepted under the mentioned circumstances.”

It was signed, “Respectfully, Esaw Booker.”

Ash said Booker had numerous arrests before the 1992 case and had not hesitated to plead guilty when he felt the charges against him were legitimate.

“Booker’s statement to me all along was, ‘Look, I’ve done a lot of things, but this one I wasn’t guilty of,’ ” said Ash, who now practices law in Oregon.

Ash described Booker as “articulate and intelligent” and said the two became friends as they worked together on the inmate’s appeal.

“Esaw is finally gonna get some justice,” Ash said. “I’m sure he’s gonna walk--he’d better.”

Attorney McKesson said Perez “has stated that every single mistake he made on the police force began after he started working CRASH.

“My client has every incentive to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the lawyer added.

McKesson was noncommittal, however, as to whether he would advise Perez to go back on the stand in the Booker case.

It has yet to be decided, he said. If Perez declines to testify by invoking his constitutional protection against self-incrimination, it is virtually certain that Booker’s conviction will be voided.