Fall of Partners Feeds LAPD Corruption Probe

Once, they were partners on the job. Now, some wonder if they were partners in crime.

One, a former world-class athlete, robbed a bank and is facing at least 10 years in prison when he is sentenced today. The other, an ex-Marine, stole eight pounds of cocaine from police custody and is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Both were Los Angeles police officers.

At the LAPD, David A. Mack and Rafael A. Perez are two names most of their former comrades would like to forget. But even as their court cases draw to a close, investigators say troubling questions persist: Most disturbing for the LAPD--an institution that prides itself on its officers’ integrity--is the growing suspicion that the corruption extends well beyond Mack and Perez.

“This case has made everybody in the LAPD nervous,” said Perez’s defense attorney, Winston McKesson. “Nobody wants to be associated with this.”

Fueling the suspicion that others may have known about or participated in Mack’s and Perez’s misdeeds are the ostentatious lives the two men led.

Drawn from court documents and interviews with investigators and friends and co-workers of Mack and Perez, a portrait emerges of two men who, while earning about $55,000 a year from the LAPD, somehow managed to live life in the “fast lane,” as one detective put it.

They took Caribbean cruises, dressed in designer suits, drove expensive cars, smoked fancy cigars in fancy bars and cheated on their wives with a string of young girlfriends, police say. In fact, just two days after Mack robbed a bank of more than $700,000, he, Perez, another LAPD officer and Perez’s mistress, a convicted drug dealer, partied the night away in a glitzy Las Vegas hotel.

The three cops even mugged for a memorial photo together outside one of the hotel’s restaurants. The third officer was Samuel Martin Jr. He, too, once was Mack’s partner and also was Perez’s friend. Unlike those two, he remains on the force.

Detectives searching for clues that Mack, 38, and Perez, 32, were in cahoots find it almost impossible to believe that the two friends--onetime roommates--separately and simultaneously turned to crime, committing high-profile offenses that made for two of the department’s most embarrassing moments in recent years.

As for Mack, police say, he is a hardened man who has shown no remorse for his crime. Until last week, Perez presented a tough exterior, too.

But after his surprise guilty plea to possession with intent to sell cocaine last week, after more than a year in jail, his former swagger and confident demeanor are all but gone.

The terms of his plea agreement were sealed by the court, leading knowledgeable observers to conclude that he is cooperating with investigators as they continue their probe.

Saving a Life Led to Enduring Bond

Undercover cop Rafael Perez stared down the barrel of the handgun pointed at his head and pleaded with the drug dealer at the other end.

“Come on man, I’m just a basehead, take it easy,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”

The next thing Perez heard was the deafening sound of gunfire--four shots fired in rapid succession.

But it wasn’t the drug dealer doing the shooting. It was Perez’s partner. He killed the drug dealer, who didn’t get off a single shot.

From that day, Oct. 26, 1993, Perez has credited David Mack with saving his life.

It is one basis for an enduring friendship. Even after Mack was transferred to another LAPD division and their partnership ended, the two remained close. They hung out together at backyard barbecues, smoked cigars and drank beer on Friday nights.

They were two tough guys, but back then, at least, there was nothing to suggest they were anything but honest cops.

Bank Robber Is Like 2 People

Those who know him say it is as if there are two David Macks.

One is the shy, polite boy who emerged from what his attorney called an “extraordinarily tough childhood” on the streets of Compton. He won a track scholarship to the University of Oregon, then went on to begin a career at the LAPD.

This David Mack is the good father described by his daughter and son in heart-wrenching letters to a federal judge, begging for leniency for their dad. The children were 11 and 13 at the time.

He’s the husband of 13 years who worked off-duty jobs to help pay the bills, the caring cop who warned kids about the dangers of gangs and drugs. This is the model officer who was nominated for one of the department’s top honors for killing the drug dealer who threatened Perez.

Then there is the David Mack investigators say they discovered: the ladies’ man, the con man, the criminal. He is the guy who as an LAPD training officer played on the emotions of a female rookie, borrowing hundreds of dollars from the younger woman. This is the David Mack who seduced a 19-year-old woman who worked as a ticket taker at a movie theater where he worked off-duty as a security guard.

The young woman, Errolyn Romero, with whom he had a 7-year affair, would later plead guilty to helping him rob the Bank of America where she was an assistant manager.

When Mack was arrested for the bank job on Dec. 16, 1997, he had $1,500 in his wallet, and authorities found a pile of receipts documenting an $18,000 spending spree stuffed under the carpet. Mack, investigators say, showed no remorse.

As an officer read him his rights, “he snickered and said, ‘Take your best shot,’ ” said one detective.

According to investigators, Mack lately has renounced his nine-year career as an LAPD officer. With disdain for his prior life or bravado intended to intimidate, he allegedly has told fellow inmates that they’d better not give him any problems because he was a member of the Bloods street gang.

Federal court documents also say he bragged about being tough enough to do whatever time he got and said he looked forward to having lots of money to spend when he gets out--money that the LAPD and the FBI are still trying to find.

According to court papers, he also attempted to take out a contract on Romero’s life after learning she was cooperating with police. But sources said the would-be hit man got cold feet and told his lawyer, who in turn told authorities. Mack was never charged in the incident.

Drug Thief Blended Divergent Lifestyles

Perez’s childhood, unlike Mack’s rough and tumble upbringing, was fairly stable and unremarkable, police say. Born in Puerto Rico, he moved to the United States as a toddler, growing up around Philadelphia and in New Jersey. After graduating from high school, he joined the Marines and got married. He left the Marine Corps after four years with an honorable discharge and got a divorce. In 1989 he entered the LAPD academy, looking for a new career.

He excelled as a police officer and soon was selected for an undercover narcotics detail, where he worked with Mack. But somewhere along the way, and police don’t know when or why, Perez started to blend two divergent lifestyles into one: He was, investigators say, both an aggressive street cop and a crafty drug entrepreneur.

Perez’s crimes were as daring as Mack’s, stealing a total of eight pounds of cocaine over a three-month period right from under the noses of department employees.

Perez’s biggest score was also his boldest. On March 2, 1998, he walked into the property room at the LAPD’s downtown headquarters and checked out three brick-sized kilograms of cocaine, claiming to need it for a court appearance. He signed for the drugs using another officer’s name. The clerk said she remembered Perez because he was rude and condescending.

With so much stolen cocaine, Perez needed help selling it on the streets. Police say he seduced Veronica Quesada, a known drug dealer, to help him peddle the drugs. At one point, Perez helped Quesada receive a lighter sentence by telling her prosecutor she assisted law enforcement.

Two days after Mack robbed the bank, Quesada joined the two officers and their friend Martin for a trip to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Martin frequently hung out with Perez and Mack in trendy clubs, smoking and drinking.

When investigators were closing in on Perez and put him under surveillance, Perez would drive around with Martin trying to shake the tail, according to court documents.

Perez knew that his association with Mack, who by then had been arrested, might one day be of interest to detectives. When police served search warrants on him, his first reaction was: Is this about the bank robbery?

Rumors About Work for Death Row Records

Investigating fellow officers is never easy. In this case, the probe has followed many paths--some productive, some not--many distressing to those who want to see the LAPD as uniquely resistant to corruption.

One particularly provocative set of questions has centered around rumors that Perez and Mack worked for Death Row Records and the suggestion that their crimes were somehow linked to the rap music label and its founder, Suge Knight.

In fact, investigators have not uncovered anything that links Mack and Perez to Death Row. But over the past two years, at least a half-dozen officers have worked off-duty security for Death Row or its affiliates. Some of those who have been identified have received suspensions for working without required permits that, in the case of Death Row, department officials say never would have been granted. Officers who worked there said in interviews that they routinely witnessed beatings and drug use.

And, in a twist right out of a Hollywood movie, some of the cocaine that Perez stole was logged into evidence by narcotics Det. Frank Lyga. Lyga is a white officer who fatally shot Kevin Gaines, a black officer, during a bizarre traffic dispute in Studio City in 1997.

At the time, Gaines was dating Knight’s estranged wife, Sharitha, and was under investigation by LAPD internal affairs. How bold was Gaines? The vanity plate on his Mercedes read “ITS OK IA”--a taunt of the department’s Internal Affairs division. Though Lyga was cleared in the shooting, in which Gaines was off-duty and in plain clothes and Lyga was working undercover, some officers in the department continue to blame him for Gaines’ death.

One investigative theory: Perez may have stolen the cocaine seized by Lyga to frame him for the theft to retaliate for the killing of Gaines.

“Are there too many coincidences in all of this?” asked one top LAPD official. “Absolutely.”

At another point, investigators reexamined the circumstances of the shooting in which Mack killed the drug dealer, but found nothing improper. They were surprised when they learned that Mack and Perez had a total of five shootings between them, an eyebrow-raising statistic considering that most officers go an entire career without firing their gun.

As investigators scrutinized Mack and Perez, they stumbled on at least one other troubling incident: the beating of an LAPD informant.

According to authorities, Officer Brian Hewitt allegedly beat a young man bloody in an interview room at the Rampart station where Perez also worked. Hewitt, and another officer who allegedly saw the injured man after the beating but failed to help, were fired.

The long-term implications of the probe still are building.

Because of Perez’s crimes, some 200 criminal cases he worked over the years as an officer are being reviewed and convictions won with his testimony may be overturned, authorities said.

Meanwhile, administrative charges are pending against Perez’s partner, Nino Durden, who has been relieved of duty on allegations including false arrest, planting rock cocaine on a suspect, and improper contact with informants.

Martin remains under intense scrutiny and has hired a criminal defense attorney. That attorney says his client has committed no wrongdoing and that he has been told by an investigator that Martin is not a criminal suspect.

And, there still are many unanswered questions about Mack and Perez. For starters, where is the bulk of the $722,000 Mack stole from the Bank of America? Who were his two accomplices who remain at large? While authorities say one suspect is not a police officer, they have not ruled out the possibility that a fellow cop drove the getaway car.

Perez’s plea--cloaked as it is in secrecy--appears to suggest that at least one more shoe may drop.