Anti-Gang Arrests Reviewed to See if Discredited Officers Played Role : Rampart Division: As judge suspends injunction, prosecutors raise concerns about possible tainted testimony.

As a Superior Court judge suspended a much-heralded permanent injunction against dozens of 18th Street gang members Tuesday, prosecutors began investigating about 15 arrests made during the crackdown to determine if they involved police officers swept up in the expanding LAPD corruption scandal.

Authorities were scrambling to learn whether any gang members were improperly jailed for violations of the court order, which would be a criminal misdemeanor.

Among the issues is whether individual gang members were drawn into the injunction because of tainted police testimony. Prosecutors also are examining whether any officers under investigation arrested 18th Street members for violations of the court order, which severely restricts suspected gang members’ activities. It drastically regulates the associations of individuals named as gang members and forbids them and others among their confederates from congregating in certain manners and places.

The injunction probe comes as prosecutors are trying to get their arms around the problems arising from the LAPD scandal.

“I wouldn’t speculate on whether we’ve contained the damage,” a downcast Assistant City Atty. Marty Vranicar told reporters after the judge’s order. “The reason we’re in court here is so that we can investigate where this is going and what impact this may have. I don’t know if other [suspected officers’] names are out there.”

Superior Court Judge James A. Bascue, in one of the first major legal reverberations of the scandal, halted use of the 10-month-old injunction against gang members in a high-crime area of the Pico-Union district west of downtown. His order puts a 30-day hold on the injunction while prosecutors conduct their probe.

County and city prosecutors sought the urgent action because they relied on officers’ declarations now alleged to be untrue to secure two injunctions against members of the 18th Street gang, one of the region’s most violent gangs.

Sworn statements were submitted by at least eight fired or suspended officers from the Rampart Division’s CRASH anti-gang squad, or Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, which is at the center of the corruption controversy.

One former CRASH officer, Rafael A. Perez, is cooperating with investigators and has said that a man was wrongly shot and framed in one shooting and that a second fatal shooting was “dirty.” Both incidents were recounted in police declarations and used to help justify the 1997 and 1998 injunctions.

In two other statements, a Rampart officer who was fired for allegedly beating an ex-gang member provided a lengthy overview of 18th Street activities.

After Tuesday’s hastily arranged court appearance, prosecutors said they will return to court today seeking to formally stop the second injunction against 18th Streeters near MacArthur Park.

“Certainly, it sets back the efforts that we have taken to try to work against gangs,” Vranicar said. “It’s always a sad day when you have a situation like this.”

With the corruption probe still widening and prosecutors unsure when the injunctions may be revived, Tuesday’s actions raised the specter that the orders might have to be abandoned altogether.

“If I were seeking to unravel it, this would give me a heyday,” said Norman Garland, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law.

Prosecutors said it is too early to know the full impact of the LAPD investigation on the two injunctions.

But the disclosures that some officers may have lied under oath could complicate efforts by prosecutors to win future injunctions. In granting the court orders, judges have tended to rely on police declarations concerning alleged gang activity.

“I think we’ll feel the impact for a long time,” said David E. Demerjian, head of the county’s hard-core gang division.

Reputed gang members often have not been able to afford attorneys in injunction cases.

But a lawyer for several alleged 18th Street members named in the 1998 injunction argued in court documents that the order should not be granted because Rampart officers beat one of her clients and provided “unclean” declarations.

Attorney Ira Salzman, who represents several 18th Streeters named in the second injunction, said Tuesday that he hoped the revelations would “give our prosecutors pause to avoid this rabid pushing of injunctions.”

More than a dozen anti-gang injunctions have been granted in Los Angeles County in recent years.

“It’s just sad that this is what it took to do it,” Salzman said. “When the constitutional and legal objections were initially raised, they were brushed aside.”

He stressed that his clients do not pose a threat to the community.

“[But] I certainly agree that the 18th Street gang commits a lot of serious crimes,” Salzman said. “That’s not a subject of serious debate.”

Outside the courtroom Tuesday, Vranicar and Demerjian insisted that the two injunctions have helped curb crime.

“I think if you ask residents of the community,” Demerjian said, “they will tell you that these injunctions have a positive impact on the quality of life.”

That sentiment was not universal Tuesday in neighborhoods covered by the injunction.

Pico-Union merchants, who asked not to be named out of fear of angering either gang members or police, had mixed views on the temporary demise of the injunctions.

“I don’t think the injunction has made much difference,” said a small business owner near MacArthur Park.

But a woman who works at a nearby bakery credited the court order with helping to drive away gang members and drug dealers. She now worries that lifting the injunction will encourage 18th Street gang members to return.

“We need a strong police presence,” she said, “because violence gets worse every day.”

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Special correspondent Joseph Trevino contributed to this article.