2 Women Say Rampart Squad Framed Them

In an alleged frame-up that has captured the personal attention of Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael P. Judge, a mother and daughter with no criminal records say a band of rogue Los Angeles police officers planted drugs on them, stole their life savings, and took them to jail on false charges that the city attorney later used to evict them from an apartment they had lived in for more than a decade.

The arrests of Julia and Veronica Chavez reflect the depravity with which former LAPD Officer Rafael Perez and his Rampart Division colleagues operated, defense attorneys said. The Chavezes, unlike most alleged victims of the LAPD corruption scandal identified so far, have never been gang members, drug dealers or addicts, the lawyers added.

“These are two humble, decent women who played by the rules and were terrorized by marauding, racist cops,” said Judge, who went to the women’s Lincoln Heights apartment Wednesday with his top attorneys in connection with a legal petition to clear their names.

“What was done here was vicious and can happen to anyone in the community regardless of how honest and upright a life they live,” Judge added.

It is unclear whether Perez, the man at the center of the corruption probe, has identified the Chavezes’ arrests as unjustified during his interviews with LAPD investigators and prosecutors. But the Dec. 5, 1997, incident fell within the period in which Perez said he was breaking the law as often as he was enforcing it. Moreover, six of the seven officers involved in the arrests of the mother and daughter have previously been implicated in either crimes or misconduct.

Petition Will Seek Woman’s Exoneration

Attorneys with the public defender’s office said they plan to file a petition today that they hope will exonerate 27-year-old Veronica Chavez, who pleaded no contest to a drug possession charge on the advice of counsel. Julia Chavez, though arrested and booked in jail, never faced criminal charges.

“I couldn’t believe this happened to us,” Veronica Chavez said in an interview with The Times. A student at the Puente Learning Center at the time of the arrest, Chavez said her encounter with the police has scarred her for life.

Police documents obtained by The Times indicate that officers alleged that drugs were being dealt out of the Chavez home. According to a search warrant affidavit submitted by Perez, he had been told by a confidential informant that a male Latino who went by “Duster” and a woman known as “Mama” were selling rock cocaine out of the South Burlington Avenue apartment. The informant, whose information had not been previously tested, allegedly told Perez that he had purchased rock cocaine from the pair on about 10 occasions. Perez said he enlisted a second informant--this one a snitch whose tips had paid off in the past--in an attempt to buy cocaine from Duster and Mama.

Perez said he gave the informant $50 and watched as he went to the apartment and knocked on the back door. Perez said a male Latino answered the door and talked to the informant.

Minutes later, out of view of the apartment, Perez alleged, the informant told him he had made the purchase and produced a paper bindle containing several rocks of cocaine.

On Dec. 4, Municipal Judge W. R. Chidsey Jr. issued the warrant Perez was seeking. A day later Perez, his partner Nino Durden and five other Rampart officers raided the apartment, which was home to Julia and Veronica Chavez.

Perez wrote in his arrest report that he and Durden found the two women in the bathroom, one of them bent over the sink, the other over the tub. He said water was running in both basins.

Perez said he looked down into the tub and discovered a piece of rock cocaine near the drain. He said that after he read Veronica Chavez her rights she started to talk.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not me that sells it; my mother and brother do. We saw you guys coming, and me and my mom flushed it down the sink and the bathtub,” Perez’s report quoted the young woman as saying.

Perez said he asked how much they had disposed of before the officers arrived. “Everything that was inside the kitchen cabinet by the money,” Veronica Chavez allegedly responded.

According to Perez’s report, officers found $4,592 in the kitchen cabinet and a bedroom.

Both Chavezes were booked on suspicion of possessing rock cocaine for sale and taken to jail.

Three years later, Veronica Chavez at times cried as she offered a starkly different account of the day she and her mother were arrested.

She said she woke up to the sound of her mother, who had been sick, vomiting in the bathroom. She went in to check on her. Minutes later, she said, two LAPD officers suddenly appeared at the bathroom door, their guns drawn.

She said she and her mother were placed in handcuffs and separated. One of the officers, whom she would later recognize as Perez, stayed with her in the bathroom. “It was Perez who got in my face and said, ‘Where are the drugs?’ ” she recalled during an interview in which her mother joined her.

Veronica Chavez said she told Perez that she didn’t know what he was talking about, but that he persisted.

“Tell us where the drugs are, or we’re going to tear your house up,” he allegedly threatened.

As Perez interrogated her, she said, other officers roamed through the apartment, pulling out drawers, opening cupboards and flipping over mattresses. She said the one female officer at the scene made racist comments about her citizenship and asked: “Why do all you Mexicans have to come up here and sell drugs?” Veronica said the officers taunted them with threats of deportation until one of them discovered her mother’s naturalization papers. Veronica is a U.S. citizen.

“I guess it’s your lucky day,” one officer reportedly deadpanned.

Officer Suggested a Ruse, Woman Says

Eventually, Veronica Chavez said, Perez confided that he knew she and her mother were innocent, and that it was really her brother, an 18th Street gang member, whom police wanted.

Veronica said she told Perez that her brother had not lived in the house for more than two years, since he was released from prison in 1995 after serving a sentence for manslaughter.

“We don’t want to arrest you guys. All you have to do is call your brother and have him come here,” she quoted Perez as saying. She said he even suggested a ruse, to tell the brother that their mother had slipped and fallen in the tub and needed help.

Fearful that the officers would frame her brother, who she said had quit gang life and stayed out of trouble since his release from prison, Veronica refused to cooperate. She said her brother has since told her that Perez knew him and had a vendetta against him.

She said she was shocked by what Perez said next.

“We got nothing. Let’s put two rocks on them,” she quoted the officer as saying to his partners.

Veronica Chavez said that her mother was bailed out the same day they were arrested but that she spent the next five days in jail. Although her mother was never charged, Veronica said she pleaded no contest to a drug possession charge on the advice of her public defender, who told her no jury would take her word against that of the police officers. Part of her motivation for entering the plea, she said, was the knowledge that if she successfully completed a court-ordered drug program, the case would be dismissed.

Tears welled in her eyes as she recounted the aftermath of the arrest and conviction. During the raid, she said, officers took far more than the $4,592 they booked into evidence. The real sum was $6,800, the balance of which never was returned, she said.

The loss left the family broke at Christmas and forced them to beg from friends. She had to attend--and pay for--drug counseling she said she didn’t need. Most embarrassing, she said, is filling out a job application and having to respond “yes” to the standard question: Have you ever been arrested?

“It makes me feel like they’re not going to give me the job,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like lying and just saying no, I haven’t.”

Troubles Did Not End With Arrests

The Chavezes didn’t know it at time, but their troubles did not end with the arrests.

Six months later, in early July, the family received a letter from the city attorney’s office saying the city was demanding that their landlord evict them from the apartment.

The action was being sought under an ordinance calling for the eviction of people who commit drug- or gang-related offenses on residential properties.

Veronica Chavez said their landlord believed they were good tenants and didn’t want to evict them, but was being advised by his attorney that he had to do so. He even suggested to the family that they seek legal assistance to fight the order.

The family followed that advice and spoke to a lawyer who charged them $50 and told them he couldn’t help, they said.

The city prevailed and the Chavezes were forced to move.

Veronica Chavez said Wednesday that she looks forward to having her name cleared in the courts, which would restore her faith in a system she now distrusts.

“I dream about what happened to us,” she said. “It’s hard to forget.”

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MANAGERIAL FAILURES

Mayor Richard Riordan places blame for Rampart scandal but defends cleanup efforts. B1