Woman’s Suit Says Rampart Officers Beat, Robbed Her

A 35-year-old woman alleges in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that a former LAPD officer--now the central figure in the department’s current corruption scandal--and his ex-partner beat and robbed her and then threatened to kill her if she went to the authorities.

Cynthia Diaz contends in her federal civil rights lawsuit that she was in her hotel room on April 1, 1997, when Officer Rafael Perez and partner Nino Durden, both on duty and in uniform, rousted her and her drug-dealing boyfriend under the guise that they were going to arrest the couple.

Instead, she said, the officers terrorized her and pressured her to become an informant for them.

The suit, filed by Venice attorney Stephen Yagman, is the first by a woman claiming to be a victim of Perez and Durden. Perez, a former anti-gang officer from the Rampart station, has since pleaded guilty to stealing eight pounds of cocaine. In a deal that is expected to shave time off his prison sentence, he is now providing information to detectives which is the basis of the department’s corruption probe.

Diaz said Perez and Durden never arrested her, and she never complained to the LAPD about them. In fact, Diaz said she only decided to file a lawsuit after she was contacted about three weeks ago by a detective on the departmental task force investigating LAPD corruption.

In an interview, Diaz said Det. Jesse Castillo recently contacted her boyfriend, who is now in prison on unrelated charges, about the incident. After that, Diaz said, the detective came to see her. She said she was shown about 30 photos of officers and was able to pick Perez and Durden from them.

An LAPD spokesman declined to comment, as did Durden’s lawyer. Attorney Winston Kevin McKesson, who represents Perez, said his client has never forcibly robbed anybody. He declined further comment.

Diaz said Wednesday that she had just left her room at the Lafayette Hotel on Beverly Boulevard to go pay the rent when an officer she later learned was Durden pointed a gun at her and told her to freeze. She said Durden took a $50 bill, the rent money, from her hand and put it in his shirt pocket. He then handcuffed her.

Seconds later, Perez walked up, Diaz said. Both officers wanted to know her room number, she said, and she reluctantly told them it was 315. The officers then led her upstairs to the room, she said.

“You’re going to do something for me,” Diaz quoted Perez as saying. “When I knock, and he says who is it, you’re going to answer and say it’s you.”

Diaz said her boyfriend was in the bathroom and wasn’t quick enough getting to the door. He didn’t have time to answer before Perez allegedly knocked it down.

Inside the apartment, both officers screamed, “Where is it? Where it?” apparently referring to drugs, Diaz said.

She said she and her boyfriend said they had no drugs. When she complained to Durden about the way the officers were behaving, she said, “He slapped me upside the head and pushed me up against a wall.” She said he later shoved her down some stairs.

When it became clear that Diaz and her boyfriend were not going to admit to having drugs, the officers took them to an unmarked car and drove them to a police station.

There, Diaz said, Perez continued to pressure them.

“I need you to give me something before I can give you something,” she quoted the officer as saying.

Eventually, she said, her boyfriend told the officers where they would find money in the room. She said the officers left, leaving the couple locked in an interview room.

About a half-hour later, she said, they came back empty-handed. At that point, the boyfriend convinced Perez and Durden that he would show them where the money was. They all drove to the hotel, she said, and there her boyfriend was unshackled. He reached into a heater and fished out a stack of bills amounting to $2,700, fastened by a rubber band.

She said the officers took the money and left, after warning them not to say a word about what had happened.

“They told us they would get us,” Diaz said.