D.A. Set to Charge Officer in Shooting

Prosecutors in the LAPD corruption probe today are expected to file an attempted murder charge against a Rampart Division officer who allegedly shot an unarmed gang member at point-blank range and then planted a gun on him to cover it up, according to a law enforcement source close to the case.

Officer Nino Durden, a key figure in the ongoing scandal and onetime partner of ex-officer Rafael Perez, is expected to face five other charges that he committed crimes while on duty, including robbing a man at gunpoint, the source said.

The attempted murder allegation would be the most serious criminal charge yet filed in the Rampart scandal. It stems from the Oct. 12, 1996, shooting of Javier Francisco Ovando, who was paralyzed and then allegedly framed for attacking Perez and Durden.

Ovando’s case, which has come to symbolize the abuses alleged to have occurred at Rampart, came to light only because of a plea deal last September in which Perez agreed to expose widespread police criminality and misconduct in exchange for a reduced sentence for stealing more than eight pounds of cocaine booked as evidence by the Los Angeles Police Department.

For months, Durden, 32, has remained silent as Perez accused him of a litany of crimes. Durden’s attorney, Darryl Mounger, declined comment Thursday, but he dismissed Perez as an admitted liar.

The complaint against Durden would bring to five the number of officers facing criminal charges for their alleged involvement in LAPD corruption. Prosecutors have said that more than 70 officers are under investigation for either committing crimes or knowing about criminal conduct and failing to report it.

The case promises to pit two very tenacious attorneys against each other. On the one side is Mounger, a former LAPD officer turned attorney who boasts of refusing to represent any client who would even consider cutting a deal with prosecutors. On the other is Deputy Dist. Atty. Anne Ingalls, who obtained a conviction in the Ennis Cosby murder case and is considered one of the most skilled--and toughest--litigators in Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s office.

According to Perez, he and Durden were partners in crime for more than a year. Perez said they prowled the streets west of downtown, victimizing gang members, drug dealers and others, stealing their drugs and money. When they were not stealing from people, he alleges, they were framing them, often indiscriminately.

When Perez began cooperating with authorities, the Ovando shooting, which he says had been haunting him for years, was the first thing he mentioned.

At the time, Ovando was three years into a 23-year state prison term. Within days of Perez’s disclosure, Ovando’s conviction was overturned and the 22-year-old man, who is in a wheelchair, was released from custody.

The attempted murder charge is seen by many as a bold move by prosecutors, considering that the three known eyewitnesses are Perez, an admitted perjurer; Ovando, who once said he had no recollection of the shooting; and Durden, who presumably will stand by the official police account he gave four years ago.

According to that account, Perez and Durden were on a stakeout in an apartment building when Ovando burst into the dark apartment where they were hiding and pointed an “assault-type rifle” at them.

Durden yelled at Ovando to drop the gun. When he did not comply, both officers opened fire, according to the police report. Durden fired one round. Perez fired three. Ovando was struck in the head, chest and hip.

Perez now offers a dramatically different version of the shooting.

He said he was looking out the window of the apartment, watching for gang activity on the street, when he heard voices coming from inside the apartment.

“All of a sudden, I hear like talking. And then, I hear like, ‘what the . . . ?’ or something like that,” Perez told investigators in a Sept. 10, 1999, interview, a transcript of which has been obtained by The Times.

“I see Officer Durden talking and agitated . . . cursing,” Perez testified. “As I turn around to get up and start walking toward him, I see him pulling out his gun.”

Seconds later, Perez said, his partner opened fire. “I’m feeding off him,” Perez told investigators, explaining why he shot too.

“I felt like I fired once. But I must have just kept pulling.”

Under questioning from Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Rosenthal, the prosecutor who secured the deal requiring Perez’s cooperation, Perez said he could not say for certain whether Ovando had done something to provoke the shooting.

“Were you in a position to see whether Ovando was taking aggressive action?” Rosenthal asked.

“No,” Perez responded.

“So, he could have taken an aggressive act and you wouldn’t have known?”

“Right,” Perez said.

Perez said he was sure, however, that he “did not see a gun at any time.”

Immediately after the shooting, as he held a gun on the wounded Ovando, Perez said Durden disappeared for a few minutes.

He said his partner returned holding a dirty red rag draped over what turned out to be a gun. Perez said Durden then dropped the weapon--a sawed-off, .22-caliber rifle with a military-style banana clip--on the floor next to where Ovando lay bleeding.

Perez told investigators that he recognized the gun. He said he and Durden had found it after receiving a tip from an informant about where it was stashed.

“We kept it just to have it in case something like this were to occur,” Perez said.

A couple of days after they had seized the gun, Perez said, he and Durden were on duty when he noticed Durden, seated in the passenger seat of their police car, filing the serial numbers off the weapon.

Perez said that either he or Durden--he didn’t remember who--checked the gun on a department computer to ensure that there weren’t any red flags that would discourage them from using it as a so-called “throw-down” gun.

That computer activity, Perez said, would prove that the officers had the gun’s serial number several days before the shooting of Ovando.

“All you have to do is check the system to see if the serial number was run,” Perez told investigators.

Corroborating Perez’s Story

According to one LAPD official, detectives on the corruption task force have found information logged in a department computer that may help corroborate Perez’s story.

On the night of the shooting, Perez said, as soon as Durden dropped the gun, one of the officers got on the radio and sent out a secretly coded message informing others in the Rampart CRASH unit that there had been an officer-involved shooting.

When the other officers began to arrive, Perez said, he and Durden used them to further cover their tracks.

“We sent somebody out to be a diversionary person out in the front,” Perez said. “If somebody wants to come in--I don’t care if it’s the captain, you tell him that we’re [doing] a search, there could be possible suspects still around, whatever. The reason we do that is so that we can sit there and discuss what happened, how it happened, what occurred--everything that needs to be explained.”

When their supervisor, Sgt. Edward Ortiz, arrived, Perez said Durden did the talking and he just followed his partner’s lead. “And then, later in a separate interview you would have said what [Durden] said?” Rosenthal asked.

“Right,” Perez said, adding that he and Durden were not separated when they were taken back to the station, as they should have been.

Instead, he said, “they sit you in the same room and you discuss it more, get your story straight more, or whatever. That’s what happens.”

Ovando, who at the time of his trial told his defense attorney that he had no recollection of the shooting, apparently has regained his memory of the incident after three years behind bars.

His account, which he gave to investigators during a prison interview late last year, is even more damning of Perez and Durden. According to Ovando, he had an encounter with the officers the night before the shooting, when they questioned him and filled out a “field interview card” identifying him as a gang member.

The next evening, Ovando said, the officers knocked on his apartment door, ordered a friend of his to leave, and then searched the apartment, looking for drugs.

Finding no narcotics, the officers handcuffed Ovando and took him to apartment 407--a vacant residence in the building, he said.

Inside apartment 407, Ovando said, he was shot in the chest by both officers. It was Perez, he said, who grabbed him by the shirt, stood him upright and shot him in the head--an allegation that Perez denies.

After his conviction was overturned, Ovando filed a lawsuit against the city alleging that his civil rights had been violated.

In addition to the Ovando case, prosecutors are expected to charge Durden with perjury for his role in the Oct. 25, 1996, arrest of Miguel Hernandez, who allegedly was framed on a weapons offense.

Prosecutors also are expected to allege that Durden stole money and jewelry at gunpoint from a suspected drug dealer on Aug. 15, 1997.

Perez said he and Durden bullied people into becoming informants for them, stealing their money and jewelry, and then using it as leverage to obtain their cooperation. One victim told LAPD investigators that Perez and Durden even stole his food stamps.