Officers Deny They Framed Suspects

Two suspended LAPD officers on trial in the Rampart police corruption case adamantly denied from the witness stand Thursday that they schemed to frame suspects or fabricate evidence.

“No, I did not,” responded a beefy Sgt. Brian Liddy, 39, giving identical answers to questions posed by two defense attorneys. They asked whether he conspired with other officers to plant a gun, or to fabricate other evidence to make false arrests.

“Absolutely not,” said a strapping Officer Paul Harper, 33, when asked whether he plotted with other officers to violate gang members’ civil rights and submit false police reports.

Liddy, Harper and Sgt. Edward Ortiz, 44, and Officer Michael Buchanan, 30, are on trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, accused of conspiring to obstruct justice.

It is the first criminal trial to arise from the yearlong police corruption scandal that has held the city in its thrall and which on Thursday resulted in a historic, 114-page legal agreement with the federal government to restructure the Los Angeles Police Department.

The scandal was unleashed by the confessions of former Rampart Officer Rafael Perez, who has admitted stealing cocaine from police evidence lockers and selling it, as well as shooting, paralyzing and framing an innocent man.

The defendants so far have displayed remarkably clear memories compared to the vague testimony and failing recollections of the police officers who testified reluctantly for the prosecution. The point has not been lost on jurors; one sent a note to the judge asking why Liddy could remember so well events that occurred four years ago.

Completing his testimony before the lunch break, Liddy denied that he had rubbed the gun against the suspect’s hands to plant fingerprints--contradicting the testimony of a gang member.

In his testimony, Harper backed up the testimony of Liddy, a senior officer who showed him the ropes during his first months with Rampart’s elite CRASH unit, which targeted gang activity.

Harper testified that he wrote and signed a police report on Liddy’s and his behalf, never questioning his partner’s account.

“Everything I put on there I believed to be true and I signed it,” Harper said. He added that he trusted Liddy so much that he incorporated what his partner saw into his own account.

“What I observed and what Officer Liddy told me he observed were very consistent,” he said. “I stand by everything that’s on that . . . report.”

Jurors, who are allowed to submit questions to the judge, asked why Harper never identified Liddy as the source of his information in a probable-cause declaration he wrote. Harper said he was trying to write a short synopsis and wanted the narrative to flow smoothly. Liddy’s personal observations were attached to the report, he added.

Defense attorneys said Thursday that they expect to call all four accused officers to the stand before resting their case, perhaps as early as today.

Beyond their denials of wrongdoing, both Liddy and Harper offered vivid descriptions of their 1996 contacts with gang members in the city’s busiest and most violent police division--six square miles of gang territory where shootings were a nightly occurrence.

Harper described a parking lot raid that began as he and Liddy attempted to “sneak up on the 18th Street gang” at a memorial gathering on April 26, 1996. They planned to question the gang members about a slaying that occurred the previous week, the officers testified.

As Liddy drove their patrol car into the middle of the lot, and Harper ran behind it, several gang members scattered. Two made it through a hole in a fence, Harper testified. Another, later identified as Allan Lobos, ignored his commands to stop, the officer added.

“He was not in any hurry to comply,” Harper said. “He was ignoring me.” Then, he added, Lobos began to run along a line of cars parked near an apartment building. He lost sight of the suspect.

“It was very stressful,” he testified. “I remember it as being a pretty bad situation because I didn’t know where Mr. Lobos was at the time.”

Liddy’s shouts soon ended the mystery. “I heard Officer Liddy give commands to Mr. Lobos: ‘Put your hands up. Stop! Put your hands up.’ It was a common command.”

Then, Harper said, he heard Liddy shout, “Gun!”

Harper testified that he never saw the gun in Lobos’ hands. Later, another officer showed him a black .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol in the trunk of a patrol car. He said he assumed that Perez had found it, because that was what he was told.

“What did you think when Officer Liddy told you his observations?” attorney Joel Isaacson asked.

“I believed him,” Harper responded.

“Do you still believe what he told you?” said Isaacson.

“Absolutely,” Harper said.

Prosecutors allege that the gun was planted, and that Lobos was falsely arrested for carrying it.

Lobos’ was one of more than 100 convictions overturned, largely based on Perez’s word. In this case, Perez said Liddy, Harper and Ortiz conspired to frame Lobos.

Details of Lobos’ criminal past emerged during the questioning of the two officers. Lobos is serving 15 years to life in state prison in connection with the 1997 murder of rival gangster Alejandro Garcia. He also is a suspect in one of Los Angeles’ deadliest arson fires: the 1993 torching of an apartment building at 330 S. Burlington Ave. that killed seven children, three women and two fetuses.

Lobos and another man, Rogelio Andrade, were charged with 12 counts of murder and a single count of arson in November 1998, but the charges were dismissed a year later for lack of evidence.