Memories Foggy at Rampart Trial

The first two Los Angeles police officers called as witnesses in the Rampart police corruption trial testified Monday that they couldn’t remember details of a controversial 1996 arrest.

Most significantly, they couldn’t recall whether they saw fellow Officer Michael Buchanan at the scene.

The foggy memories of Officers Kulin Patel and Tim Kalkus were significant because prosecutors called the two to the witness stand to help prove that Buchanan wasn’t there that September night in 1996, and that he lied when he said he had been.

The officers’ testimony, which came during the first full day of the Rampart corruption trial, followed waffling by other witnesses for the prosecution.

“I think it was a catastrophe” for the prosecution, said Harland W. Braun, Buchanan’s lawyer. “You have to understand, they led with this because they thought it was the strongest part of their case. But every time they put someone on [the stand], they fell on their face.”

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, said the D.A.’s office “won’t characterize testimony.”

“We let the testimony speak for itself, to the jury in the courtroom,” Gibbons said. “How someone characterizes it in a hallway isn’t what matters.”

Buchanan, 30, is one of four suspended officers accused of scheming to pervert or obstruct justice, by framing gang members, planting evidence and lying on police reports and in court.

And though the Rampart scandal has delivered one explosive disclosure after another, Monday’s court proceedings were a mind-numbing affair.

The trial began with a parade of Los Angeles Police Department bureaucrats who offered testimony so dry and tedious that jurors yawned, fidgeted and seemed to struggle to remain alert in the warm, crowded courtroom. By afternoon, one juror, with his eyes closed, appeared to be sleeping.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Laesecke called on Patel and Kalkus to prove a negative: that Buchanan could not possibly have witnessed an arrest on Sept. 18, 1996, because he was on vacation that day.

Buchanan, who is also charged with four counts of perjury, had testified in two separate trials that he saw fellow Officer Rafael Perez find and take a loaded handgun from the trunk of a convertible being driven by Nabil Hassan and carrying four known gang members.

Perez is the fallen former Rampart CRASH officer who, caught stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from police evidence lockers, confessed a year ago, implicating other officers in corrupt acts, unleashing the biggest police corruption scandal in the city’s history.

His status as a witness remains uncertain.

Buchanan and the three other suspended officers--Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy and Officer Paul Harper--worked with Perez in Rampart’s elite anti-gang unit, known as CRASH.

Monday’s testimony focused on what Laesecke calls “the Vacation Day incident.”

The prosecutor alleges that Buchanan was marked down for vacation, didn’t use his password to activate the LAPD’s computer for background checks, didn’t file any reports and didn’t use his hand-held radio transmitter, called a “Rover,” that day.

Paula Weissman, an administrator for the LAPD’s security unit, told jurors that a check of the LAPD’s computer system showed that Buchanan did not use his serial number and password to log on Sept. 18, 1996. And, he did not file any field information cards--reports of contacts with gang members--that day, she added.

Under cross-examination, however, Weissman acknowledged that she had no way of knowing whether Buchanan worked that day. She conceded under questioning by the defense that Buchanan appeared to have been listed as on-duty on about a half-dozen other occasions when he didn’t log on to the computer.

Another LAPD employee, Kim Hunter, testified that Buchanan did not activate his hand-held radio transmitter. Nor could he be heard on the LAPD’s base radio frequency, called Duplex.

However, under cross-examination, she acknowledged that he could have used another frequency, called Simplex, or tactical channels without her knowledge.

Braun told jurors during his opening statement that Buchanan was late for roll call that day because both his parents were receiving cancer treatments. Ortiz marked him down as being on vacation, the lawyer said.

Buchanan, just past his first year as a probationary officer, later joined two other officers in a car as “a third man,” Braun said. For that reason, he appeared to fly under the LAPD radar.

It’s not unusual, the lawyer added, because Buchanan works in an elite unit that sometimes doesn’t follow the same procedures as patrol units.

Patel and Kalkus both testified that they responded to an arrest scene on the day in question and saw Perez and a partner there, with about five men who appeared to be suspects.

But both officers remembered little else about the incident, describing it as one of hundreds of uneventful traffic stops they’ve responded to over the years.

Both admitted that they didn’t mark Buchanan down as present at the scene on police “field activity” reports. But then both said they don’t always include all officers.

Asked whether he could recall the day with any certainty that Buchanan was not there, Kalkus said: “I can’t say that.”

Hassan complained loudly and immediately after his arrest that he’d been framed. He said that he never gave Perez permission to search his car, and that Perez lied about the gun being loaded. One jury deadlocked and another acquitted Hassan.

After he struck his deal--receiving a five-year sentence for stealing the cocaine--Perez began talking to authorities. He admitted that he lied during Hassan’s trials and asked Buchanan to lie about seeing him recover the gun.

Perez and Hassan remember Buchanan being present, even though official police records indicate he was on the first day of a two-week vacation.