2 Former LAPD Officers Indicted in Assault Case

Two former Los Angeles police officers were indicted Thursday in connection with an assault on a homeless man, who alleges that he was taken to the Los Angeles River, beaten and then threatened with a handgun, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

Former Central Division Officers Christopher Coppock and David Cochrane allegedly terrorized Delton Bowen after he called one of them a derogatory name, according to documents and interviews.

The key witness in the case also is a former LAPD officer who says she was working with the officers when the alleged attack occurred. That officer, Sandra Salazar, testified about the Oct. 23, 1997, incident before the county grand jury Thursday, sources said.

“She is an officer who was caught up in the code of silence when she worked at the LAPD,” said Salazar’s attorney, Michael Lackie. “She believes that her cooperation with the district attorney is the right thing to do.”

Lackie declined to discuss his client’s testimony. Salazar left the LAPD last year and is now working for another police agency.

The indictment against Coppock and Cochrane was handed up under seal. Prosecutors plan to seek the officers’ arrest today, a law enforcement source said.

Coppock, 28, and Cochrane, 34, left the LAPD last year amid other allegations of misconduct, including the framing of suspects by planting drugs on them. They remain under criminal investigation in at least one unrelated case, sources said.

Neither man could be reached for comment late Thursday.

The indictment comes as prosecutors struggle to prove that four officers from the scandal-plagued Rampart Division committed crimes. In addition to the Rampart scandal, three officers from the LAPD’s 77th Division have been charged this year with crimes, two for allegedly framing a man, the other for allegedly shooting a motorist in the back.

Last year, prosecutors rejected Bowen’s allegations, but reopened the matter after inquiries from The Times. They needed to move quickly on the case because statutory deadlines on the alleged crimes are about to expire.

According to documents obtained by The Times, Bowen said he had been drinking vodka and was “getting loud” as he approached two LAPD officers in the 10900 block of West Pico Boulevard on that October day.

Bowen said that the officers, later identified as Emil Florez and Alfonzo Gutierrez, offered to give him a ride to a downtown mission and that he accepted.

On the way, Bowen said, he told the officers he had previously tipped off police to narcotics activity. To that, one of the officers replied that he “hated snitches,” the documents state.

Bowen said that the officers then dropped him downtown “near a bunch of crack-heads” and that one of the officers yelled out, “He’s a snitch.”

According to the documents, Bowen then cursed at the officers and kicked their patrol car. At that point, he says, the officers threw him in the back seat of the car and drove him to the Los Angeles River, where one beat and kicked him while the other watched.

After the beating, Bowen said, he made his way to a nearby Denny’s restaurant and called 911. But, fearing that the same officers might respond to his call, he said, he left before being interviewed.

Based in part on Bowen’s account, Officers Florez and Gutierrez were charged internally by the LAPD with the beating.

But those charges were dropped when Salazar--who was dating Florez at the time--testified that it was actually Coppock and Cochrane who had beaten Bowen.

Bowen, who admits being intoxicated, according to documents, apparently mistook Florez and Gutierrez for Coppock and Cochrane, sources said.

He was, however, able to pick Salazar out of a photo lineup and said she had been present at the beating.

Salazar testified at Florez’s and Gutierrez’s Board of Rights hearing that those two officers actually had dropped Bowen off at the mission, as they said.

But after they left, Bowen staggered back outside. It was then that he allegedly encountered Coppock and Cochrane, with whom Salazar says she was working that night.

An account of what allegedly happened next is contained in court papers filed by Florez, who, despite being cleared of the beating, was fired for allegedly threatening an investigator during the case.

According to those documents, Bowen, after stumbling back out of the mission, called Cochrane an insulting name.

“Cochrane immediately threw Bowen to the ground, handcuffed him and threw him into the police car,” the documents say.

Cochrane, Coppock and Salazar took Bowen to the river, where Salazar says Cochrane threatened him, activated the slide on his 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and put it to Bowen’s head, according to the documents. Bowen has a hazy recollection of that event.

A source familiar with the case said Salazar’s testimony before the grand jury was largely consistent with the sequence described in Florez’s court documents.

Before Salazar’s account came out, LAPD investigators presented a potential criminal case against Florez and Gutierrez to the district attorney’s office in December 1998. That case was rejected a month later for insufficient evidence.

Two months ago, The Times asked district attorney’s officials whether they were investigating Coppock and Cochrane in the Bowen case, in light of Salazar’s testimony.

A prosecutor in the D.A.’s Special Investigations Division, which prosecutes police officers, said he was unaware of Salazar’s allegations. A day later, he said he was reopening the case.

Coppock resigned after he was accused of a false arrest in another case. Cochrane was fired last year for making false and misleading statements during an internal LAPD investigation, officials said. At the time, he was also facing internal allegations of planting cocaine on another arrestee.