2 Ex-Officers Accused of Evidence Planting

Two former Los Angeles Police Department officers who were indicted this week on charges of beating and terrorizing a homeless man in 1997 were sued in federal court Friday by another man, who says the officers planted drugs on him.

Anthony Carnighan charged in court papers that former Central Division Officers Christopher Coppock and David Cochrane planted crack cocaine on him and helped send him to prison for four years. Carnighan was released from prison last month after a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge determined that the two officers, both of whom left the LAPD amid allegations of misconduct, lacked credibility.

“This just shows that Rampart is the tip of the iceberg,” said Carnighan’s attorney, Gregory Moreno. “This stuff is just going to keep popping up. It’s everywhere.”

Carnighan’s suit came one day after Coppock and Cochrane were indicted by the county grand jury in the alleged beating of Delton Bowen, a homeless man, near the Los Angeles River, sources said. The indictment remained sealed Friday. The officers’ surrender or arrest is imminent, according to a law enforcement source close to the case. Neither man could be reached for comment Friday.

Coppock and Cochrane allegedly assaulted Bowen after he called one of them a derogatory name, according to documents and interviews. The key witness in the case is Sandra Salazar, a former LAPD officer who says she was working with the officers when the alleged attack occurred Oct. 23, 1997. She testified about the incident before the county grand jury Thursday, according to sources.

According to court documents, Bowen was driven to the Los Angeles River and beaten. Salazar has testified that Cochrane activated the slide on his 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and put the weapon to Bowen’s head to scare him, according to sources familiar with her account.

In the suit filed Friday, Carnighan said he was arrested Jan. 20, 1998. According to his suit, Coppock and Cochrane said they saw him put his hand to his mouth and spit out several rocks of cocaine as they approached him at East 5th and South San Pedro streets.

He was charged with felony drug possession and pleaded no contest in exchange for a four-year prison sentence.

In his lawsuit, Carnighan says he would not have agreed to a plea had he known that a forensic analysis done on the cocaine found no traces of saliva, meaning there was no proof it had been in his mouth. He said he was also unaware that both officers were being investigated by LAPD’s Internal Affairs unit. That investigation focused on complaints of misconduct and allegations that the officers “falsely arrested, planted evidence and committed perjury when testifying” in another case.

Carnighan’s federal lawsuit alleges that the officers violated his civil rights, including “detaining, handcuffing, arresting and imprisoning him without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”

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.