Perez Plea Means More Prison Time

Former Los Angeles Police Officer Rafael Perez, whose admissions and allegations launched what became known as the Rampart corruption scandal, is headed back to prison after agreeing to plead guilty to federal civil rights charges in connection with the shooting of an unarmed man, sources said Wednesday.

Perez, who was released from state prison just four months ago after serving three years for stealing cocaine from LAPD evidence lockers, will spend an additional 24 months in federal custody, according to several sources familiar with the deal. Those sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he will plead guilty to violating the civil rights of Javier Francisco Ovando--a crime Perez himself brought to light more than two years ago.

Even as federal prosectors prepare to conclude their case against Perez, sources said they are continuing to probe allegations against other officers implicated by Perez, including supervisors.

Also on Wednesday, a district attorney’s official said local prosecutors will review as many 60 new Rampart-related cases, despite an announcement this month by Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley that his office was “closing the book” on the corruption probe. Those cases will be submitted by the LAPD.

“Steve [Cooley] made those comments based on the information he had at that time,” said William Hodgman, head of the office’s Rampart task force. “He did not know about these [new] cases, because I didn’t know about them then.”

Perez uncorked the scandal in September 1999 when he told authorities that he and other officers in the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit routinely committed crimes and misconduct. He made the statements as part of a plea deal in exchange for a lighter sentence on cocaine theft charges he was facing at the time.

Among the crimes he admitted to was the shooting and subsequent framing of the unarmed Ovando, who was left paralyzed and was sentenced to 23 years in prison for attacking Perez and his partner.

Perez was granted immunity from state prosecution for the shooting of Ovando and a host of other crimes to which he admitted.

His lawyer, Winston Kevin McKesson, argued that the agreement also shielded Perez from federal prosecution. But lawyers in the U.S. attorney’s office disagreed, and have been pursuing charges against Perez for more than a year. Federal sources said they were threatening to prosecute Perez for crimes that could have resulted in a sentence of more than 10 years behind bars.

Few details of the plea deal were available late Wednesday, including when Perez would enter his plea or when he would begin serving his sentence. McKesson declined to comment on any negotiations with federal prosecutors regarding Perez. Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, also declined to comment.

Former Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Rosenthal, who brokered the 1999 plea deal under which Perez began cooperating with authorities, said he had mixed feelings about Perez serving more time in prison.

“Lord knows he deserves it,” said Rosenthal, now a civilian monitor of the Police Department in Portland, Ore. “But I don’t think it’s appropriate. He was the whistle blower. Without his cooperation nobody would have known anything about Ovando or any other police corruption.”

Perez has been both praised and condemned for his work as the key informant in the Rampart corruption probe. Civil rights advocates have said he helped crack the police code of silence and spurred much-needed reforms at the LAPD. Some in law enforcement, however, have blamed Perez for putting the entire Police Department under a cloud.

“From our perspective it’s hard to imagine that Ray Perez could ever pay his debt to society,” said Mitzi Grasso, president of the LAPD union. “We are very happy he is going back to prison.”

Perez implicated about 70 officers as having been involved in crimes or misconduct or knowing about them and doing nothing. More than 100 criminal convictions were overturned because prosecutors lost faith in the credibility of their police witnesses.

The first conviction that was overturned was Ovando’s. Perez said he and then-partner Nino Durden shot Ovando, who was unarmed, several times.

In March, Durden pleaded guilty to a host of state and federal charges, including planting a gun on Ovando and providing false testimony against him in court.

In addition to Durden, seven other officers have been charged with crimes as a result of Perez’s allegations. Three were convicted by a jury of corruption-related offenses, but their convictions were overturned. That outcome has been appealed by the district attorney’s office. Two others pleaded no contest to crimes. One former officer is awaiting trial on assault charges.

In a Nov. 8 news conference, Cooley said he did not expect any other Rampart-related prosecutions of LAPD officers. But Hodgman said Wednesday that the new cases mean his nine-attorney task force will continue to work rather than shut down in December.

He said police officials have not given him any details about the case, but he said they generally believe that not many of them would result in criminal charges.

“But we are the ones who determine that,” Hodgman said.

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Staff writers Steve Berry, Anna Gorman and Greg Krikorian contributed to this report.